Then age 9, Charles touched my heart when he stared into the camera and declared: “We just need some help out here. It’s so pitiful.”

I saw Charles again today on television. The 14-year-old told NBC broadcaster Lester Holt that Hurricane Katrina was “like a scary movie that I would not want to see again.”   

Some 1,800 people died after hurricane-swirled waters crashed through levees and flooded 80 percent of  the city. Hundreds of thousands people were displaced, businesses were destroyed and many people left for places far away.

Holt told viewers that he returned to New Orleans on the fifth anniversary of Katrina to see if life had gotten back to normal. For many, many people there, it hasn’t and it won’t. Many have had to deal with a new normal.

I met a family of four nearly five years ago who moved to Savannah after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their home and their lives as they knew them there. They were blessed to meet people in Savannah who helped them get settled and find work. Now that family is doing well and enjoying their new city. They have no plans of returning to New Orleans.

Charles says he wishes “that things would kind of be back to normal” in his city, but  he recognizes that may not happen. “New Orleans is not back to normal,” he said. “You know, a lot of people may think that it is, but it is not.”

In the five years since Hurricane Katrina, thousands of people in different parts of the country and the world also have had to deal with natural and man-made disasters that have upended the normal flow of their lives. What use to be isn’t anymore for so many people due to hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes eruptions, snow storms, terrorist’s attacks, mine collapses and oil rig explosions.  Floods in Pakistan from month-long monsoon rains have claimed the lives of nearly 1,700 and left homeless millions more. And the rains and the floods are continuing to bring calamity. (Photo from the Associated Press)

What happened in New Orleans five years ago, which was captured in all its misery and despair on television, was unimaginable. But since then, so are the disasters in Haiti and more recently Pakistan. We are not living in normal times.

While our personal storms may not compare with what Charles and millions of others have suffered and are suffering, some of us have encountered some our own earth-shattering events that have caused us to rethink  at times how we  continue to live our lives. Deaths of loved ones,  lost of mortgages, job terminations, children in trouble, illnesses, divorce, to name a few.

 I have learned  that when my normal has been upset to turn quickly in prayer to the one person that is constant.  God is unchanging. Faith in Him is the only way that I can deal when my way of living, thinking and doing has been turned upside down.  When I trust in God, I don’t as easily lapse into wishing that things would be like they use to be. Instead, I look forward in hope for something much better than before.

How did you deal with the seismic changes in your life? What lessons, if any,  have you learned from observing what happned in New Orleans about dealing with life-altering disaster?

Related posts:

1. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner
2. Why me? Why not me
3. Finding a personal faith

Darlene Etienne had been in her shower when the 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti on Jan. 12, collapsing her house, she said. A blanket of concrete and steel entrapped her there until passersby heard  a faint voice coming from the rubble of her what had been her hillside home.  A  group of young men  using pick axes, a sledgehammer and whatever else they could find began digging out Darline until Haitian and French rescue teams arrived to complete the task. Within nearly 4 hours, the 17-year-old was freed.  

French medical staff  treated her Wednesday night  aboard the French medical ship Siroco, off Port au Prince, as seen in this Associated Press photo. Doctors said her survival was medically inexplicable.

A person can stay alive without food for 15 days but without water for than long –not usually.

 ”It’s a miracle, ” a British police chaplain declared when Darlene was pulled out of the rubble.

“It was the second remarkable rescue in the Haitian capital in the past 24 hours and may have marked one of the longest stretches of survival on record in any natural disaster. In a nation that has counted its dead by the tens of thousands, Darline’s survival provided a rare moment of pure happiness,” The Washington Post reported.

I have been reading and looking at news reports of the rescues that have taken place since the earthquake, including the one that has remained etched in my mind of the little boy who was pulled from rubble last week. As soon as he was free of the hole in which he had been buried in for  too many days, he flashed a smile and raised his small arms in sheer exhilaration.

I need to see those rescues, to see that miracles still happen amid such tremendous sorrow. To know that despite what appears on the surface that God does not abandon us. He is there in the midst of our troubles, giving us the strength that we need to make it one more minute, one more day. His grace is sufficient and his faithfulness is great . Yes I still wonder why Darlene survived for so long and was rescued, and so many others didn’t. Are there more Darlenes still clinging to life and waiting for passersby to come their way?

Questions of who lives and who dies in such horrific natural disasters, or in plane crashes, or in exploding sugar plants or car accidents or in many other circumstances, such as cancer or other illnesses, are too big for me. All I can do  when those question bubble up is stop and pray that my lack of an answer not does not lead to lack of faith. I will do what Darlene must have done, and what a number of other earthquake survivors say that they did —  hold fast to faith in God.

Please continue to pray for Haiti and support relief efforts because the needs remain great and will be for a long time to come as people are resettled and as the rebuilding begins.

What has touched your heart about the stories coming out of this tragedy?

Related posts:

1. Let the spirit of Christmas linger through you