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Bad things continue to happen. Bad things always happen. Last week, my friend’s home was destroyed in a fire. When I stopped by her hair salon to take her a bag of clothes and to offer some comfort, she said, “We’re going to be OK.”
I know she’s right. We are all OK.
One Good Friday 37 years ago when I was a senior in high school, our house flooded. I didn’t know it would be OK. We left everything in haste to escape the rising waters. The car stalled halfway down the street. My family was rescued and, in the aftermath, well cared for by friends. But we lost our home and many of our belongings. We went back in a boat to rescue our pets. There were sad moments during those days. Many times I asked if we would be OK.
Weeks later when the flood waters had receded, 21 people from our church showed up to clean out our house. Things were sorted. Things were thrown away. As I walked around my house to the window by my bedroom, something caught my eye. It was a stick. It was my stick.
As a teenager, I attended youth retreats with our church’s youth group. At one of these retreats I had picked up a branch and stripped it of its bark. I carried it around like a talisman. The stick came to symbolize finding my way in the world. But lying on the soggy ground outside among the muddy debris, the stick meant that everything was going to be OK.
On Easter Sunday, the priest’s message was this: Everything is going to be OK. And even in the tragedies, the times when things do not seem OK, the resurrection assures us that it will be.
Reflections on the Teche 