Jackie’s favorite spot is a seat at the two-sided breakfast bar where she enjoys peering outside at the natural beauty of the trees and flowers. “I am just so blessed,” Jackie explained proudly. “I just love my home. God had a plan for me when I did not have a plan for myself.”

Hurricane Katrina interfered with Jackie’s plans as well as the plans of most people who lived in South Mississippi and South Louisiana. She had been living in an apartment in Gulfport when the hurricane turned her life upside down, taking away everything she owned.

Around Thanksgiving of 2005, Jackie received a FEMA trailer. While she was grateful to have something to live in, she was not grateful for the troubles that came from some of the people who lived around her. Gunshots and sirens along with stabbings, prostitution, drug dealing, child abuse and other crimes were common in her new neighborhood. Those things combined with growing respiratory problems further complicated her life. “That was a scary time,” Jackie recalled. "I spent seventeen months there.” if I had spent more time in that trailer, I would’ve probably gotten sicker,” she added.

A piece of art that hangs over the loveseat in the living room connects the recent past to where Jackie is now. You see it as soon as you enter through the front door of her home. It’s a bible verse, Jeremiah 29:11, which reads: "…for I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." “God gave me a second chance,” Jackie added. “I am so blessed. If I didn’t have Jeremiah 29:11, I don’t know what might have happened. I might have lost hope. But I am so at peace with myself. I thank God and I thank Habitat.