leaving well

Two years ago today was truly one of the hardest days of our family's life. Two years ago last night, Matt and I were up almost all night, having just heard from Missionary Flights International that until further notice, the last flight was tomorrow...having just heard from OMS that afternoon that if there was going to be a last flight, we were to be on it. 

As the world was shutting down those bizarre first weeks of Covid, we were supposed to be finishing well our last four full-time months in Haiti...finishing well our classes, finishing well with our children, in our relationships. Finishing well and transitioning well and I had so many books and lists and ideas and projects and "finishing well" ways.

Suddenly, it was a full night of stuffing only the most necessary things in 50 lb. max bags, trying to figure out where we were going to go, how we were going to get there, how long we would be there, and what we would need most. We never dreamed it would take us seven months to get back and actually get to say good-bye, or that today two years ago, all my finishing-well plans got shredded into a confetti of emotional few hours. 

On top of so much uncertainty and suddenness (we had no idea when we tucked the kids into bed that last night that we'd be leaving in the morning), there was the unexpected and sudden death of Nikki's father we learned of moments after arriving at the airport in Cap-Haitian, a little one throwing up, and newly instated Covid travel restrictions that separated us from our Northern Irish and British family we'd thought we'd be traveling with....more sudden and brutal good-byes.

I mean. It was a shudder-awful day with a million questions and no answers and we were hanging on to simply His breath in our lungs for a good long time after that. 

I remember sitting on the evacuation flight with the kids passed out all around me with tears just unceasingly pouring down my face...Where were we going to go? What were we going to do? What about all the dear and long relationships we just suddenly left without even saying goodbye? What about leaving WELL? 

Oh man.

The only season that compares was the day we left the hospital one last time without our mom, never to return again (or so we thought until my dad's recent diagnosis)...how could the world possibly going to keep on? How did everything I had hoped and planned and prayed for and counted on end so suddenly, so permanently? It was such a similar dark season of His one breath at a time in my lungs carrying me.

I would never ever want to do either of those years, not 2020, not 2003, not ever again.

But.

It's been two years, March 25th, and here we are. 

Somehow, it's been two years, and I'm sitting here bizarrely in the same place.

Different.  Really different. But in the same place. With the same people...the same people I felt like I would never see again who are still just a part of our lives....whom we've seen many times, whom we talk to on the phone, whom my children still pray for around tables in America. Sitting here, looking at seeds that have blossomed, seeds that have withered, seeds that are being planted, still.

Here we are, two years later, and Lily and Sofie are speaking Creole like they never stopped, falling into friendships like they never paused, all four kids eating Haitian food like their very lives depended on it. Truly, these four children haven't eaten this much food since, well...last time we were here. Sitting here, singing the same worship songs, Ben playing soccer with the same boys, Nora wandering freely in her three Haitian braids. 

Here we are, the downward spiral Haiti was on deeper, deeper still, and while I see the lines on our friends weary faces, they are loving one another well, they are seeking to be used by Him, they are looking for opportunities to help others in their stretched communities, they are not making ANY excuses.

They remind me that NOW is still the time. That today is still the only thing given.  That "comfort" and "careful" were never to be the goal of the Christ-follower.

That it's not really about finishing well, because, as a first year student told me today, God is the one that does and determines the finishing.

They remind  me that it's about living in His hand well, TODAY.  Loving others the way He's asked us to, today. About being sacrificial light without regard to the darkness, living fully for and in Him without thinking of why it's uncomfortable or of what you'd rather do.

They remind me, disaster upon disaster, that having His breath in our lungs IS ENOUGH.  Not just to get by piti-piti, but to serve. To have joy. To burn bright.  

Two years later, and I'm somehow here, with 4.5 kids in tow, still learning.

Have we been let down? Have we been insulted? Have we been discouraged? Have we been thin, have we been dry?  Have we been wronged? Have we experienced injustice? Have all the governments failed? Have we lost our stability? Maybe our hope? Our job, our spouse, a dearly loved one? Have we been persecuted? Have we been weary? Have we been comfortable, or has it just kind of all twiddled down to us being mostly all about US?

My focus today, this hard anniversary, is finally no longer about leaving Haiti well...but about leaving well at His Feet those hurts and injustices and losses and conditions and excuses.   

He has you and I right here, today, and has put His breath in our lungs...surely with that, we can bring His faithfulness glory in even the most painful of days.