Like every far-off perspective, Haiti above is not what Haiti looks like on the ground. It often does in my heart and stories, in my passion for the precious people upon it.
But you hit the airstrip and there is suddenly an overwhelming, complete and utter landscape of trash and mud and dust and discouragement and broken and difficulty...life is so, so incredibly hard, just the simple daily uphill battle of living it.
Getting water. Finding work. Buying food. Trying to survive. Sending your kid to school.
It is so beautiful in so many ways, look at it.
And yet the landscape of struggle and suffering is the same it was fifteen years ago, worse, even. And you hold hands with precious brothers and sisters, and even when they are somehow NOT despairing, I am tempted to.
The challenges they face are SO huge. So impossible. So...unfixable. The struggle to just live, such a struggle you would not belive. The desire to just care for their children and work for their food, and it is so. so. hard.
No one is complaining.
But they should be.
I am complaining.
It isn't right. It isn't ok. It isn't fair. It isn't just.
I come when I want and I go, five passports in hand and two weeks worth of snacks, and our friends are frozen in political chaos, seeping-into-every-corner-of-life corruption, no jobs, no good medical care, no infrastructure, no roads, no plan, no break, no end.
Haiti is tired. Haiti is discouraged. Haiti is worse than it's been, and it's been rock bottom many times before.
It shows on beloved faces, it filters into every story, and it hurts my deepest heart.
I was so consumed with getting everyone gifts and everyone here and getting alongside, I forgot what a mission-field, not a family reunion. I forgot how hard-hard life is, because the parts I hold onto from afar are the sweet-sweet.
It is painful openly regarding so much suffering, and it is painful when I reach out to grasp Claudin's hand, and he cannot look at me, nor I at him.
It is painful, for the thousandeth time, but anew, wondering where I fit. How I "be the change" I want to see. How I truly minister to these men and women whom I love enough to die for, but cannot ease their impossible burdens, nor shoulder them myself. How I encourage in the trenches I am now--and always have been--quick to hop out of, these trenches not my trenches.
There are these beautiful, hurting men and women around the globe, around the island, around this very campus that my children are gleefully reacquainting with, and they are hurting for the very most basics of life, sweetly and humbly and casually sharing with me nightmares and horror stories, and I literally own an air-conditioned home in America with a literal white picket fences and I will go back there when this is done.
I might as well be 18-year old Stacey on her first five day missions trip.
I want to encourage. I want to be a blessing. I want to help. I want to pour out His great love on the men and women and children around me, on this beautiful, broken island...globe...and I remember day one that I am on a missions trip I offer NOTHING to.
I've got just nothing.
I am tired and discouraged with my family today, day one, straight off the plane, and that changes NO circumstance, helps NO heart.
I knew I needed you prayers for safe travel and good passage, and I thank you...we are safely here and ALL came together well.
But I totally overlooked that I need your prayers for Haiti. I cry out for Haiti, for our brothers and sisters here.
I made it about me, and it never has been, never was, not still, for ME is just more tears and sweat to add to the Haiti heap.
Pray that somehow in being utterly poured out and alongside, that I might be a vessel of His courage for our brothers and sisters as they suffer and struggle.
Pray that He might work in impossible ways, in impassable roads, for Haiti.
Pray that He might bring refreshing, somehow, through the words He's going to have to provide my heart and mouth, that He might bring His joy, somehow, through these five small Ayars.
Pray that He might make himself known as I make it my only ambition.
Pray that our God might bring peace, somehow lasting, through the prayers He's going to have to provide me with.
Pray that, through my thimbleful, He might manifest powerfully His deep overwhelming love for those around me.
In a dry and bitter and weary and hungry land,
pray that somehow
these dear brothers and sisters might
taste and see that HE IS GOOD
through us...
or not.
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