With four kids, that probably translates into about a thousand-hundred-sixteen hours, real time.
There seems to be no place more intense during corona-virus intensity than Miami International Airport. I really don't ever want to do the last two days again.
When we finally, finally landed in Cap-Haitian, we were screened for fever, went through customs, and made it to the baggage claim area, waiting next to a group of Haitian-American young adults, most of whom were on their first trip, ever, to Haiti.
The electricity went out, leaving us all pitch black at the baggage claim, and without missing a beat Sofie yelled Marco! and Lily was after her, Polo! and the young woman next to them, well, she was yelling, too...petrified to be in the dark in a place she was already afraid of.
We finally got through with our bags and stepped out into what most visitors describe as the most stressful, intense, and frightening part of their visit to Haiti...men grabbing at your bags, tons of people clustering in on you, a totally overwhelming world pressing in on the horizon all around you, as different as possible from the one you just left.
Nora spotted Ti-Lou first and shot through the crowd to his high five and the van, and as I climbed in after her a few moments later, she sighed, "Mama, it is SO GOOD to be home!"
I wish I had recorded it.
Mama stores it all up in her heart.
Without knowing I am listening, the girls call having no power an adventure. They call toilet paper, which their schools and churches have never had, a bonus. They call spaghetti fried in garlic with hot dog bits breakfast. They call reasons to fear reasons to 'let's just pray.' They call eleven people coming to the driveway to welcome us home and feed us and sit with us normal.
They call home a place that terrifies many. They call family a people who are not our own.
Look at what riches God has provided in an impoverished land.
He has cared for us, in the middle of political upheaval and global turmoil--mind, body, and soul--well. So well.
If God sees not as man does, then why should we?
Search out the Lord's good perspective, and He will be found.
Search out the Lord, and we will be found, too, in the most challenging of places, yes. But with our hands and our hearts--growing and often hurting--very full.
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