But the hard things about Haiti were never those and aren't those now.
I try to only show all the many beautiful things, because all that most people ever see of Haiti is the horrors. It discourages and embarrasses and frustrates deeply our Haitian brothers and sisters to only ever see their country through the eyes of the world in negative light, and I always try to show the BEAUTIFUL sides, which are many and incredibly true.
But the hard things I don't show are deeply wearying.
And when someone said today that this looked like a fantastic vacation, I wasn't thinking about the fact we're taking cold showers or trying to pasteurize milk.
It's that almost everyone you meet is in incredible need. And that every day, every day, from the beginning to the end, people are asking for help. Hinting at help. Referring to needing help. Begging for help. And they NEED it. And you can't DO it...not all of it. Not much of it. Coming to your house, finding you in your office, waiting on your couch for you to come back, pulling you aside after church, coming to the door while trying to get kids bathed and in bed, walking with you wherever you were going, leaving letters when you can't be found....It is HARD and heavy and often heartbreaking to hear the hard stories again and again, to figure out what to do again and again, to arrange to do it, again and again. The moment you sit down to work or to rest or to attend to a child, there is someone precious waiting to speak to you...needing to speak to you, and you know.
This week alone, there have been countless asks for help paying for tuition, for advanced studies and for children's education. Several asks for housing. Several asks for serious medical issues. Several asks for help with visas, two asks for jobs, and anytime we're off campus, asks from precious kiddos for food.
I had forgotten how hard it is to live in that, all the time. To stand out as someone who could possibly help, and to bear the burdens of others, even those you can't help, ALL the time. I don't know how the Lord does it.
The hardest thing in Haiti, in my opinion, however, is probably the hardest thing in any culture.
The hook-ups and sin issues of Haiti are different than the hook-ups and sin issues of America, but any time you invest and invest and invest...and things turn out broken, it hurts to your bones.
Competition, jealousy and disunity are some of the main hooks for Haiti. I could write a novel...but time and time again over the years DEAR and true brothers and sisters have gone through hard times UGLY, public, community ugly...and this trip has been marked by a particularly painful break....the continuation of a pattern of disunity and horrible stories...and men and women we LOVE and had SO much potential and good together...now split. It KILLS me.
Life and ministry in Haiti is incredibly hard. TOGETHER is the only way.
The cycle has been true since the beginning, and when the church ISN'T different, when our Christian leaders are NOT different...oh man. It's kept me up.
Imma leave that there.
Another powerful hook of Satan's in Haiti is FEAR. Voodoo controls by it. People live obsessed with it. It calls so many shots, even among our strong brothers and sisters. So much of life in Haiti (read any story coming out of Port-au-Prince right now, or about the earthquakes, or about the voodoo) fuels such fear, and it dictates how decisions are made. Living and acting and thinking and speaking constantly out of fear, much stays the same.
My hardest interviews this week were with courageous brothers and sisters...desperately asking their people to STAND UP...to stop waiting for God to intervene and to be USED by GOD to intervene. But the church in Haiti is largely trembling to pray and wait and pray and wait...and it is CLEAR that DAVIDS are needed in the face of so many giants...not the Sauls and Israelites trembling in their tents waiting for someone else to handle Goliath.
I hate to encourage these brave ones to stand firm, to stand up, to confront sin and to lead and to be BOLD...for the cost in Haiti may come far greater than these things cost in America. But I must. There are some courageous ones in my life here who inspire the daylights out of me. I fear for them...and that is not what is needed. I pray that the Lord will use them to call up entire armies of His Children ready to not just pray, but to be the answers to their prayers, whatever it costs.
I wrote once years ago of tucking our children in every night to the sound of the voodoo drums pounding in our village. It scared me. It was eerie. It was dark and thick and unsettling. They were conjuring up evil while I was kissing sweaty foreheads and begging God to cover them while they slept. I prayed and prayed and hated it.
And one day I spoke to a staff member about it...how could we get them to stop?
And he told me an amazing story of a boy who once pounded the drums to call in the demons with them...until God met him in a dream, completely transformed his heart and life and he walked away, risked losing his life, became a pastor, came to Emmaus Biblical Seminary, planted a church...and praises the Lord every night to the sound of the drums, praying for the hands of every beat, that God might call them stronger. HIS story. I sat in Belo's "Dynamics of Spiritual Growth" class again this week.
After that conversation, I was NEVER afraid again. His story completely transformed the fear. Instead of praying for them to stop, I prayed for THEM, lost and in darkness as Belo had been, with no hope and living in constant fear and blindness. As I tucked in the girls every night after, it was as if the Lord had already done it...Already changed it. I pictured old Belony and new, and now the beats were for HIM, the hands for HIM, signs of hope that God is at work...After that, I joined Belo in praising the Lord to the voodoo drums, praying for the Belo's to awake and arise.
So as I look back to all the heavy asks and pains and discouragements of this week of "vacation", I am listening for the drums that Lily, Sofie and Nora struggled our first months in America to sleep without. I am asking the Lord to take all the things and transform them. I am asking the Lord to see all the needs and to meet them or use them or be glorified somehow. I am asking the Lord to heal all the wounds and to use these cycles of brokenness and sin to remind me to PRAY for redemption and NEW cycles of brothers and sisters walking in UNITY.
I am asking the Lord to take all that pounds in my head and my heart this week and turn it somehow to praise...making beautiful that which Satan meant for despairing.
The best and sweetest part of every day, all the need and brokenness even still, are His people...which makes Haiti not at all unlike America or any other country.
I may not come back from this "vacay" well-rested, with tan lines or a few extra buffet pounds, but what a PRECIOUS gift intimate time with His people has been. Seeing Jesus in one another is the richest stuff of earth, I'm sure of it.
Walking dusty-sweaty with our brothers and sisters here has breathed new passion, new prayer, new praise and new purpose into my life, and I PRAY I have given some small version of that to all our family here.
I am so incredibly grateful for your prayers. Thank you for being my streams-of-consciousness people :)
One of our students in front of the home where he, his mama and six younger siblings live.
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