my dry home

I didn't even have to go anywhere today to feel the pain.

When we live together in community, it comes to us, doesn't it.

I was so glad when I saw Ezechiel pull up on his motorcycle this afternoon in the first bit of beautiful sunshine we have had since Saturday afternoon.

I couldn't wait to add his take on Limel to the testimonies of the students who went.  I was so pumped to hear his stories, that I didn't notice that his clothes were wet from head to toe, nor that his shoes sloshed, nor that the glint of Gospel preached was absent from his dark eyes.

"Hey, brother!  How'd it go?"

"It's a disaster," he says glumly.  "Water everywhere."

"Yes, the guys told me it rained quite a bit and that you were sleeping in the mud!  I'm sorry!"  I said, surprised that this was his first observation of Limel.  Zeke is no complainer and usually doesn't mention such details.

"All our food is wet with sewage, the children are hungry."

Still thinking he was talking about his weekend in Limel, I say "Yes, I heard the kids are hungry.   There was that much water on the mountain?"

Suddenly we realize we are talking about different things, and what the other was talking about.

He isn't talking a mile-a-minute about Limel because his wife and three children are at that very minute sitting on a bed perched on cinder blocks, the only thing in their whole home not submerged with mucky water.

I feel stupid for not having thought of it.   I've been to Zeke's house, I know of all the rain.  Of course his home--right in the center of town and right at sea level--is underwater.

His clothes are entirely wet.  He won't sit on our couch.  He's ashamed he tracked puddles of mud on our floor.  I'm ashamed he can't find his floor and mine is dry and clean.

We start over on the same page, and he shows me pictures on his phone of his little family huddled on the soggy bed.  It looks like a boat in the middle of a nasty river.

He shows me the water yesterday, at the doorknob.  The water today, a few inches below it, thanks to the glorious glorious sun pushing out the clouds.

He is discouraged.  He is exhausted.

His family called while he was on the mountain, begging him to return right away, and when he did, he found them on that bed.  As soon as he saw they were ok, he headed out in the neighborhood to answer the many calling out for help.  A few houses down a man was yelling continually, and Ezechiel entered his home only to find the man a paralytic, sitting in his chair alone with water around his neck.

Unable to help the man alone, Ezekiel swam/sloshed back out in the road to look for help.

Finally, he called to three young men to come and help him lift the paralytic out of the house and onto the roof.

"For how much?" was their response.

Even when Ezechiel explained the situation, they would not help him, not without pay.  In the end, having not a penny, Ezechiel finally convinced them to help save the man's life by giving them his cell phone number so they could find him later for money.

I was so disgusted and angry at this point in the story I was glad I wasn't there.

"You've got to be KIDDING me," I said to Zeke.  "THIS...THIS is the problem!"

"Yes," Ezechiel said, equally discouraged but far less heated.  "It is.  This is the problem in the world...the heart is turned in on itself."

Utterly.

Helping the neighbors all he could, he returned home to access the damage, every possession soaked through or underwater, no where TO bail out all of the water, and nothing to do but wait for the water to go down...to clean everything...and to wait weeks for it all to dry, and mold.  If there is no more rain.

He looks at his backpack and says something I've never heard him say.

I need help.

It's always hard for Ezechiel to ask for help...for his school or community, for his church.  For people hurting and for problems bigger than he can imagine addressing.  But it was excruciating for him to ask for help for himself.  So uncomfortable.  I wanted to cry.

That would not of helped.

To alleviate his awkwardness I went to the fridge and pulled out leftover chicken and dumplings.  It occurred to me that he probably hadn't eaten since...

I heated it up put it on the table with some juice, asked him to come and eat, and then realized he wouldn't sit there alone with my handout.

So, I heated up some more and we had lunch, finally talking about Limel.  That bowl of soup was so appreciated by him and so shameful for me.

A bowl of soup would touch about 20 seconds of his situation.

I rifled through the drawer everyone knows we keep our money in.  Using the word "our" very loosely.  Coming and going, coming and going, no one has ever become poor from giving.

It all feels pathetic.  Sure, money helps.  He'll buy food on his way home, and his wife's face will soften a little bit from her perch on the bed, she'll try to cook something on their roof if he can buy some dry charcoal.

But their house is still underwater.  As are all the houses around them.  And I can't do a darn thing about the sun, about the sewage, about the neighbor boys.  Can't do a darn thing, truly, for Ezechiel as he hikes the mountains on the weekends to pour out the Gospel on people who not only have never heard it, but can't even begin to understand it, their lives have been so dark.  Travels quickly the long road back, only to save his neighbors and find his children and to have lost so much of the little bit he started with.

I want to be God, you see, and reward him, care for him, change his circumstances, take away all his pain and suffering.  I want to be God and suck all the water from Cap-Haitian, dry every home, heal every wound, change every heart, smite those selfish neighbor boys, fix every problem.

Sitting in my dry home.

Eating soup.

for it is for this we labor and strive

because we have fixed our hope on the living God