rich and wanting

well.

These are rich and challenging days. Emmaus is made up of men and women.  

That means it's a mixed bag of beautiful and broken, of rich moments and moments of want, of blessings and burdens, of radiant faithful and of disappointing failure.  

It means the nights are once again floating with worship from the chapel...it means the classrooms are once again bursting with debate...it means the cafeteria is overflowing with laughter and rice and beans...it means the mango field is the soccer stadium, once more. 

Our radiant returning group is haggard.  Life is hard everywhere, but life in Haiti is hard also.  It never ceases to surprise me...EVERY smiling face is half the face it was in May, and not many students were round then.  Food has been an issue.

Our noisy returning group is clinging to one another...holding hands down the sidewalk and sitting as close as possible on the new benches. Good, safe, healthy, like-minded community has been an issue.

Our weary returning group has clearly been working and ministering hard, burdened with struggles in homes and churches and communities, burdened with a dry and weary land, a people living in darkness. The battle has been raging...support and encouragement has been an issue.

The first week of school last year, one of our brand-new female students lost her mother. The whole year was plagued with sadness, struggle and health issues for her, and when she testified in the first chapel of the year yesterday of how God has carried her and restored her joy...I felt rich to witness. 

As students pop in and out of my office, as they ride bikes with the girls around the basketball court, as our staff joined together for our first Prayer Tuesday of the year and the time was sacred, as students and staff share with me concerns and cares...all of it...I am rich and thankful and burdened...I am thankful to be a part of a community that cares and concerns and carries each other to the Lord.

It means that when someone down the road asks Matt to come and pray, their family seems to be under spiritual attack, the work that needs done is put aside, and he goes. And I'm thankful for the chance to come along faithful families and pray and encourage. 

It means that when he, Steve and Belony are almost an hour late for dinner tonight, I know there's a good reason...and when they come home with stories of their afternoon with Noah, the witchdoctor closest to Emmaus, I'm thankful again for these opportunities to face darkness with light and to overcome it.

I'm thankful for the opportunity Matt had yesterday to preach the first chapel of the year, the chance to BE light in darkness, to pour water on thirsty siblings, to carry hope in threats of despair, to encourage in seasons of despair. 

But Sunday.

Sunday morning coming home from three hour church with a very crowded car and sweaty kids still on my lap, I had a door and I blew it. 

When we pulled up to the gate of Emmaus and Matt started talking to a few young men, a young girl I've seen 100 times but don't know came running up to the car.

Dirty, covered in open rashes and sores, bones poking out of her threadbare shirt, she immediately asked, "Can I come in and play with Lily?"

Exhausted, trying to figure out a plan for lunch and for some rest, battling Ben and my own plans for the day, I patted her hand and said, not today, cherie.

When can I come play? she asked immediately, and I looked at Lily and blew her off with some kind of a we'll see if we can find a day.  

I don't know that girl, Lily said as we pulled through the gate.  I bet she doesn't really want to play with me, but just with my toys.

That was probably the case, true.  And it was Sunday and we were in bad need of some down time and family time and rest, yes.  

But I swear, the Lord has brought her little face to my mind 20 times since. Because I don't know much about her...but I know from years of driving in and out that gate that that girl has never been in school. I know I've NEVER seen her with a parent...we don't even know who she belongs with. I know she's hungry and malnourished and beyond poor. I know she sleeps in dirt.

Tonight as my fragrant, full children were tucked in their soft, clean beds, I read to them from their devotional, and the days questions was, "I want to help send some money to missionaries in Mexico so they can help children in need, but how can I do that when I don't have a job and I'm just a kid?"

The answer was irrelevant for the Ayars kids.

They don't need to try to sell lemonade or to get their parents to have a garage sale so they can send money to a missionary who can perhaps buy a shirt for a malnourished, neglected little girl. 

She lives to the right of our gate, and we have shirts in piles, and a meal plan on the fridge for the week, and toys that could be taken and never missed.

And she asked to spend time with us. And I blew her off.

I blew her off because I don't know WHAT to do for her, because it's uncomfortable and hard to figure situations like this out, because there was no clear "best" answer, because I didn't know what to say and wasn't prepared, because my day was planned, because my children were unenthusiastic, because I didn't want someone sitting in my home with open sores staring at me all afternoon, the one afternoon we were all home and at peace.

It kills me to even write that.  But it's true.

Tears pricked my eyes tonight as I stopped reading about selling girl-scout cookies this evening and asked the girls to pray with me instead for the little girl outside the gate.  I confessed to them how the Lord had offered me an opportunity to love someone as unto HIM, and I had blown it. 

But MOM, Lily said, rolling over to slip into sleep, how in the world are we supposed to know what to DO?

I don't know, Lil.  

But I know that He will open doors to walk through, if we will follow.

Praying for the many brothers and sisters safe in their beds again at Emmaus tonight, a greenhouse for their weary souls, may we be.  And I'm praying for the many lost and hurting around us, from Noah to that little girl...and for the courage not to have it all figured out, but to take every opportunity He gives us and to be faithful.

I am grateful for second chances, and for His promise to give us the words and the guidance and the courage we need, right when we need it.