where He is, we can be too

 A few random things from a random week :)

A few of you continue to support the Ayars as missionaries to Haiti, monthly. Many of you no longer do, but you DID, many for YEARS...like, 15!  And it may not seem like it was much or is much, but that savings and that continued giving means that when we go to Haiti like we did a few weeks ago, that money is getting us on that missionary plane, taking care of us in Haiti and bringing us home. That money is going to Emmaus University in His redeeming work in Haiti...and that money is making it possible for our one-income family to keep on serving in Haiti...and it's a big deal.  THANK YOU. Thank you. Continuing to be a part of His work in Haiti is one of the richest areas of our lives and is making a difference in Haiti. If you ever wanna talk Haiti, email me!

While the kids and are feeling ready for summer vacation, I've also been feeling really rich lately to be able to homeschool this crew. It is a full-time job...it takes everything I've got, but it is also a huge gift. Lily came home this week with a list of everything she needs to take before graduation (she is a sophomore), and due to years of focused studies at home, she is two classes away from being eligible. Sofie has been struggling with some hard friend things lately, and as she shares with me what she's learning through it...I'm here for it (and what she's learning, I've had the priceless gift of teaching her all these years!) Ben and Nora and Sofie just finished memorizing Psalm 139...a Psalm we all thought would be too long to learn, and the richness of studying God's WORD in school as our truth for life...oh man. What a gift! If you ever want to talk homeschooling, email me :) If you can get a Beth to help you, all the sweeter :)

Finally, the Lord has been stretching me on a thing lately, and I wanted to share in case it may speak to you.

My whole susie-sunshine life, I have avoided sadness, depression, mourning, worry, anger and fear like the plague. In my mind, Jesus is always waiting in the joy...in the peace...in the faith...in the hope. I chase Him there, always. I hang out there, clinging, avoiding the hard places or pushing past them.  

It has been occurring to me lately, with His help, that perhaps He was has at times been waiting for me in the sadness...waiting for me in the mourning. Perhaps the anger I was avoiding, He was sitting in! Perhaps He had wanted to meet me there...and I wouldn't come...refusing to GO those places in the name of Jesus. I'm still asking Him to help me work all this through, but my point is that perhaps when you find yourself sad or angry or mourning or disappointed...it is not to be avoided, because Jesus is IN it. When we are sad, He is sad, and in our sadness He is there. In our losses, He feels the pain, and is to be found IN that pain. 

I don't think He leaves us in our broken places...but He sure does MEET us there, and as long as He's there...we can be too. That's all. 

Grateful for you friends

His fault

I've got some friends going through some things right now...maybe you can relate. 

Major life transitions.  Incredibly hard challenges with children. Battles with brutal cancers. Huge and sudden losses. 

Impossible situations. No right answers. One hour at a time. Dark nights of the soul.

I've been praying lots of grace. I've been praying lots of mercy. And I've reminded again and again that He can be trusted for two things: His glory. Our good.

He can be trusted for our good. 

I've always struggled with idea, because I'm not often sure His good is the good I'm wanting. I'm sure He wants my good...but what if the one He has in mind isn't best? I want Him to promise my outcome...not just my good. I'm not the first Christ follower to question if His good IS good. If it's the best good. If maybe I don't have a better good in mind. Oh, how patient He is with me. 

Finally through this last incredibly hard season (and you may still have to remind me in the future), He's been stretching me to a place of "I'm trusting you with my good, no suggestions.  I'm trusting that You have my good in Your heart, and I don't need to tell you what that looks like. Whatever comes, I'm trusting that it is for my good."

Whatever happens here, it is on YOU. If it goes the way I want or the way I don't or some other way I haven't thought of, You are the one on the throne of my life. It's on You, it's Your fault, and I'm good with whatever is Your fault. I TRUST you.

And He can be trusted for His glory. 

That one, I don't pretend to understand or know or have the grand perspective for. All I know is that I can trust He's working for His glory...and I want that. I want to be doing that too...I want to be a part of THAT.  So if this current circumstance can and will be used for His glory, and that's His work, then I'm in...relying on His help to be pleasing to Him as we go. 

It's taken me a long time to trust that for Haiti....Leme's good, Gerta's good, God's glory. He's working for their good...even in the situations that are not. It's taking me time, still, to trust that for those dear ones who are deeply hurting. 

However hard or impossible it is to see now, I know the instant we see His face...His goodness to us and His glory will be all that we see. All that we breathe. All that we know. 

And if that's the true reality...I'll take that perspective.

He is who He says He is. 

He can be trusted.

courageous

Haiti always kinda brings out the boldness in me. It always makes my excuses surface...and look pathetic. Makes my Christianity feel cushy. Makes my faith seem dimmer than it should be.

I get frustrated with a few things at my church...and then my Haitian brothers and sisters pass me on the way there, walking miles to get there, carrying their chairs on their heads. They've been waiting all week to gather together, and they're gonna be there, whatever the cost. They're gonna sing like heaven's already here, dance like they're bringing glory down, clap like the rhythms of life are His.

I get shrunk by disappointments and losses in my own life...and then my Haiti people are kissing loved ones goodbye from treatable, minor illnesses because the hospitals are shut down and gang-burned. They are investing everything in one another, and then losing one another to the Bahamas, Mexico, Brazil, Turks and Caicos, the US, anywhere that perhaps could offer a job or safety or a little money to send home. People work hard to earn a little money to send their kids to school...and then threats and dangers rage, shutting down schools again and again and keeping kiddos home. 

I think it takes courage to post a truth on FB or to confront a friend...and then the students at Emmaus tell me about what they have overcome to be there, about mothers and fathers who have rejected them, entirely, about threats and curses and hardships that would have crippled and done me in. 

I think there are areas where I'm giving enough, doing enough, praying enough, stretching enough, and Haiti reminds me every time I'm there that it's not. When the One we follow gave everything, and asks everything, when following Him costs many everything...so much of my "good enough" suddenly feels so pathetic. 

What excuses do we live by? We're tired...money's tight...it's someone else's turn...no one expects us to do that...we don't feel like it...people will think it's weird...we don't want to do it alone...we have good reason not to forgive...we have our own problems without worrying about someone else's...we're afraid...we're worried. We're content. 

I've had a lot of these excuses in my life these past seasons, and since coming back from Haiti I keep envisioning myself seeing Him face to face and sharing my reasons for smallness. My reasons for dimness. My excuses for blandness. When I see the global church, persecuted and hungry and weary and I see His precious face, I bite my tongue on my excuses. I stand before Him and I have none.

What are we praying for that we're not ready for Him to do? What are we asking Him to do that we're not prepared to vessel? What am I wanting to see from the church that I'm not churching myself? What am I complaining about that I wouldn't in front of Him? What am I praying for that I'm not meanwhile preparing for Him to do? What am I giving to Him and then trying to sneak in the back door and keep worrying about? What is not evil...but junk, and why's it tolerated?

It's not far from my dishwashing vision of the praying pastor's wife...if godly and holy and obedient and radiant-unto-Him looks any different than our lives do today...what's our excuse?  Do we want it? 

I am grateful for the country that always reminds me that He is who He says He is, and that He's asking what His Word says He is asking. 

It all gets complicated and cluttered until it's mud huts and food for the day and walking dirt roads by faith and trusting Him for tomorrow. It all gets entitled and comfortable until there are churches of beheaded Christ-confessors, and men and women risking their lives to be the Gospel and homes who do not have enough, hemming in orphans and widows and refugees and homeless. It all gets cushy and easy until we take His Word at His Word and let it highlight all the allowances we've given ourselves that He never did. 

I'm thankful for a few days away to process what all that means! I'm thankful for our Haitian family, encouraging me to be deeply rooted, sincere and brave...just by being themselves. 

ashes

It is incredibly something to go full steam ahead in Haiti for a week, to wake up to the birds and the cars and the flooding the night brought in and to wake up the next day in a hotel....to wake up the next day back at home. Hot shower. Smooth roads. Closed house. Clean water.

It's almost as if it never happened...and also almost as if the entire world was gone around since last we were home. 

It's a mix of lots of things, rushing back to school for Lily, Matt busy mid-week and a sweaty, stinky pile of laundry Emma-high.

Mostly, it's that nothing stops or slows down...just shifts, and your brain and heart are left with lots to process. 

We got home at 3, I started a load, got a much needed shower, dressed up, stuck a frozen pizza in the oven for wiped kids and headed to the Ash Wednesday service at church to meet Matt. 

I slipped in late and sat in the dim and Matt talked about what it all means, and I needed that. 

He asked if we knew about the ashes, and tears started to pour unknowingly down my cheeks. 

I know about ashes. All the ash heaps in my Bible have "Haiti" scrawled beside them, every image from these days in my mind are of the ash heap. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needs from the ash heap, and makes them sit with princes, with the princes of his people. He gives the barren woman a home, praise the Lord.

He talked about Lent and about suffering and slowing and lengthening, on purpose. He talked about the journey to the cross, and said that suffering leads to deepening and lengthening.

Stretching.

Sitting with the beautiful suffering these days leads to such stretching, such deepening, such lengthening within myself. 

Eating meals with a suffering people lengthens you. Asking for and listening to suffering stories, it changes you. It should. Looking when it's easier to look away...it deepens perspective. 

Spending days with Jonas and Gertha and Anne-Yolie and Leme deepen you. Walking in the ash heap and asking God if He sees, if He's reaching down....seeing Him at work and yet sitting with the suffering, it stretches you.

As Matt smudged the ashes on my overwhelmed forehead, I felt the grit and it helped me. 

I am desperate for Him, smudged for my heart. 

I have seen so many different sides of Him this past week. I want it to deepen me. Lengthen me. Sober me. Re-orient me. I want to be poor in spirit...humble of heart...undistracted...

Among the poor in spirit our hunger for Him is fueled....in suffering we are deepened. 

There is something lasting and rare in the beauty that comes from ashes. He reminds me.

That which seems like good excuses won't the day we meet Him. 

our Haitian Vacation

A week of no air-conditioning, no microwaves, no washing machine, no drier, no dishwasher, a freezer but a busted fridge, no true stores, dirt roads, sleeping on a mat on a bunk...those things can be challenging and have been this week. 

But the hard things about Haiti were never those and aren't those now. 

I try to only show all the many beautiful things, because all that most people ever see of Haiti is the horrors. It discourages and embarrasses and frustrates deeply our Haitian brothers and sisters to only ever see their country through the eyes of the world in negative light, and I always try to show the BEAUTIFUL sides, which are many and incredibly true.

But the hard things I don't show are deeply wearying.

And when someone said today that this looked like a fantastic vacation, I wasn't thinking about the fact we're taking cold showers or trying to pasteurize milk. 

It's that almost everyone you meet is in incredible need. And that every day, every day, from the beginning to the end, people are asking for help. Hinting at help. Referring to needing help. Begging for help. And they NEED it. And you can't DO it...not all of it. Not much of it. Coming to your house, finding you in your office, waiting on your couch for you to come back, pulling you aside after church, coming to the door while trying to get kids bathed and in bed, walking with you wherever you were going, leaving letters when you can't be found....It is HARD and heavy and often heartbreaking to hear the hard stories again and again, to figure out what to do again and again, to arrange to do it, again and again. The moment you sit down to work or to rest or to attend to a child, there is someone precious waiting to speak to you...needing to speak to you, and you know. 

This week alone, there have been countless asks for help paying for tuition, for advanced studies and for children's education. Several asks for housing. Several asks for serious medical issues. Several asks for help with visas, two asks for jobs, and anytime we're off campus, asks from precious kiddos for food. 

I had forgotten how hard it is to live in that, all the time. To stand out as someone who could possibly help, and to bear the burdens of others, even those you can't help, ALL the time.  I don't know how the Lord does it. 

The hardest thing in Haiti, in my opinion, however, is probably the hardest thing in any culture. 

The hook-ups and sin issues of Haiti are different than the hook-ups and sin issues of America, but any time you invest and invest and invest...and things turn out broken, it hurts to your bones.

Competition, jealousy and disunity are some of the main hooks for Haiti. I could write a novel...but time and time again over the years DEAR and true brothers and sisters have gone through hard times UGLY, public, community ugly...and this trip has been marked by a particularly painful break....the continuation of a pattern of disunity and horrible stories...and men and women we LOVE and had SO much potential and good together...now split. It KILLS me.  

Life and ministry in Haiti is incredibly hard. TOGETHER is the only way. 

The cycle has been true since the beginning, and when the church ISN'T different, when our Christian leaders are NOT different...oh man. It's kept me up.

Imma leave that there. 

Another powerful hook of Satan's in Haiti is FEAR.  Voodoo controls by it. People live obsessed with it. It calls so many shots, even among our strong brothers and sisters. So much of life in Haiti (read any story coming out of Port-au-Prince right now, or about the earthquakes, or about the voodoo) fuels such fear, and it dictates how decisions are made.  Living and acting and thinking and speaking constantly out of fear, much stays the same.

My hardest interviews this week were with courageous brothers and sisters...desperately asking their people to STAND UP...to stop waiting for God to intervene and to be USED by GOD to intervene.  But the church in Haiti is largely trembling to pray and wait and pray and wait...and it is CLEAR that DAVIDS are needed in the face of so many giants...not the Sauls and Israelites trembling in their tents waiting for someone else to handle Goliath. 

I hate to encourage these brave ones to stand firm, to stand up, to confront sin and to lead and to be BOLD...for the cost in Haiti may come far greater than these things cost in America. But I must. There are some courageous ones in my life here who inspire the daylights out of me. I fear for them...and that is not what is needed. I pray that the Lord will use them to call up entire armies of His Children ready to not just pray, but to be the answers to their prayers, whatever it costs.

I wrote once years ago of tucking our children in every night to the sound of the voodoo drums pounding in our village. It scared me. It was eerie. It was dark and thick and unsettling. They were conjuring up evil while I was kissing sweaty foreheads and begging God to cover them while they slept. I prayed and prayed and hated it. 

And one day I spoke to a staff member about it...how could we get them to stop? 

And he told me an amazing story of a boy who once pounded the drums to call in the demons with them...until God met him in a dream, completely transformed his heart and life and he walked away, risked losing his life, became a pastor, came to Emmaus Biblical Seminary, planted a church...and praises the Lord every night to the sound of the drums, praying for the hands of every beat, that God might call them stronger. HIS story. I sat in Belo's "Dynamics of Spiritual Growth" class again this week. 

After that conversation, I was NEVER afraid again. His story completely transformed the fear. Instead of praying for them to stop, I prayed for THEM, lost and in darkness as Belo had been, with no hope and living in constant fear and blindness. As I tucked in the girls every night after, it was as if the Lord had already done it...Already changed it. I pictured old Belony and new, and now the beats were for HIM, the hands for HIM, signs of hope that God is at work...After that, I joined Belo in praising the Lord to the voodoo drums, praying for the Belo's to awake and arise.  

So as I look back to all the heavy asks and pains and discouragements of this week of "vacation", I am listening for the drums that Lily, Sofie and Nora struggled our first months in America to sleep without. I am asking the Lord to take all the things and transform them. I am asking the Lord to see all the needs and to meet them or use them or be glorified somehow. I am asking the Lord to heal all the wounds and to use these cycles of brokenness and sin to remind me to PRAY for redemption and NEW cycles of brothers and sisters walking in UNITY.  

I am asking the Lord to take all that pounds in my head and my heart this week and turn it somehow to praise...making beautiful that which Satan meant for despairing. 

The best and sweetest part of every day, all the need and brokenness even still, are His people...which makes Haiti not at all unlike America or any other country. 

I may not come back from this "vacay" well-rested, with tan lines or a few extra buffet pounds, but what a PRECIOUS gift intimate time with His people has been. Seeing Jesus in one another is the richest stuff of earth, I'm sure of it. 

Walking dusty-sweaty with our brothers and sisters here has breathed new passion, new prayer, new praise and new purpose into my life, and I PRAY I have given some small version of that to all our family here. 

I am so incredibly grateful for your prayers. Thank you for being my streams-of-consciousness people :)

One of our students in front of the home where he, his mama and six younger siblings live.

ups and downs

Every part of every day has been full of extreme ups and extreme downs.  

Since the end of January, a wave of extreme brutality has led to widespread loss of life and the displacement of over 6,000 people in the capital, Port-au-Prince...120 miles from where my children are softly snoring, right now. Cap-Haitian is overrun by families running for their lives, Emmaus hosting several students who came with absolutely nothing but the clothes on their backs. Their stories these last few days are so incredibly painful and scary. 

And, also today little Emma in braided pigtails sat in a bucket of cool water in the sunshine and sucked on warm, sweet mangoes, watching the students play soccer at the base of our mountain...just like Lily did, and Sofie, and Nora, and Ben. 

At the end of a long day of interviews with staff (what's going on at Emmaus and in Haiti and how can I beg The Church to come alongside?) and with students (why did you decide to go into ministry, and how is Emmaus forming you and the Lord filling you?), I needed to sit in that evening breeze with her and slow it all down. 

Granny's son, Bedwell, brought Gran's grandbabies, Prince Lou and Daiashka, to spend the afternoon, and I wanted to tell them all about what she meant to us, and how she loved my children, and how she pointed me to Jesus so many times. Instead, they ate cookies and chased frisbees with Ben and Emma and I MISSED her. Being in Haiti with her family without HER finally settled in today that Granny is no longer a part of our lives...just a part of us. What a good GOOD gift she was, Giselaine. I hate how she suffered. and I am grateful for how it only seemed to strengthen her joy and trust. 

Lily and Sofie played with their friends from the Haitian school they attended in braids and navy uniforms on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. They're all awkward teenagers now...too cool for school the first hours and then giggling like school girls by the end and exchanging WhatsApp's. 

We sit around the dinner table, pancake mix and scrambled eggs, and pray for those who do not have food...100 feet from where we sit....and it puts a pit in my stomach and dampens the meal.

One staff friend told me today that many people in Haiti are here in body only. Their minds and their hearts are traumatized, dull, despairing and done. They are only here because they canNOT leave, and have totally given up on any hope, any will to BE the change, any desire to give or help or grow.  Most just stick to the broken and violent and corrupt paths the country has already often chosen, waiting for "God to intervene" without being willing to be one He intervenes THROUGH.

Nora plays with Joel like they've never been apart, Emma clings to Tati Gertha like she's always been her nanny and dear friend, Lily's on the porch handwashing her clothes and laughing with Christie, and I share funny stories with Sharon and she with me of students throughout the day.

One moment I am heavy with how broke broke, needy and despairing it is...the next I see truth and character and wisdom from a godly staff member we've known for almost 15 years and I am flooded with hope. If there IS any change, it will be coming through Emmaus. I have seen and see TRANSFORMED, and if there IS a place discipling people for TRUE change and freedom in Haiti, it. is. here.  I am flooded with confidence of this again and again this week, even as I cringe at the suffering of the crosses that must be carried.  

Student after student tells me the same thing. I have never been a place in Haiti my whole life where you could leave your cell phone on the table and it will still be sitting there when you come back. I have never been a place where people treat each other with respect and love. I have never heard of a person with a master's or a doctorate or a teacher or administrator who treats you like a brother or sister, not like an invisible lowlife. 

This is what they love about Emmaus....this is what they learn and live for four years...this is how they go out...this is simply God's law, and this is how things change. 

And Ger brought Sharon guava and Lily marinade and Sofia sugar-cane to gnaw and Ben another bucket of sweet mangoes, Nora her Haitian breakfast spaghetti and Emma, sos pwa...the dark chocolate-looking bean and garlic sauce she was spooning all the kids at a few months old.  La vie cher....life is so expensive...and she is a new widow, and yet she knows us and loves us well and tirelessly gives...and fights me on taking a few dollars to cover the Haitian treats she knows we adore and miss.

It is a dusty mess of violence and insecurity and of breath-taking beauty and barefoot, penniless pastors playing soccer in the wet grass. It is hunger and need and every Christian family I visit has extra children and widows and friends and family under their roofs, eating their little food, sharing with one another as if it all were the Lord's. It is sweaty and dusty and broke, and palm trees and crystal Caribbean and humble all at once...and most everyone just wants no fear of tomorrow and enough food for today.

I wonder if we spend so much time and energy managing our blessings and don't spend enough time and energy outpouring them. 

It's heavy, breezy days of ups and downs to ash heaps. I know He comes down to those. I beg He comes down to those. May He lift us out, Ayiti cheri. 

Lord, use these men and women. Lord, if you will, use me.

that is that

I almost quit before we ever got here.

The exhausting drive, half in the dark, all in pouring, pouring rain, every last 720 minutes. 

Made it on the second day to Missionary Flights, and the last time we were there my dad drove to meet us and send us off. We miss him. I needed his stabilizing way. 

Trying to get everyone settled and sleeping in an uncomfortable bunk room with 12 other women and children and a confused toddler who would NOT go to sleep. A 4:20 am alarm, bags and weights and keys and last minute changes, including Sharon not being on our plane. A flight on a DC3 in a storm that had Nora throwing up and frightened kids. An absolutely overflowing Cap-Haitian (the result of the horrors of Port-au-Prince...people gotta run somewhere) in an absolutely overflowing van of dust and sweat and children hanging on both sides of the widows...wide-eyed on one side, and begging for food they absolutely needed on the other.

When its all the Ayars kids knew, it looked normal. When Mississippi has become normal, it looks utterly overwhelming, staring desperate need in the face and scanning a bottomless horizon of further desperate need. You can taste it, touch it, smell it, see it, feel it all at once, everywhere, and it's heavy.

I almost quit eleven times, with what in the world are you doing? running through my thoughts again and again. I've got a safe, clean house in a safe, clean neighborhood for my safe, kinda clean kids. Haiti's been in trouble a long time, but it is absolutely past the brink of safe, of stable, of hope. And going there, on purpose, is ridiculous. And taking children, five!, is insane. And ALL that effort and time and energy to just let all our hearts shatter, deranged! 

At my very lowest over the last days, I texted Matt the doubt in my heart without realizing what it was until I sent it. 

Maybe this is too much. Maybe I can't do this. Maybe I'm not a missionary any more.

Home was far more crowded and dusty than it used to be, sweating and suitcases and finally some freedom from three days of travel for the kids. They gobbled down their long-awaited rice and beans and ran off to pluck the cocoa pods and smash open the coconuts and run with their dog and swing in the trees, and I finally sat with our plates and Gerta finally rested and I put my hand on her arm.

How's Thaliya?

With school? Gerta asks.

No. How's Thaliya with the death of her precious dad? And how are you? Really?

And as tears instantly flooded her eyes and poured down her cheeks, she answered instead all the contents of her heart. The whole story. Not the version I got over the phone six times. The real. The accusations of her husband's sudden death being a result of being voodoo cursed. The fears of it being her fault. How much she misses him. All her fears for the future. All the pieces of her heart for their daughter. 

And I listened long and hard as she talked and talked it all through.  Tears poured down my cheeks as they poured down hers. And I reminded her of the Truth. And she longed for it, and remembered. And I saw her, and I heard her, and I love her.

And that, the Lord reminded me, is that.

If you are reminding people of His truth, and seeing them the way God does, and hearing them, not your own way, and loving them because He loves them, because He loves US...you're a missionary. 

He didn't promise it would be easy. Or that it wouldn't require some courage. Or that getting there was going to be fun. Or that it would be comfortable once you got there!

And when we sat around our old dinner table last night and Jonas--his whole life an orphan with health issues from starvation throughout his childhood to this day--introduced us to his girlfriend with the words, "Naika, these people are my people"...that is that. 

When Maxi, who climbed the stairs with his wife and Christie to see us last night, and my eyes instantly closed to the years of praying with him for that child... the sleepless night Kerline labored and labored in that hot and black hut and almost died, years of miracle-Christie playing in our yard with Lily and Sofie....and he climbed painfully to show me the horrific scars on his legs and arms and on Christie's legs from the propane explosion they had in December...when he told me all the details (people NEED to tell their STORIES, dear ones...ASK and listen)....I was in agony with him.  They called and told us he'd been in an accident. But we had NO idea, I couldn't understand, I didn't SEE until we came.  

There is something to that God Sent Jesus. There is something to that Jesus touched the lepers. That He picked up the children. That He drained out for the woman. That He bent down in the dust for the sinner. That He roasted fish for His friends. That He ate from the same loaf as the doubters and the betrayers. 

We must be strong and courageous friends. Not domesticated Christians. BOLD.

There is one kind of ministry that matters, and it is the one where Jesus CAME. It's the one where we go out and suffer with the hurting and break with the broken and sweat with the sweaty. It's the one where we run to the sound of pain. 

It brings tears now that in my weary, fearful moment, I wondered if maybe I was done being a missionary, done running to the sound of pain because the pain is too painful. 

As long as Jesus was a missionary, and as long as Moses and Jonah and Abraham and Joseph were sent, as long as the church went out like He told it to, as long as Jesus forgot about Himself and sat in the dirt with the dirty, Imma run to the sound of pain. And if it kills us, fellow missionaries, it killed the One we are following.

And that is that.

Haiti may be past the brink of hope.

But God is no where near that place. 

I have so much to tell you...

not a suitable substitute

As I gather our minds and hearts and bags to go, He meets me. 

There was a season in our lives when Matt was at Wesley where he was traveling and gone ALL the time. By the time he got home, he was so, so exhausted that I was still alone. I told myself, and others, often that I was alone. Parenting alone, covering alone, doing our lives mostly alone. 

And I can't remember now when He interrupted me with His truth, but I ALWAYS remember how it shifted me, because I started some habits then that I still carry today. 

I would remind myself that I was NOT alone, not ever alone, but that God was walking it with me. And I would act like it was true until it BECAME true. 

I was not standing at the sink alone. I was washing dishes with the Lord, the Lord Almighty. I wasn't folding laundry alone or driving kiddos alone or attending things single or sleeping alone. I was walking with Jesus. Truly. He was with me. Closer than my bones, more real than the breath in my lungs. 

I started talking to Him, like He was there. I started leaving space for Him, and stopped saying I was alone. When someone would note that it must be hard being alone, I would remind them that I wasn't. 

Pretending His truth was true has made it true in my life and affected how I live, and how I talk to the Lord, and how He talks to me (or maybe just how I hear Him). 

As I gather our minds and hearts and bags to go, He is with me. The places I feel weak, He reminds me He is strong. The places I feel unsure, He reminds me He is the foundation I'm building upon. The temptation to think we are alone, or to stay distracted away from Him, or to think that we are of little value to Him, or to believe that our mistakes are unredeemable or that darkness will never lighten...His truth speaks to. Are we grabbing His truths with both our hands?

The places where truth is avoided, lies grow.

So I give it all to Him instead, for He's right at my elbow, and He covers me. 

When I wish TiLou was going to be there to watch over us, like he always has been in the past, the Lord reminds me He's watching over us, and always was. When I wish Granny was going to be there to care for us and minister to my children, as she ALWAYS did, He reminds me He will minister to my children, as He always did. 

Do you remember (if you've been here a good long time) the day my dad decided to sell our childhood home, my mama's home, meaning not only the loss of the only place she still felt near, but also that when we were stateside we'd no longer have a home base? I was overwhelmed and devastated and resistant. In the end...after months of truly over-agonizing and over-placing my security in a place, He met me strong at my desk in Haiti one day. Lord, where will we go if we are in trouble? Where will we call home? I will BE the place you rest your head. He spoke, audibly that afternoon through my tears, and for the first time I wrapped my mind around home being a PERSON, security being a person, peace being a person, not a circumstance...and it was JESUS.  

It is NOT that Jesus is a suitable substitute for a person or a place or a thing in our lives....He is, truly, THE person, place, and thing needed. 

So as I gather our minds and hearts and bags to go, He is not just my helper...He is what is needed. He is my peace. He is my protection. He is my shield. He is my reason. He is my love to share. He is my strength to sustain. He is my place to rest my head and my portion. He is our adventure and our guide, and I can't wait to see the ways He stretches and grows and moves our family as we stretch and grow in Him...in Haiti and in Mississippi. 

He is who He says He is.

You know how this all wraps around the edges of your life and heart and circumstances.  Whatever we tell ourselves, in our great wisdom, that He can't help with or can't change or meet us in or provide...we are joyfully WRONG. I pray for you as you pray for me...please share with me best how to lift you up! 

Several people have reached out asking how they can help as we head to Haiti next week! 

I've detailed prayer needs a few posts back...please pray for and with us! 

We are also going to come alongside a lot of struggling, faithful families, and I can tell you now I will be praying with and pressing in palms as many $20s, $50s and $100's as I can. Money doesn't change anything like the listening and laughing and coming alongside do, doesn't touch the doors that prayers can open...but in a desperate day and in a desperate country...$20 is food for a week...$100 is school for a child, $50 is long neglected and badly needed medication. If you want to come alongside me in this small and practical helping, Imma take whatever we have and give--through relationship and to trusted friends--every penny I take. 

If you have some extra tithe or some rainy day bills or some bonus bread, get it to me by the 23rd and I'll cherish middle-manning loving one another. Thank you friends....I am SO grateful for and feeling your prayers. 

down in the dirt

The Lord seems to be reminding me lately how He identifies intimately with us in our weakness. The heartbreaking places in our lives, He intimately, completely, fully understands. The frustrating places, He gets. The weary places, He walked, the confusing places, the limbo places, the uncertain places....somehow, while He is entirely NOT like us and entirely on the throne, He also decides to empathize with Hagar in the wilderness. Also decided to put on flesh and kneel down in the dirt with the woman caught in sin. Psalm tells us He reaches down to the ash heaps, that His eye is on us, that He walks with us, and identifies with us.

It's such a truth to cling to on days when it seems surely no one understands. In seasons when it feels so alone. In hours so dark that no hope is seen. 

He transforms and redeems those places, yes. But first He feels them with us.

I remember a day not long after mom died sitting on my bed in Ohio and wondering if I should be mad at the Lord. Something human told me that was a common path, and that I should at least consider whether I should be angry that the Lord heard my prayers and didn't answer them, saw my mom suffering but did not heal her, saw our family breaking and didn't fix us.

Of course, I see now that He did hear my prayers AND answer them, that He did see my mom suffering, suffered with her, and did heal her...that He walked close with our family and did fill our gaps.  But what He showed me then, as I bawled on my bed wasn't that He would carry and redeem in the future. He showed me quietly and strong and intimately the tears in His eyes.

Instantly, as I looked to Him for answers and saw Him cry with me instead, considerations of anger just melted. If He cried with me, He understood. If He was crying with me, He was for me. If His heart broke because mine was, then His heart could be trusted and clung to. I wanted in that moment to be WITH Him, not oppose Him...always. I wanted to be in tears with that kind of God, and to trust Him then on.

As we've been walking alongside some really broken situations and hurting people lately, I keep finding myself praying, "Lord, I can't even imagine...but YOU do. You understand, fully. Meet her. Meet them. Be close." or "Lord, I don't even have words to pray for this, but you are down in the dirt with him and YOU have all that is needed."

Even today, Valentine's Day, as a few people weigh heavy on my heart, He reminds me that He is with them and loves them full, complete, strong and deep. ALL that is needed is found in His love, and His love is FULL...unable to be diminished nor weakened nor earned nor grown. I don't understand fully His complete love...but He does, and He is in it with me, and glorious, and unlimited, and gives the power to understand.

I'm so thankful for this passage from Ephesians 3 the kids and I memorized a few years ago and has been traced and trusted in a million times since:

I pray that from His glorious, unlimited resources

He will empower you with inner strength through His Spirit.

Then Christ will make His home in your hearts as you trust in Him. 

Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong.

And may you have the power to understand--

as all God’s people should--

how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is.

May you experience the love of Christ,

though it is too great to understand fully.

Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life

and power that comes from God.