making room

It always hits me when I least expect it. 

Saturday morning, sitting around Julie's living room with a few new brides from church, I asked one of them to read a verse from Ephesians for us. She stood up for a minute to find her Bible buried in the chair, and out of total darkness my ESL classroom in Haiti rushed in, a student standing to read. 

If you're reading the Bible in Haiti, you're standing. 

For thirteen years, every single English class, every single day, whomever read the Word stood and read. Anytime the Word was read in chapel, we all stood. 

I remember telling a student once, reaching for efficiency, "It's ok, just read from your chair," and he looked at me as he stood
like the permission to make the reading of His Word less sacred wasn't mine to give.

Like many cultural elements, I grew to love this about Haiti. I grew to adapt the habit. I grew to naturally change my position, get to my feet, whenever anyone read God's Word. 

Sitting there Saturday, pouring over how to powerfully pray for our marriages, I was hit with a tidal wave of memories and homesickness that has taken all weekend to shake. 

I miss the habit of politely ALWAYS asking about one another's families, children, husbands, households. I miss the habit of carrying our hymnals to church. Of every house we ever passed calling out their greeting. I miss teaching...the sweet times of laughter and learning, of praying for one another, of becoming friends with men and women from across Haiti, a surreal and sacred reality. I miss sweet visiting professors coming year after year in their season...we all waited for the days of Larry, of Charles, of Ms. Pam, of Jerry. I miss the days Haitian worship...chapel...church...cafeteria...places it was supposed to be and places you wouldn't expect it...loud, strong, often off-key without concern, swaying...sincere.  I miss how the hard things were borne together, and how community was never something I had to look for.

I miss my students standing, reading the Word first in their heart-language and then painstakingly in English, and how the careful, deliberate sounding out of each word and 20 pairs of eyes on my explanation made me soak in His Word in totally new ways.

The more I miss pieces, the more I miss the whole, and knowing life in Haiti has made even these precious classes meeting impossible just rips my heart out. 

Tonight right as we were sitting down to family dinner, 10 loved ones around the table, a car pulled up in front of the house. We all watched, confused, as three unexpected friends got out of the car and started heading up the hill. 

QUICK! Sofie yelled, knee-jerk grabbing three kid plates off the table and running for the art room. Grab more plates! Cups! We three can eat in the art room...quick re-set the table! Make room!

I watched as the kids rapidly added three more places to the table before our friends even got the door, and Lily whispered in a frenzy, Don't let them know we didn't plan for them, so they don't feel unwelcome! And Don't Take Too Much Food! she hissed. 

While Lady Jane watched the whole ordeal quite amused, my heart warmed to see my Haiti girls, grown up with visitors frequently appearing at mealtimes and being quickly squeezed in around the table, naturally doing the Haitian way.

I'm not a teacher at Emmaus anymore. There aren't even students in the classrooms, either. 

But what He's done...it's not gone. What He's doing...it's not done.