An Unlikely Path

Much has been written, produced, filmed, and recorded about New Orleans and the Saints over the past fourteen days. Seeing the images of the flooded city, brought back a rush of memories for me. Until moving to Atlanta four years ago, I had spent more time in New Orleans than any other major U.S. City. Needless to say, New Orleans was and is a special place to me. After seeing and experiencing all the images in the build up to the Super Bowl, I went back to my journal and re-read my entry from December 17, 2005, the first time I went back to the city after Katrina. In the midst of the excitement of a Super Bowl win, I offer this reflection of that car ride into the destructed city, on December 17, 2005:

Silence falls over the car fifteen miles outside of New Orleans as we begin to count the blue tarps that cover rooftops of homes; the marking signs that FEMA had been there to repair roofs, and checked off each home surrounding New Orleans. As the van makes its way closer to the heart of the city we see that a majority of the power has yet to be restored, and in every sense of the word it is a ghost town. Billboards split in two, restaurant signs blown to pieces, cars turned over, walls on one Sam’s Club blown completely off, and homes destroyed. The homes, the one thing that we all connected to, the reason that we felt the call to New Orleans. Homes where families were born, raised, the first Christmas’s, Thanksgiving’s, Birthday’s, and the countless other memories that we cherish about our own homes. The homes that made up the communities that were now displaced, and from all outward appearances “washed away”. The sinking feeling in the heart and the aching in the stomach were all signs that pointed us that we were indeed in the middle of the destruction and exactly where we were called to be.
The van continued to make its way into downtown, more of the same, no power for miles with the exception of one or two lights sprinkled here and there, as if the last signs that there was power there to begin with. The flood of emotions and memories of the images that flooded our television screens, the internet, and magazines came to mind. The streets we were now driving covered in eight to twelve feet of water at one time. It’s hard not to envision what it must have been like a mere two months prior to us driving that day. People swimming, clutching to whatever they could find that would float. These are all images that we are familiar with. They were the images that we clung to in the days and weeks after what has been called the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. It’s hard to put into words what it felt like that night. Yes it was devastating, but we were there for bigger reasons than flooded houses, broken signs, ruined stores, and rusted cars; you see we were there to be in relationship with each other and the people that made these places home. Otherwise these were just houses, stores, wood, nails, and cement. So many people have asked where was God in the storm? How could this happen? As we addressed many of these questions throughout the week we quickly understood that God was there, in the rebuilding process. God was there in the community that was taking place in the destruction of houses, but in the rebuilding of relationships, that were broken long before the hurricane. Our eyes were open to the community that we are called to live in each and every day of our lives.


A lot has changed in New Orleans since the flood and the city in many ways will never be the same, but the spirit of that place lives on. New Orleans is a place like no other. I cherish my time there, and the relationships that have come from that city. The spirit of that city lives on, and now with a Super Bowl trophy.