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People of the Gulf Coast also need help rebuilding their spirits
The first time I drove through Pearlington, Miss., I couldn’t shake my amazement at how, even two-and-a-half years after Hurricane Katrina swept a 20-foot wave over the town, there was still so much recovering to do. Pearlington, which lies at on the Pearl River just above Lake Borgne, remained only a collection of partially constructed homes and accompanying FEMA cottages, toppled trees and debris-scattered yards. From dawn to dusk, the din of power tools and hammers was inescapable.
Our group settled into working on a doublewide that was gradually regaining its pre-storm condition. It was owned by a couple entering their 50s, Jethro and Linda. Jethro spent most of the day sitting on his FEMA cottage porch, drinking. He would come over only to point out the faults in our work. He thought the government was corrupt, and church groups too.
One day Jethro told us about a plastic statuette of praying hands that was in the home. Before the storm, they’d held his wife’s work nametag and family photos. When they returned after Katrina to a trailer chest deep with mud, he found those praying hands sitting atop the muck, still holding the nametag and photos.
“I guess it was a miracle,” he said. As we worked, I realized this man needed a miracle of a much higher order. What I was giving to him in home repairs, I now understood, was fairly small in comparison.
Almost exactly a year later, we returned to Pearlington. Most of Katrina’s wounds were now scars. Almost all the new homes were finished, and the old ones restored, at least those not left abandoned. The community center was nearing completion. And the lunchtime line of volunteer workers at the town’s Baptist church was half what it was the previous year. By the good work of many helping hands, the town’s physical wounds had largely healed.
Our group spent the week drywalling a home that Katrina had flooded to its second story, and then Gustav flooded again. The owner, Cindy, was gracious and kind. “This group, you’re the best,” she said. She smiled as she watched her home transform, yet repeatedly she fell into tears. In addition to the hurricanes, she had nearly died in an auto accident, then her husband died. Hard times seemed to fall like rain on the people of Pearlington.
Even those who’d had easier paths were similarly downcast. As our group walked through the lunch line, we asked the pastor of the Baptist church how he was doing. “Oh, I’m getting by. Just barely, but I’m getting by,” he said, clearly making an effort to sound mildly upbeat.
I began to understand that much work remained to be done to restore the residents’ spirits. I thought of Nehemiah, who knew it was not enough to rebuild the cities. The exiles must be returned, the peoples’ spirits restored through prayer and ceremony. In Pearlington, homes had been repaired. Souls, for the most part, had not.
Like Jethro the year before, Cindy was a wounded person, struggling to get by, worrying over the bills, her health, the next storm. Those concerns couldn’t be hidden behind drywall and paint. As with Jethro, all I could offer was prayer.
Before leaving town, I stopped by Jethro and Linda’s home, hoping it had been finished. Their address still was spray-painted onto the trailer’s side, and their FEMA cottage hadn’t yet been taken away. Otherwise, the home was a home once again, rebuilt and clean, filled with furniture and appliances. Only a few boxes remained to unpack. As Linda gave me the tour, I noticed the loving thumbprints of volunteers’ unskilled hands in the drywall.
The past year had been hard for them. Jethro had suffered a stroke. One of their sons had passed out and smashed his head against the sidewalk. He lay in a coma for a week, then needed months of rehabilitation. Narrowly they avoided Gustav’s flooding.
“There were times I thought I couldn’t go on,” Linda said. “But all you people helped me through. It’s hard. Lord, it’s hard.”
I spoke with Jethro for a moment. He looked me in the eye and smiled. He was different. He’d stopped drinking, started keeping himself busy, spending the hot afternoons reading on the porch. In one look, I knew his life had changed, by something awful — a stroke. But in a way it was a miracle in a town that needs so many more.
Van Jensen is a member of Morningside Presbyterian Church of Atlanta, Ga.
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