foreigner

Thank you for all your precious prayers - they are seen. Sweet Mayah is hanging in there today...not doing great, not doing terribly...fighting all her viruses mostly on her own in her own time with the help of oxygen and fluids, steroids and breathing treatments, attentive doctors and a great hospital, loved on sacrificially and continually by a truly awesome mama.

Adam and the girls are good, Matt and the girls are good, and it's a gift to see this little family giving their all for the best of each other.

I am grateful for your prayers...keep them coming.

Today was one of those days that I felt like such a foreigner.

You'd think I'd be used to it, "foreigner" being my title among strangers at home. I've never owned a car. I've never owned a house. I've never owned anything bigger than a suitcase, come to think of it. I hurt when Haiti hurts, I celebrate when she rejoices, but always as one who will never vote or have any buy in.

I send my kiddos to Haitian school, but I homeschool them as well. I speak the language fluently, and then I listen to Sofie and her friends chatter and sing children's songs and I do not know them...I can scarcely follow along with the rapid gaggle of 8 year olds. Our dear friends brought Matt and dad and the girls pumpkin soup this morning, the traditional Haitian food of Independence Day, but no one likes my recipe, from allrecipies.com instead of from mama, and hers before. For all the years I have worked to forget it, to make others forget it and call me sister, instead...every passing child reminds me, "good morning, foreigner!" Foreigner, I will always be.

No one was calling out to me "foreigner!" today, but I felt just as awkward and out of place, maybe more so.

Living out of a small pack Lisa filled for a few hours of travel, not days in a hospital, she was in dire need of a few basics. Mayah was out of formula, and my freezing flip-flopped feet needed some socks for the hospital room, another item to add to the list of things I don't own.

There is a Target two miles from the hospital, only a 10 minute drive, says Google. But Lily always says to be careful, you don't know where Google has been!  I don't know where or how to get there. I've heard about Uber (the kind of thing I'm PRETTY sure our mothers told us all NEVER to do) but had never ever done it. I don't know another soul in the whole city. I've got no one to call, even if I needed. I'm still in the clothes I put on New Year's Eve morning. I've wandered the hospital with my huge "visitor" sticker on my chest, but the supplies are almost as limited as they are at home.

I realize that I am never ANYWHERE alone in Haiti, ever, never further than a few minutes from any given friend, student, co-worker, alumni, and that I have grown accustomed to being able to ask anyone, anywhere, for help, and they will probably know me, or of me, or be someone dear's cousin.

I painstakingly downloaded the whole Lyft thing, the paypal thing, set it up, rode with Mario (who I then had a very hard time separating from once I got to Target and he even called me twice while I was shopping, seriously, I don't even know how this happened) and then struggled with all of the many, too many choices.  Looping the least efficient routes of the store I only know once a year, I finally found everything I needed except for food, because let me tell you, IT IS BAD at the hospital, and my dear sis hadn't eaten hardly a thing, being unable to leave the room with Mayah and being unable to leave her.

Around 4, there was a foreign girl in smelly clothes and matted hair feeling weird out of her flowing skirts and packed into her annual mom jeans (that were probably fashionable somewhere, once) and a huge Target bag of snacks and toiletries and formula walking down the main road in Miami, trying to avoid the clearly--even to a newbie--Lyft-violation Mario, and trying to get on foot almost a mile away to the only place my phone recognized as "food near me"...having NO idea where me WAS.

As I ordered tacos from a man who only spoke Spanish and attempted to find a very different Lyft back to the hospital I'm "sleeping" in again tonight on a chair that's a couch and also a bed (but all very badly)... I felt as awkward, foreign, unsure and helpless as any foreigner ever could in any place.

This this, this is not my home. That that, it isn't either. And any other home I can think of belongs to someone else and includes their guest room...because that is what we are.  Such guests.  Always.

You know what, precious family?

We all know we are all missionaries, bound to share and live the Gospel to all around us, wherever we are.

But we are also all missionaries, the homeless type. The helpless type. The awkward type. 

The type that aren't looking for what we can get out of this country (or that one), but looking for what we can give.

That type that doesn't get angry when our rights are violated, understanding well that we have none outside of Christ.

The type of missionaries that don't build up bubbles of people around us who believe everything the same way we do, keeping our families from being lights in our communities.

The types that aren't looking to fit in, but to being faithful. The type of missionaries who are always aware of all that we cannot do, and of Christ, the only hope of glory and our only Rock and Stay.

The type that walk humbly as learners and listeners and grace-seekers and givers.

The type of missionaries that naturally expect that we are going to be UNcomfortable, uncomfortable for the sake of God's work.

The type of missionaries whose goal is not to get ahead, not to blend in, not to be esteemed, not to conquer, but to love...to share what He has so generously shared with us.

Don't get too comfortable with me, family.  

This world is NOT our own. Our rights are not ours, our plans not our plans, our lives not our own.

This city overflowing with foreigners, this hospital full of sick, sick kiddos, this VISITOR sticker on my chest and this plastic couch under my head, I rejoice for the ways they remind me...I was never made to settle my roots into this world, I will stop trying, trusting...for He has something much better.

Hebrews 11.

13 All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. 14 Obviously people who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own. 15 If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back. 16 But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.