Faith, Grief, and Resilience: The Thread That Connects Hurricanes and School Shootings

Yesterday, I found myself sitting at a coffee shop in New Orleans waiting on my first appointment of the day. I was staring at the news on my phone, tears slipping down before I even realized I was crying. Another school shooting the day before. This time in Minnesota. Children sitting in Mass, heads bowed, teachers nearby, parents trusting they’d be safe. And then—gunfire.

Two children gone. Others wounded. Lives forever split into before and after.

And the first thought that rose up in my chest, like a knot too big to swallow, was:                                                                    “God, where are You in this?”

It’s a question that echoes through every mother, grandmother, aunt, godmother, and friend who has ever loved a child. We pray over scraped knees and nighttime fevers, we pack lunches and wave goodbye at carpool, whispering please bring them home safe. And then tragedy knocks, and we wonder if heaven was listening.

It’s easy to think that when disaster strikes, God must not be paying attention. But I wonder how many tragedies have been stopped that we’ll never know about. The teenager who didn’t follow through with his plan. The bullet that jammed. The stranger who noticed something off and spoke up. Those quiet mercies don’t make the evening news.

Still, free will is real. People choose evil. And that’s what shakes us—because if God could stop it all, why doesn’t He? Why let children die in church? Why let water rise until a city drowns?

I don’t have an easy answer. What I do know is this: God often shows up differently than we expect.

Today, as we mourn Minnesota, New Orleans also remembers another grief. It has been twenty years since Hurricane Katrina. Twenty years since the levees broke, since helicopters circled endlessly overhead, since we felt forgotten by the world.

If you were here, you remember.

• You remember the smell—the mix of mildew, mud, and despair.

• You remember the long lines for water, ice, gasoline.

• You remember seeing refrigerators duct-taped shut and pushed to the curb, painted with words like Do Not Open because the contents had rotted.

• You remember families split up—children sent to Texas, grandparents stuck in Mississippi, neighbors lost track of for months.

For those of us in New Orleans, Katrina wasn’t just a storm. It was a wound.

And I remember crying, asking God: Where were You when the levees broke?

I still recall watching the news from Birmingham, AL after the waters receded, seeing cars on rooftops, debris tangled in oak trees, silence where birds once sang. I remember coming home and driving through communities where neighbors were waving from porches that were no longer porches—just bare slabs. I remember strangers—church groups from Ohio, women from Alabama, college kids from California—driving down with bleach and brooms and casseroles because they saw our pain and wouldn’t look away.

And I remember crying, asking God: Where were You when the levees broke?

I didn’t see God in the wind or the water. But I saw Him in the neighbor who cooked red beans for the whole block when nobody had power. I saw Him in the elderly woman who stood on her porch singing hymns to keep her own heart steady and ended up steadying all of us as we loaded stranger’s homes with garbage bags of debris. I saw Him in the men who drove airboats into neighborhoods to rescue strangers they’d never met.

That’s where God was. Not in preventing the storm, but in sustaining us through it.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s the same with the shooting in Minnesota. God didn’t stop the bullets. But He was in the teacher who shielded a child. He was in the EMT who pressed his hands against wounds. He was in the neighbors who ran toward the sound instead of away from it.

Where Do We Go From Here?

That’s the hardest question. Where do we go after one more shooting? After twenty years of remembering Katrina? After so much loss?

1. We turn grief into action.

After Katrina, we rebuilt—not perfectly, not quickly, but we did it. We demanded safer levees, stronger systems. And after this shooting, we have to do the same. Demand safer schools. Advocate for mental health support. Push for commonsense gun laws that protect children more than they protect profit.

2. We lean on each other.

In 2005, it wasn’t FEMA or the politicians w ho saved us first. My disdain for most politicians, no matter which party they associate with, truly came because of Hurricane Katrina. Our mayor blamed the governor, the governor blamed the President, and the President blamed them both. No one wanted to take responsibility or accept accountability, the number one problem still in politics. Politicians care about being right and winning, not about rolling up their sleeves and solving really hard problems, and possibly getting some things wrong along the way. 

Nonetheless…. Sorry for my side rant… It was neighbors who stepped up and saved communities.  It was church ladies serving gumbo out of big pots and making beautiful, fluffy southern biscuits and center cut strips of bacon to send workers and volunteers out with every morning. It was cousins sleeping five families deep in a two-bedroom house. It was aunts, uncles, and grandmothers holding kids close while parents stood in line for supplies. And, it’s the same now. After every shooting, it’s communities gathering for vigils, cooking meals for grieving families, and sitting in silence together because words aren’t enough.

3. We pass on the stories.

Children today don’t remember Katrina. But we, their parents,  do. And it’s our job to tell them—not to scare them, but to remind them that resilience is in their blood. Just like we must tell them about these shootings, as awful as they are, because shielding them from reality won’t keep them safe. Hopefully, though, equipping them with courage and compassion just might. 

The Thread Between Katrina and School Shootings

I’m sure some of you are thinking at this point in your read, what do a hurricane and a school shooting have in common? is a natural disaster One, the other an act of human violence.     Here’s what they share:

Both rip away the illusion that life is safe. Both reveal the cracks in our systems. Both leave behind survivors who are never the same.

And both force us into the same choice: despair or determination.

After Katrina, many people left New Orleans and never returned. But so many stayed. So many rebuilt. So many planted gardens in the same soil that had been flooded. That’s determination. And now, after this shooting, parents in Minnesota will send their children back to school. Not because they aren’t afraid, but because they refuse to let fear dictate the story. That too is determination.

Today, as New Orleans remembers Katrina, and as Minnesota grieves fresh loss, I can’t help but see the thread between them.

We are a people who know what it means to suffer. We are a people who know what it means to rebuild. We are a people who, by the grace of God, keep standing even when the wind and water and gunfire knock us down.

And maybe that’s the story we pass on to our children and grandchildren: Not that God prevented every storm or every act of violence. But that God was with us in the middle of it. That God gave us one another. That God is still calling us to love harder, stand stronger, and never stop fighting for the lives of our children.

Katrina taught us something we can never forget: the waters may rise, but they don’t have the final word.

And these shootings, as senseless and cruel as they are, remind us of the same: violence does not get the final word. Love does. Community does. Faith does.

We are a people who have suffered, yes. But we are also a people who have rebuilt, resisted, and refused to give up. From the brass bands that second-lined through flooded streets, to the schoolchildren who will walk back into classrooms next week, we carry the same message:

We will not be break. We will not quit. We will not be afraid of hard things. 

So, here’s where I land today, on the 20th anniversary of Katrina and in the shadow of another school shooting. I sit at my kitchen table, and I let myself cry. I hug my son tighter. I light a candle for Minnesota. I whisper a prayer for New Orleans. This morning, as my 10 year old son and 4 year old great nephew walked out the door this morning to go to school, as always, we held hands for our morning prayer but, this morning was different. It was not a prayer of making good choices, doing our best, and being kind, but more of an emphasis on simply giving thanks for another day to live in our world.

They are so young, so innocent, and both have so much God needs them to do for His Kingdom. Therefore, I have to choose to continue to believe. Not because I understand everything, but because I have seen enough to know this:

• God doesn’t always stop the storms or the bullets.

• But God never leaves us alone in the aftermath.

• And God gives us one another—mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, friends—to hold on and keep going.

Love is louder than fear. Hope is stronger than despair. And faith, even in the questions, is what keeps us standing twenty years later.