Finding faith amid destruction

By MADDY THIBODEAUX
I’m five or six years old, sitting on a soft, worn blanket under my gran’s crape myrtles, a cement bird bath standing nearby. My brother and I are eating tomato and mayo sandwiches on Evangeline Maid bread and drinking icy cokes.

On a different day, I’m in my gran’s kitchen. It’s probably too late for me to be up. I’m weaving through legs – some dancing, some still. The smell of homemade bread dough hangs thick in the air.

It’s early morning now, and I’m watching my papa cook scrambled eggs on the stove. He’s wearing his welding cap, a white undershirt tucked into his blue jeans with a brown belt and worn leather boots on his feet. An old western is playing on the T.V. The old house gently stirs awake.

These are some memories I often think about as I drive over the bridge to Dularge, LA, and begin a winding journey “down the bayou.” They present familiar feelings of pure contentment. I turn left after the curve of the bridge and the sky opens up – there’s a swamp, then a bayou; on the other side of the road, a vast shipyard.

I keep driving, curving past trees and skirting fields until I pull into a driveway – Gran’s house. It’s up nine feet on pilings now and has a big red swing on the porch.

This is how I know the power of faith.

My grandparents built this house when they were first married, and, though after two floods it bears little resemblance to its first iteration, it’s still here, built and rebuilt in the spot they picked, in Terrebonne Parish down the bayou from parish seat of Houma, in a small town called Dularge.

Almost directly across the bayou from her house is a simple A-frame church named after St. Eloi, the patron saint of metalworkers. It’s the people's church – honestly, just the kind of church you would expect to find down the bayou: Unassuming, plain, but it holds us and keeps us safe. It’s a haven, much like its parishioners are to their families.

Mine, in particular, showed me their faith and charity directly through action. Gran’s house has always been an in-between dwelling for all of her children and two grandchildren. Most of us moved back at certain points in our lives; others came when needed – all to a house that was never less than a home.

A few days after Ida roared through Terrebonne, images of its destruction finally reached us online. Roofs ripped from buildings, boats capsized and washed ashore, whole homes destroyed.


Most striking to me, though, was St. Eloi’s statue of Christ, laid beneath the rubble of the humble church of my childhood. To see something that stood so strong for so long crumble under Ida’s winds took me aback. The statue of the Risen Lord was buried beneath the bricks that held it high behind the altar. I felt unsettled as I tried to make sense of it all.

Gran, however, in all her wisdom, wrote about it: “This is home for our faith community. A place of peace, prayer, music and rest. A place so dear to so many. But we are the church! We celebrate new births and dear ones whose lives have seen their fullness. The community that gathers here and many who have moved here are drawn by God to come together. And now many are being drawn from near and far to help restore our gathering space.”

This is what she’s tried to show our family – that God has no hands but ours. We are our faith.

Since Ida’s landfall, and out of necessity, the people of the bayous and volunteers from beyond are showing immense faith through action. A communion is taking place along these bayous, from Dularge to Grand Isle. The blood of Christ runs through them, the heart of the South, beaten but beating.


We are the church, and we will rebuild our home. Our people will rebuild these places of gathering down every bayou. We’ll continue fishing and shrimping, crabbing and frying, sautéing, baking, dancing, talking, sharing. We're always sharing – our faith, our homes; a hug hello and a hug goodbye; a piece of fresh-baked bread from the countertop, broken with my brother on the swing.

My great grandma, herself a member of St. Eloi's congregation, had an oft-repeated phrase of unknown origin: "All this and heaven, too." She saw in her family, in the community and in the parishes along the Gulf, the tender embrace of God, the richness of life on the bayou.

(Maddy Thibodeaux, a former staff member in the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ Office of Communications, lives in Baton Rouge with her husband and two young daughters.)