hard lines

This is hard.

It is hard not being here. It was hard getting here. It is hard being here. It will be hard to leave. 

Life in Haiti is hard.  Hard hard.  The lines that have always felt so unpadded, so lean, so sharp, have somehow lost some of their softness still.  

That which was hard for people a few years ago--feeding kiddos, sending them to school, finding a job, getting to work, owning a cow or a goat, getting medical help when needed, taking care of your family--that time has grown FOND in everyone's memory.  

Hard has grown impossible. Fields once full of goats or cows are now empty, most stolen in a desperate and lawless age. Churches have had benches, speakers, microphones, offering plates stolen. Jobs once faltering and fragile have disappeared. The exchange for the American dollar is through the roof, and little bits of life--rice or oil or a book for school--are two and three times the price for the same small handful, fuel sometimes to be found and at obscene prices.

I have never known how everyone does it...make ends-survival-meet. And now? Now I really don't know, and it's hard not knowing, hard seeing sacrifices that shouldn't ever need to be made, hard to hear about the many injustices of the last nine months, of what Haiti-in-the-news looks like when it's Haiti-in-the-villages, when it's just Gertha's life...Jonas' life...Claudin's life.

Hard when "corrupt country" plays out into people's lives, and you are suddenly in their lives, and it is NOT as it should be, and the corruption runs deep and unbelievable, and there is nothing you can do about it. 

Hard when the future for mine looks so, so different than the future for yours, not by ANY merit of my own, or any fault of yours. 

Our dear ones bring sweet pineapples, deep-red papayas, bring Ben a soccer ball, Lily and Sofie little wooden boxes. Gertha comes early and stays late, pushing Ben as high as he wants, makes and feeds Nora whatever she wants, whenever she wants it, Granny clucks over them and ten thousand people have now asked after Pastor Matt.

While everyone is looking for ways to bless us, I am looking for ways to radically change everything for them. To bring back Claudin's wife and little Christie, Claudel and Claudie's mama. To get a heaping handful of friends medical care, answers, help, counseling. For parents to keep their children instead of giving them up over starvation. I wish there was available 1/50th of what is available in my daily life, I wish there was HELP in so so many places that help is so badly needed. I wish dear ones would stop thanking me for "risking so much" and for "being so brave" and "having such faith" to come...when the place I came to to visit is their EVERY day, and always will be.  

Lily's friends she started school with at 3 and 4 years old have stopped...it is expensive, it is "extra", it is not creating any jobs that don't exist and seemingly never will.  I watch them, all 13, awkwardly greet one another and quietly finger exchanged gifts...then turn into little giggling girls moments later, bouncing into one another on the trampoline in their skirts, hiding their shiny new lip gloss and sparkly eye shadows in our couch cushions until it's time to leave, stuffing them into their waistbands so no one sees the tiny riches they now have and take them. 

It's hard to remember not that long ago and to see how things have changed, hard to interview staff member after student after staff member and truly imagine the realities they are speaking of and giving God glory in....hard to listen to one after another after another and hard to have anything to say, hard to not be overcome with discouragement as I grip desperately to my one goal of godly encouragement.  I can only conclude each conversation the exact same way...: "let me pray with you over that," and then wait for the Lord to give me the Haitian Creole words that escape me in any language.

Lord, there are so many complicated hard things, and you know them and feel them and share them with us, share our pain and also share your comfort. Give us your good, untouchable, priceless gifts of perseverance, of faith, of peace, of joy, of love for one another, of courage. Heal what only you can heal. Change what only you can change. Touch what only your touch matters, meet this brother or sister in this impossible place.

Our brothers and sisters in Haiti--and in many places around the world--seem to only have that which cannot be taken away from them, nothing tucked into their waistbands...and I somehow find myself urgently wishing more for them than that.  

Or is it less?

I don't know. But.

This is hard.