This week marks ten years since Hurricane Katrina forever changed the landscape of the gulf coast of America. Time for the gulf coast is now marked by “before Katrina” and “after Katrina”. The gulf coast has rebuilt, but the after is markedly different from the before.

August 12, 2015 was our family’s Katrina. We are forever changed. We will rebuild, but our after will look markedly different from our before.

Friends and family keep asking how we’re doing. We’re shaken. After Katrina it took months for power to be restored in many places. During those months, people whose homes were in the places without power were displaced, unsettled, and forced to wait on moving forward with life. That’s where we are right now. The Army hasn’t made any final decisions on when Chad will retire, or if he will do a short-term job before retirement, or whether they will let him finish the medical retirement board he began a few years ago, or if they will force us to move for his remaining time on active duty. The storm has passed. Nothing looks the same. We are without power.

But… Matthew 7:24-25 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock…” ~ Jesus

Our family has weathered other storms. I’ve battled cancer. We’ve survived war. We’ve walked through a torrential adoption and the aftermath. We’ve been homeless. Each storm changed us. Each marked time. Each left us with a markedly different “before” and “after”.

But NO storm has the power to change our foundation. We stand on solid rock.

Four years ago we were preparing to purchase a cute little house on a great street in our neighborhood. The closing was scheduled for the morning of August 30th. One week before closing, on August 23rd, the earth literally shook. Our area was shaken by a 5.8 magnitude earthquake. If you’ve never experienced an earthquake, it is unsettling. When the windows stopped shaking and the light fixtures stopped swinging, my thoughts went to the house we were planning to purchase. The earthquake revealed cracks in the cute little house’s walls and foundation. Four days later Hurricane Irene blasted through our area. On the morning of August 28th, two days before we were scheduled to sign the closing papers, we walked through floodwaters in the cute little house and on the morning of the 30th, while removing water-damaged sheetrock, a structural engineer discovered that the entire support structure of the main floor was infested with termites. Everything we owned was sitting in a moving truck and we had no clue where we would sleep that night. But we knew we were not going to purchase the cute little house.

Our plan for the cute little house was to completely remodel it and double the square footage while we were living in it. The project would’ve taken 8-12 months to complete. We had the plans and the contractors lined up.

But God knew.

Jeremiah 29:11GWT I know the plans that I have for you, declares the LORD. They are plans for peace and not disaster, plans to give you a future filled with hope.

He knew that three months later we would enter the fire. He knew that the investigation my husband was about to walk through would leave us with zero reserve energy or patience or grace for a whole-house renovation. 

After two weeks of quasi-homelessness (friends who were traveling graciously let us stay in their home), we landed in a great rental that has been home to our family for the last four years. The house we live in was built on the foundation of a chapel that was part of a girls’ camp. The camp was built on land once owned by George Washington. This place has been our sanctuary as we’ve weathered the latest storm. And it just so happens, this house is built on solid rock.

Do you know what you stand on? Do you know what your foundation is made of? If not, I encourage you to plant your feet firmly on The Rock. Storms in life are guaranteed.

Psalm 62:5-6NLT

Let all that I am wait quietly before God,
    for my hope is in him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
    my fortress where I will not be shaken.