We have always tried to keep this blog transparent, honest and personal.
It’s certainly not because we revel in the fact that you (and many of you friends we have never met) can hereby intimately know our many shortcomings, failures, struggles and weaknesses.
It’s also most definitely not because we want you to dwell upon the brokenness of the world, the darkness of sin, separation and death or to look down upon anyone or anything.
It has only been for one reason: life-on-life. If these are the only kind of relationships that really transform a person, really build a person, really bring us closer to the Lord and each other, really encourage a person, then that is what we want to do.
The darkness around us in this world and shortcomings in us must be felt intimately by US and by YOU if the desperate need for Him that we each have is to be desperate. The sheer beauty of the many times that He has lifted our faces and set our feet on solid ground can’t be appreciated if we never share with you the mire of other times.
His POWER that we have intimately experienced, been awed by and been changed by can’t be equally shared by you if the situation He transformed was sugar-coated to begin with…His great love for these and you and us often passed over without emotion if we mis-share things in a way that portray that any of us or this as somehow deserving.
Our perspective of WHO HE IS is greatly diminished if the perspective of who we are or where we live or what we are experiencing is sweetened up or watered down for greater comfort, an easier read, or to keep things butterflied and rainbowed.
Since His Glory and the knowledge of Him in every place has been at the forefront of our minds for this blog since the day, a few months in, that we realized it was NOT just going to be our immediate families journeying with us…no point changing it up now J
SO...I didn’t realize how hard this last three months have been until we pulled into our hotel last night around 7:30.
We didn’t know that there is no “drop-in” business for a resort in the Dominican (guess they don’t get a lot of guests from Haiti or the surrounding sugar-cane villages!), so it took a while for Matt to get us checked in. Lily was asleep in the car, so I sat with her and tried to…transition. The whole hotel is decorated for Christmas, the first decorations we’ve seen outside of our home. A huge Christmas tree, just gorgeous, was in the open-air lobby to my right, and to my left, a ginormous room full of people and table after table of FOOD.
I felt entirely overwhelmed. Not just overwhelmed that hours before, Hannah and Julie had literally been scouring cholera vomit off their clothing and that we had been driving through our city, crowded with people, noise, dust, sewage, garbage, political posters and UN tanks, barricades of a week ago now charred marks in the dirt and tire fragments.
More, I felt entirely overwhelmed with blessing…not NEW blessing…not buffet blessing or Christmas light blessing… but with blessing I already had that frankly, the last three months of extreme sickness, an almost subconscious CONSTANT concern about cholera and the sleeping fragile little creature in the back-seat that He has shared for my care, sadness and a small kind of hopelessness over the political issues, and the general heartbreak that extreme poverty, voodoo and lost-ness bring…I had kind of let myself lose the sense of BLESSEDNESS that I had of just being His.
And for some reason, safely arrived in Puerta Plata, looking at completely unexpected Christmas lights in a dark parking light, He was finally able in the stillness of my soul to remind me.
I am blessed because I am His. I am His. The bird outside the window, the impossible-to-create breeze, sun ray, soft grass, mango, the intricacy and creativity of the Irish, British, Dominican, French, German, young, old, bizarre array of people around me…THAT God…I’m HIS.
I should know by now that my EVERY safe journey, every deep breath, every Lily kiss, every well of joy, every touch of peace, every Good thing, every ounce of purpose, every sweet moment and every heart-wrenching challenge…It is by His grace and His love alone. Blessings.
Praise the Lord for His voice in moments when we don’t expect It, His peace in moments when we didn’t even know our hearts were in such turmoil, for joy for His children.
The last 24 hours have carried many of those joys.
The four of us feel a bit pathetic as many guests around us are frustrated over the flavors of jam and we are clapping for five minutes of Spanish television and taking photos of the salad bar.
Matt and I had to laugh at Hannah last night, standing in front of the eternal and free spring of various soft drinks, just emptying her glass and quickly and easily refilling it…over and over and over, in a bit of a daze. Then Julie had her laugh as Matt, Hannah and I all returned to the table, all three talking about “Did you see there are PICKLES??”
Even Lily has become aware of how different our life is from here, grabbing my skirt and yelling, “Look, Mommy, LIGHTS!” over the halogen bulbs lighting the dark sidewalk…abundant and free electricity contrasted with pitch black drives through Cap-Haitien.
Yesterday morning Hannah and Julie pronounced a ti-toddler dead in the grsdd outside the cholera house. Yesterday morning Matt and I were meeting with several students who are struggling to survive, much less pay their tuition. This morning we were rolling with laughter by the swimming pool after eating bacon and cheese eggs and yogurt, watching a multi-lingual, very enthusiastic, partially topless salsa/aerobics “lesson” (no pictures…sorry!).
There is a surprising amount of happiness to be found following an intense few months in just an air-conditioned room, in front of the ice cream bar, in watching your daughter rejoice over a cheap plastic slide and swim for four hours straight...and for a few moments, have no thought of the hour, of cholera, of poverty, of lesson plans, of cooking or cleaning, of rioting, of meetings…
For a few moments this weekend, I know this is a good thing. Happiness and laughter to be had, to be sure. But what I am truly and incredibly grateful for today is just the JOY that is to be had in each moment of knowing Him…The kind that doesn’t take $57 dollars a day, electricity, warm weather or pickles…and that He has reminded me!
THANK YOU for your prayers…yesterday did bring some excitement with
denied visas, meaning that we have been in Haiti over the 90 day legal-foreigner-without-visas limit…
two passengers coming into the DR who had been in DIRECT contact with cholera a few hours earlier…
the fact that we ‘no hablo Espanol’…
MapQuest…
a lack of pesos…
two hours of driving in a foreign country in the dark…
receiving directions from those who ‘no hablo-ed English’...
showing up at a hotel that takes NO walk-in guests…
But the Lord kept us safe, brought us from Saccanville to the buffet in only 6.5 hours, and gave us joy on the journey…and met me in the parking lot.
ps...internet here isn't good enough for pictures, so we'll have some up in a few days!
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