Echoes of Helene, Article 1: Light in Darkness

Dark times come in all sorts of ways. From this experience, what would you want to say to someone to give them encouragement to get through it?

Natasha: Even in the worst, there was always a glimmer of “God’s still in control ultimately.” Kathy and I decided we were going to serve tomato soup. We had the keys to the “candy store” aka the school so we had everything needed to make the soup, except 1 thing - crackers. I want crushed up saltines when I eat tomato soup. We searched everywhere in that school. There was not a single pack of saltine crackers in that entire building! Our old sanctuary was set up to have some of the overflow from the distribution center supplies. I walked in there to find one box of saltine crackers sitting on the counter. 

I said “God, this is really funny but I can’t feed all of these people with 1 box of crackers. You’re going to have to do better than that.” 

The very next day, I walked into the distribution center to see not just a box, but an entire pallet of premium saltine crackers! and I was like “thanks God! Now these people can eat crackers with their soup.” That’s nothing, but it’s what got me through the rest of the day. Ultimately, God knew exactly what was coming on those trucks. 

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Jacob: I have struggled my whole life with mental illness. I wasn’t sure how to help people when we opened the shelter. I was still new here, and my dilemmas made me feel like I was an outsider. If someone were to ask me how did I get through a dark place when tragedy seems endless, my answer is this:

If you can just get through the next hour, or even survive the next 5 minutes, that you’ve then survived 5 more minutes past the darkness that you thought you couldn’t survive. We are promised that storms don’t last forever. The sun rises again. But when that sun rises, cling to it because you are guaranteed another storm but you can survive that too. Last time, you survived and this time you can survive again. 

My takeaway from Helene is just to go all in. If you’re struggling getting hit with another situation, just embrace it. I can't tell you how many times i thought during that situation it can’t get worse! But it does. It was out of my comfort zone, but there was a point where I dove in and embraced the situation but it took me time to get there. I tried to be open and helpful, but sometimes you just gotta be who you are and know that God has a purpose for you. I know now that if we have another hurricane, I know to just dive in. They did that naturally, I did not. But I know now that I learned something about myself. 

We opened our home. We had a bunch of people washing clothes at our house and that was nice, sure but at the end of the day I felt more fulfilled knowing that people felt like they had a place they could go for some normalcy. Glenwood became that for people for 17 days. We still have people that come because they were impressed with what Glenwood did who are still coming to church here. 

Don't let a tragedy be the thing that marks your life. I love survival stories, hearing of people that made it. And this church has made it. The people that go here made it. We survived. So next time that I get hit with something that I'm not comfortable with, I'm just going to surrender to the situation and believe that God has a plan rather than fighting it knowing that at the end of the day, we survived it.

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Jennifer: I think for me, it’s community. I think God placed this church and these people here for a purpose. Just like Natasha said, we can’t do what we do without God. I hope we showed that to the people that walked through our door. To every single person that walked through that door, it’s not about Jennifer, it’s not about Natasha, it’s not about anyone else, it’s about God. I want people to see God through what we do. I want them to see Him in our community and that we love and support them. Like Jacob said, it doesn’t matter where you come from, your history or your past, or what you’ve been through. We’re here to help you while going through what you’re going through. 

I can walk to church from home. The majority of my jobs I can walk to from my home, I see Glenwood as who I am. Glenwood Baptist Church is who I am. The Glenwood community is who I am. My family came here when I was 3 and we started going to church here. Someone made me a bracelet with the coordinates of the place that holds my heart. Those coordinates are this church. My dad became a deacon and made this church a part of us. I grew up here, found the love of my life here, got married here, got baptized here, raised my children here, and hopefully my grandchild. 

I hadn’t been home. I didn’t know the extent of the damage. The ice maker had melted and leaked all over the kitchen floor. I came home to “what is that smell” I told my husband, we’re just going to tape up the refrigerator, I can’t deal with it. We’re going to tape it up, throw it away, and get a new one because it sat there for 17 days. The night we got home, I took a shower and put on my pajamas. I got a phone call from one of our church members saying to come outside. I said I just got home, I’m in my pajamas. They said come outside. They had bought us a new refrigerator. I said, I can’t take this, you can’t buy me a refrigerator. They refused to take no as an answer. The community is just amazing. I didn't have to worry about that nasty refrigerator. We taped it up and it went to the dump. It’s just a good community of people helping people.

So to me, seeing what this church can do for the community is very important and that we can show God’s love to other people is very important because I know what we can do and I see what we can do and there’s so much more that we can do. That’s what I’m taking away from this is that I see the hard work and dedication and commitment from not just staff and volunteers but from everyone that came in. we can continue that work, it doesn’t have to be in a disaster. It can be in everyday life. There's so much that God has in store for us. That's what I got from this and what I hope other people can see. That we are here for them no matter what.