Just about all that is on our local (New Orleans) television stations now is weather information, evacuation information for all of the coastal parishes in Louisiana and New Orleans and information about evacuation routes through Louisiana and Mississippi going outward from New Orleans.

Tom and I have been making preparations to try to be ready for whatever happens.  Right now, we’re in a state of uncertainty about what all we will be doing.  Gustav is looking right now as if it is going to become a big, strong hurricane on the level strength-wise as Katrina.  God forbid.

It has slowed down, so we are going to have to wait until sometime late Saturday or early Sunday until we decide for sure if I am going to evacuate north to Jackson.  Right now, they are projecting that it will come ashore a little bit west and south below New Orleans and track up through central Louisiana.  If that stays the case, I will most likely stay in Picayune, either with Tom at his office at the newspaper or with my son Mark and his family.

No matter where Gustav comes, I will not stay here at the house.  Tom will have to be at the newspaper and we don’t want me to be stuck out here in the country alone with no electricity and trees down between here and town (and Interstate 59).  So, I will either go stay in town or go up to Jackson.  I pray Gustav goes further west so I can stay in Picayune.  Katrina is too much on my mine.

Which reminds me – today is the third anniversary of Katrina.

For those of you who may think all must be well down here now after three years, here is a sobering thought.  The city of New Orleans held services this morning remembering Katrina and those who were lost.  Including, just today, the burial of 80 bodies of people who were still in the morgue, never identified or claimed. 

On top of everything else, there is yet another big tropical storm in the south Atlantic (Tropical Storm Hanna – click here to track it) that they think may track westward, turning into a hurricane and crossing the Florida Keys into the gulf next week.

I will keep you posted up until the time we leave the house and after that as I can.  If worse comes to worse, as it did in Katrina, I will probably evacuate from Jackson after the hurricane (and before the next) and drive on out to Texas to either Dallas (where my daughter and step-daughter both live) and/or on to Abilene to my mom’s.  But, those plans would be a last resort because it’s 500 miles to Dallas and 750 miles to Abilene from here, and I’m not too much on driving long distances, much less alone.

Please pray for everyone in the path of these hurricanes and pray they won’t be bad. 

Cheers & Blessings to you all today!

Dee

Everyone down here, including me and Tom, are rapidly making preparations for the worst.  That is all we can do to be safe.  

This afternoon, I will be stocking up on essentials for a bad hurricane and getting cash.  If the hurricane hits anywhere near here, electricity could be out for days and/or weeks.  More likely, weeks out here at the house because we live in a rural area.  After Katrina, one of our neighbors did not have electricity for over three weeks.

I cannot stay under those circumstances because of my many health problems, number one being that I’m diabetic and need to keep insulin refrigerated.  We have planned right now for me to drive up to Jackson early Sunday morning to stay with a good friend until the hurricane passes and we can see how things are then.

All of this may change in the next three days – we’ll see – but right now those are the plans.

To all those of you who followed us closely through and after Katrina, please pray again for us and for all those around us who lost so much in Katrina and who are facing losing everything again.  If this hurricane hits dead on the mouth of the Mississippi and moves up into New Orleans with a direct hit, it will mean total chaos and devastation to not only those in the low lying parishes, but probably also those in New Orleans, as well.

If we are on the east side of the hurricane, that will mean extremely powerful south winds blowing water inland from the gulf and lots of rain, as Florida just experienced last week with Fay.

Wherever the hurricane hits, and it has already caused death and destruction in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, God help us all.

I will keep you posted.

Dee

Friday night at the President’s dinner, Tom stepped down as this past year’s President of the Mississippi Press Association.  He enjoyed a great year as president and went on several trips that were really good – one to Norfolk, Virginia to the National Newspaper Association’s convention and one to a governmental conference for press members in Washington, D. C. – but is glad to be stepping down, as well.  It’s been a real hectic year with him being gone a lot, and I don’t like to be by myself so much, so I’ll be happy to have him home more.

He’s still got several responsibilities for the MPA Board this coming year, so will still be really active and gone on short trips to Jackson on a regular basis, but will be home a lot more for the most part.

However, we’ve got a big trip (for me, anyway) coming up this week – Friday, July 4, to be exact.  Tom has to go out to Dallas (Grand Prairie) to pick up two of his three grandkids, 15 year old Julian and 12 year old Veronica, to bring them down for a week.  (He’ll be picking up his other granddaughter, Hayley, 11, in Jackson on the way home.) He worked it out last week with his daughter, Kristine, to come back out the next weekend to bring them home if they pay for his trip (they had planned to come down to get the kids, but something came up). 

Kristine agreed, so Tom worked it out, too, for me to come along AND not only is he going to take me on over to Abilene Saturday morning to see my mom, I’m going to stay and visit with her all next week with Kristine coming to get me and take me back to Grand Prairie (a 2 1/2 hour drive) Saturday morning, July 12.  

I called my mom to ask her if it was all right for me to come back out so soon (I just flew out there the first of May, if you remember).  She was very surprised by my request, but what’s a mother to do, you know?!  She couldn’t exactly say she had big plans for this weekend and next week.  And although it’s hot out there in west Texas in the middle of July, as Tom said (when I was protesting going out there with him because I thought it would be too much, having just been gone this past week), Mom and I don’t tend to spend much time outdoors, anyway, when I’m there.  We just sort of hang out!

Besides, it’s gotten to be a tradition for me to go out there in the middle of July, somehow.  I was looking back through old blog posts the other day and found where I had been out to Abilene in July of 2005 – "Confessions From the Edge of the Sun" – (then immediately back again the end of August during Katrina for two weeks -  see D(estruction)-Day +2 – On the Road, P.S. One More Thing & Joy! Joy! Joy! for starters), July of 2006 -  "More Confessions From the Edge of the Sun" – then not again until July of 2007 – "Greetings From Abilene, Texas – I Think" – exactly one year ago! 

 Now, heading into July 2008, I’m heading out to Abilene, Texas once again for my 4th year in a row during that delightful month.  Lord willing.

Well – that’s the news from here in Picayune, Mississippi this late June Monday.  Besides, I’ve got to "run to town" to catch up on a bunch of errands, which is always interesting in this small town.

But before I go, let me leave you with what I learned at the Mississippi Press Association’s convention.  I post this cartoon every summer for y’all, but just love it and never get tired of seeing it again because it so represents the difference between my life as a blogger and my former life as a journalist and Community Editor for the Picayune Item.  Hope you aren’t too bored by seeing it again:

Cheers & Blessings to you all today!  Leave me a comment, y’all, to let me know what’s going on with you this week and what you are going to be doing for the 4th of July!  Dee

The past two summers and falls along the Gulf Coast have been very quiet.  I hope it stays that way.  Once in a lifetime was too much of what Katrina involved.

The local (New Orleans) television and radio stations have been issuing a lot of warnings already for people to get prepared, if they haven’t already done so.  Most haven’t.  And many around New Orleans insist that they will refuse to evacuate, even if mandated, and they will be.  Leaders in New Orleans and surrounding area towns and cities along both the south side and north side of Lake Ponchartrain have made it clear that things will be different next time in when and how evacuation orders will be given and that everyone will be required to leave, but that’s never worked before, and I doubt that it will again.

Many of you started reading Finding Direction as I wrote about what all we went through before, during and for a long time after Katrina.  If you haven’t read those posts, you might want to do so now or sometime soon.  I began writing about Katrina on August 27, 2005 as Tom and I were leaving Slidell to start north in escaping the coming fury and I wrote for weeks and weeks after that about it. 

The easiest way to read some or all of the posts is to go to my Archives over on the right side of my page and start with August 2005 (or here).  If you’ll read from the August 27, 2005 post forward through the September 2005 Archives (in the Archives, you have to read the posts in reverse chronological order – the earliest posts are last in the series of posts for the entire month) it will give you a pretty clear idea of what life was like through that tumultuous time and how we coped with it, both on a family basis and as Christians all along the Gulf Coast, including both in Mandeville, Louisiana where I was a church member at Tammany Oaks church of Christ  then all the way over to Pascagoula, Mississippi, where John Dobbs was (and still is part of the time).

 Reading John’s archives from that time forward would be a good exercise, as well.  God certainly used those events through the efforts of John and many other Christians to bring glory to His name all along the Mississippi Gulf Coast and is still using them today, nearly three years afterward.  In light of the terrible personal tragedy in John’s life and the life of his wife, Maggy, and family last week in the death of their only son, John Robert, who was 18, we can only pray that God will bring John and Maggy to a place where they can see the glory of God that shone through John Robert and that continues to shine to reach out to others.

Now, looking back at those days and in reading my posts of then, it’s as if it happened to someone else.  I’m glad that memory can erase some of the worst of such times and leave only the good.  If we could but be that way about everything that happens to us in this life I think we would all be better off.  But, some things take many, many years to overcome and so we must to patient and persevere until such time as we can see more clearly how God will work those things out for us.

But, never let us forget the lessons, so that we may be wise.  After all, as I wrote in my post on August 9, 2005, "What Is Our Share Anyway?," some 2 1/2 weeks before anyone ever heard of or thought of Katrina, King Solomon said that "time and chance" happen to us all in this life.  If we’re not strong Christians, already, we may not be ready for "time and chance" when they do come.

I pray that we all will be.

May God richly bless each of you who come by here to read this post today and over the weekend!  Dee

Now, some two years out, is the first time I’ve been able to go back to read the posts from then and I was quite surprised, even shocked, at not only how well written they were, but how emotionally packed they were.  It was an emotionally and faith challenging time. 

I don’t have anything to add today.  I wish I did.  It was an extraordinary experience to live through and it has taken it’s heavy toll.  But we survived and have made it through it all intact and the better for it, as far as Tom and I are concerned.  For others, it has not boded so well.

So, at this time as we think back to that time a mere two years ago, yet long ago in some ways, let us remember all of those who are still without a home in which to live and let us remember the devastation that once prevailed.  And let us be thankful for all who survived and all who have come to help the survivors.  You all deserve a medal!

Dee

Tom says that when storms move from east to west, against the flow in the U. S., which is normally west to east, at least generally, the thunder and lightening are much worse. 

I don’t know about that, but it seems so.  

I do know that whichever direction the storms are crossing, they are very loud and scary.  And great for porch sittin’.

You see, Tom and I have been sitting out on our back porch the past several afternoons in the cooling temperatures under the ceiling fan to just listen to the rain and thunder and to watch the lightening and to take it all in.

It’s the best back porch sittin’ ever.  Worth the price of the house, I’m tellin’ you.

The storms and rain have been great to cool off the hot August temperatures, to bring much needed rain and to soothe the soul.  The last part is the best.  How calming and soothing a good thunderstorm can be.

While ago I indulged by myself eating a late lunch out there and feeling guilty about it the whole time because Tom was at work and not here to enjoy it with me.  But, we had last night.

Yesterday evening it started raining so Tom drug the grill in from the deck to the screened in back porch to grill a couple of big ol’ steaks.  Oh, they smelled good cooking and even better in the eating.  This is the way to live, folks, even with – especially with – all of the health problems and other things in life I have to worry about.  

The way I look at it is – God has given us this for our enjoyment and relaxation.  It brings me great peace to sit out on the back porch in the middle of a thunderstorm and rain and I thank Him for that.  Immensely.

Find those things from nature in your own life and let me know what they are so that we can all enjoy them together.  Leave a comment, won’t you, about what in nature or your life brings you great contentment and/or pleasure.

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the massive hurricane Katrina and we here on the Mississippi gulf coast and fringes need your prayers and thoughts as we face yet another year without much success in making things right.  A lot has been done, but there is a very long way to go.

Thanks for stopping by this stormy afternoon and may the Lord be with you through the rest of the day and tomorrow.

Much love, Dee

P. S.  It’s also good napping weather, so I think I’ll go take one. 

Seventeen and 1/2 months, to be exact.  I would – could – tell you the days, hours and minutes, but I won’t stop to add them all up.  I know them by heart in my own heart, for sure.

It actually started way before that some 12 years ago when our house in Slidell first flooded.  We had a foot of water from excess rain, like what they just had in Texas a couple of weeks ago.  We had over 20" of rain in 2 1/2 days.  Way too much to drain off or pump out of low lying neighborhoods in the lowlands of Louisiana.

Nine years ago we flooded once again, again from excessive rain.  Then, even though we remodeled once more, we wanted to move even more, but couldn’t get enough for our house to pay for a far more expensive newer, nicer place somewhere.  Anywhere around.  Prices on houses for sale were rising far faster than the sale price of a twice flooded house, as you can imagine.

Then nearly two years ago Katrina happened.  Our house barely escaped getting any water in it.  We were blessed.  Greatly blessed, as the eye of Katrina came directly over our house, as it did a vast number of others in its width swath of destruction across the land.

While other people’s lives languished unendingly, ours proceeded on without major disruption to our home, although in every other way our lives were turned upside down.  But for a short period of time after Katrina, the price of "whole" houses went up amazingly well.  Including ours.

When someone has had ten feet of water in their house and it’s taken everything, a foot of water doesn’t seem so bad and the fact that none was taken in Katrina seems to be the clincher on not asking any further about flooding.  We decided to try to sell our house at a far higher price than any in our neighborhood, many of which were damaged, had ever sold.

We got what we were asking.  No questions asked.

But before we put our house on the market, we came up to Picayune to talk with real estate agents and our builder to count the cost.  Monetarily, it was all black and white on paper and affordable.  Emotionally, it’s been a slightly different story.  It’s been hard.  I won’t deny that at all.  It’s been very hard.

We bought our lot in early March of 2006 and started heavily packing our house of 14 years up so that we could move 18 miles up the road.  We’ve been mostly packed up ever since.  Even still today we have boxes full of stuff from packing then.

That’s a long time to live without most of your possessions, but you know something?  That’s made it easier as I’ve opened boxes to just let things go.  After all, I’ve lived without them for the past year and a half, so why not permanently?

Oh, there are pictures and family treasures from the past I want to hold on to, and will.  Somehow.  But, as I’ve been writing the past couple of weeks since we’ve moved in our house, I’ve taken boxes and boxes of things to Goodwill and Jacob’s Well, the other charitable thrift store in town, and even more boxes to antique stores.

I’ve written about the emotional pain involved in doing so, but once the boxes are unloaded and disbursed, I’m actually relieved in a good way.  Hoping that the great things will bring money to help those who need the help.  Praying that will be so.

It looks like we are going to be living in limbo for a while longer because once again, just like when we moved up to Picayune 17 months ago into the apartment, now that we’ve gotten the basic living things out of boxes to make our lives at least comfortable, we’ve greatly slowed down in unpacking out of necessity.  There is just so much emotional turmoil one can take at a time to do well and I passed that limit the week we moved in.

I’m doing much better now, thanks to lots of prayers on my part and yours for me for the Lord’s help in dealing with depression and emotional unease and I’m greatly appreciative of all of those on my behalf.  Tom is greatly appreciative, too.  After all, he’s the one who has to see me suffer when I’m in a depressed state and to comfort me.

The greatest comfort so far as been the tranquility of the back porch where I can sit and ponder God’s goodness in keeping us safe thus far and praying and faithfully expecting that He will continue to do so. 

Please continue to pray for us that He will do so, as well, if you would.  Y’all make all the difference in the world to me in a very positive way each day!

Hope you each and every one have a great day today.  It’s very cloudy here with rain sure to follow, it seems.  It rained heavily yesterday afternoon and has been rainy looking ever since.  But I am safe and secure here in our new house that is now working well – for the moment – and hopefully will continue to do so.

We’re expecting to have the cabinet guy out here in a little while to install our kitchen counter tops – finally – to replace these porous plywood temporary ones and I will be so glad to finally have the house completely finished except for a couple of very minor detail jobs.  What a blessing that will be to have real counter tops to work on.  Although we’ve managed thus far.  These last 17 1/2 months. 

And I thank God for that this cloudy, rainy day.  Dee

It was a bright Sunday afternoon but the parking lot of the ramshackle place was filled with nondescript vehicles, many of them of the pickup kind.  There was no sign of life and one could but wonder what was going on inside there on such a sunny bright Lord’s Day.  Was Willie Nelson’s "Seven Spanish Angels" sung with Ray Charles blaring from the juke box or was it a more maudlin tune about a woman who’d left him for another man. 

It was a typical Mississippi juke joint but much more likely filled with redneck type regulars and drop ins than blacks, like those of the Delta up in northwest Mississippi over near the big river by the same name.  Such small dilapidated roadhouses litter the southern landscape with a loud afront to the more estheticly minded of the local citizenry. 

I still wanted to wander in there to talk to some guys.  I doubt that any women were present, or at least not many.  These are mostly places for men, although among the real juke joints of the poor in the Delta, women are part of the scene.

I just wondered who these men were and what their lives were like that they had to seek sodden alcoholic solace in the Lost and Found Lounge on such a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  How desperate must their lives be.

When my younger son Mark was about 10 he said that when he grew up he wanted to either be a missionary or a bartender and I thought that those two career choices were not quite so opposite as might first appear.  After all, do not good bartenders tend to their flocks and listen and minister to their patrons in their own awkward, inept ways?

As we drove on along the ravaged Mississippi coast and saw more and more destruction not much changed from a year and a half ago I kept thinking about that sign and those cars and trucks and the men inside and wondered if I would have anything in common with them. 

In some ways I think not, but in others I’m not so sure.   What different lies in the hearts of these men that I have not seen in my own life at one time or another?  Have I not "been there" in desperation and despair in tragically grim circumstances in my younger adult years?  Yes, I was a Christian and I had faith.  Always I had faith.  But I could not see a way out for me.  Not one positive option in my life whatsoever.

Maybe those men in that place felt the same way.  I feel sure some of them did and I said a prayer for them.  

My life has seen been rescued and redeemed by my Father and I am in a very good, loving, wonderful place right now in my life, but should I not seek out those who are still hurting and minister to them?

We drove for miles and miles Sunday afternoon directly along the Mississippi coast where Katrina hurled in and it was very sad and broken indeed.  It makes one hurt to see the heavy losses and the hopelessness that seems to hang over the quiet seascape with a heavy pall. 

We drove through Waveland, Long Beach, Gulfport, Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis – it all looked the same.  Sad.  Very, very sad.

On the way home we decided to take the slow ferry from Pass Christian over to the west to Bay St. Louis.  The four lane bridge across St. Louis Bay was totally washed away by Katrina and the new, higher one is still under construction.  We were in no hurry, so we parked and waited for the ferry to dock and unload so that we could traverse the mouth of the bay into the gulf. 

The afternoon had turned cool, cloudy and windy with a cool front coming through from the west, followed by the sun.  We saw rows of curlique clouds bordering the high mass of clouds like a heavenly fringe and it was a sight neither of us had ever seen.  Sitting in our car listening to NPR while we crossed the bay we watched the water, the other vehicles and their drivers and the U. S. and Mississippi flags flying in the wind from the top of the ferry boat.  

It was a 20 minute ride and very peaceful and lovely in a down to earth sort of way.  What better way, I thought, to spend a Sunday afternoon.  Much better than sitting in the Lost and Found Lounge, for sure.

Why was I so struck by the sign for the lounge and why have I thought about it so much since?  I think because it was a reminder that we are all lost at some time or other in our lives and search very desperately and resolutely to be found.  We want to belong somewhere, to fit in, to find community and to be with fellow believers in some cause.

I have found my way, but I need to be mindful of those who haven’t.  They are all around me everywhere, even along the roadside going into Waveland, Mississippi in a dark, dank, dingy place where the only solace is each other and booze.

Lord, help me to be open to those who are hurting and who seek solace who are all around me but who many times I don’t see.  Send them my way so that I can share with them my good news and a better way in life.  Even beyond this life. 

That is my prayer today.  And I also pray for those we passed by Sunday in the Lost and Found Lounge that they may find faith and peace in their lives in some better way.  We passed a lot of small churches meeting in quonset huts and shelters next to shattered big buildings and we saw lots of workers outside many of them, so I can only hope some of them will reach out to those wandering souls, too.

I think the Lost and Found Lounge is a metaphor for all of our lives.  It just depends on the particular circumstances of our lives at the moment which side of the equation we stand on.  As for me – I was lost, now I’m found. 

Thank God for the victory in Jesus.

Where do you stand today?  If you want to share any hurts with us in comment we will all gather round you and pray for you.  That is the kind of community of Christian bloggers we are.  We’ve all collectively been in all the kinds of places there can be in this world and understand.  We may not have been in the Lost and Found Lounge literally, but metaphorically and it not the best place in the world to be, especially as a Christian, but I have been there myself and I’m sure at least some of you have been, too. 

I love you all and pray for each of you readers and commenters daily.  I consider all of you my friends.  People like Karen and Judy and Janice and Royce and Doyce.  (They should be twins, shouldn’t they?  They both asked to be prayed for by name after reading my Lost and Found post Monday and I will honor those requests.) 

Cheers & Blessings to you today, dear friends!  Dee

I want you each to please take a few minutes to go to the linlks I’m giving you in the order I’m listing them. 

The first short piece is told in very uplifting words, written from the heart.  It has deep spiritual implications for us all. I can really identify with the woman who wrote it,  because she is about my age and diabetic.  The story itself is reflections on Steve Irwin’s life and death, but not at all as you might think.  So – please take a brief few moments to read it. 

It’s:  Death, Where Is Thy Stingray?

The second story is graphically told through video, music and the fewest of written words, but all that are needed.  It is the story of a father and his son, Dick & Rick Hoyt.

So watch and listen:  With A Father’s Love – He CAN!

The third story is that of a friend of our dear friend, David Persons, an attorney and colleague of mine.  Here’s what David said about his friend, Mark Morice, who so eloquently shares his story and describes his actions through his words, sounds of others, video and voice:

"The guy in the video, Mark Morice, is a local attorney, whom I am proud to call one of my friends.  I know we’re all kind of tired of the Katrina stuff.  However, Mark’s video and his experience are truly incredible."  David

 Go to:  Mark Morice:  Screams for help led to resue of hundreds, lawsuit

You absolutely must watch Mark’s video.  Then read the article about him now, one year later. 

All three of these stories are ones you will come away from changed changed forever.  I have been.

Father – Thank you for the lives of such people among us here on earth who so lift our spirits by showing us the best of humanity and Godliness even in the worst of conditions, sometimes surrounded by those who would despitefully abuse them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

P. S.  If you don’t have time to read and see all three right now, start with the first and come back to the other two in order as you have time the next few days.  You really don’t want to miss them.  You really shouldn’t miss any of them.