Because They Love

There is a balance, in telling stories, of not centering too much of the focus on one thing or another. In telling the story of cleaning a wound at a VBS and of the raucous game of duck, duck, goose that had just occurred and the paper crowns that decorated the heads of dozens of little kings and queens.

In not telling too much without looking back to see what the pictures say.

Because, sometimes my head gets so wrapped up in the particulars that I forget to look at the bigger pattern. Forget to remember the peace that washes over our kids when they step out the other side of customs and the joy that crosses a massive language barrier when they slip into VBS mode or set foot on the basketball court and soccer field.

 We don't take our kids to Haiti so that they can change the world. We don't bring them to learn about poverty or to become more grateful for the things that they have. There are a thousand things that could be reasons for bringing them but aren't.

We bring them because, when they are here, when they are with Ms. Betty and Edwens and Dollus, they are welcomed into being a part of a global Church. Because they hear the names of other countries thrown around in an easy way that they simply do not in our little corner of the pacific northwest. Haitian friends play soccer games in the Dominican, go to school in Cuba, visit churches in Curacao, move to Canada, and attend trainings in South Africa as a matter of course.

Because Ms. Betty thinks that they can do anything, but also clucks at them to drink enough water and eat another piece of cake. Because one of the most powerful women in Haiti knows them by name and teaches them by example what it looks like to offer a cup of cool water to a stranger, whether it is ice cubes to whoever happens to wander up to the apartments or pouches of fresh drinking water to children and mamas, grandmas and big brothers, at VBS.

Ms. Betty teaches them to show up with full hands and a full heart and to offer them both to whomever is going to be there the longest, whomever is going to do the most good and disciple the most faithfully.

Teaches them that it doesn't need to start out beautiful to fill a need, it simply needs to start.

Ms. Betty loves them with the same fierce and protective love that she directs towards everyone in her path, and they learn that it doesn't matter where you come from or how old you are or what skills you bring to the table. It matters that you are willing and available, at 6:00 in the morning and 10:00 at night. It matters that you pray, it matters that you worship, and it matters that you love with everything that you have.

Edwens teaches them that the job is never done. Shows them how to express gratitude for the work that was done before you and how to never stop dreaming of ways to make it better.

Teaches them to pray for strength and demonstrates what it looks like to live in the faith that that strength will come.

Cares wildly and passionately and in a thousand directions at once and manages to fill their heads and their hearts with information that they never knew that they were missing. Slips into debrief time to hear them tell stories and rubs his hands together along with the rest of us in a ridiculous but honest declaration of, "Yaaaaay...God!"

Lays hands on these kids and prays for them and lights up their imaginations with the possibility of coming back to this place that they have come to love so much partially because Edwens loves it with everything that he has. And, if Edwens and Ms. Betty love a thing, then it must be worth loving too.

We bring our kids to Haiti to visit with their friends and their mentors, to become a part of a bigger story, to find the settled grace of moving mountains one small rock at a time, even when, sometimes, those mountains are the ones that they find in their own heads.

We bring them because they teach us the same things that they have been taught. How to love a place, body, mind, and soul, even when it tears you apart and exposes you, vulnerable, to things that you had never thought of dealing with before. How to let a place change you, not out pity or compassion or even empathy, but because you have been welcomed in and found yourself at home. And, we are all a little more ourselves when we are at home.

We bring them because there are littles who light up like the sun when they see them and teenagers who they are growing up with, even across this vast span of land and ocean.

We bring them because there is something about the sight of shooting stars and the taste of genips that gets in their blood and changes the trajectories of their lives, opens up new ideas and new ways of being.

We bring them because they love and they are loved, and, because, when there is a family reunion, you pack up the kids and you gather the luggage and you travel for as long as it takes. Because, this is family, and family is worth the cost.

SaveSave

A Prayer

 "If there's life on other planets, did Jesus die for their sins too?"

We're flopped on our backs under a brilliant net of stars, and the nature of this team quickly makes itself known. These kids, and their leaders, are questions and certainty, faith and doubt all tied up into the most intricate and beautiful of knots.

Theology and missiology, soteriology and dating. Our nights are filled with unanswerable questions and open handed issues as kids present their cases and admit their sticking points. And, in a way that is unique to this team, our days overflow with more of the same.

Pulling weeds and moving rocks is a perfect time to talk about Calvinism and Arminianism. Long van rides are for discussing prophecy and tongues, the recent socio-polital history of Haiti, and some of the finer points of what it means to honor and hold space for your spouse.

They teach each other how to solve Rubik's cubes and sudoku puzzles, discuss the age of the universe and arguments for a local or global flood. And, occasionally, they fall silent, and the journals make their way to the porch, and they introvert together, reading out an important line from a book or passing a puzzle that has them stumped.

On the basketball court, they watch each other like hawks, absolutely determined that we will not have a repeat of last year's adventures. The returning girls walk back and forth with me, arms full of Nalgene bottles that are scooped up and refilled almost as soon as they are emptied. You sweat hard, you take electrolytes. You feel sick, you tell Jessica. Take breaks, sub out, push hard, but remember that we still have a week yet to go.

VBS after VBS with kiddos who want nothing more than to see your face spark to life the way that it does when you see them. Hours of chase and beach balls and made up games. Wires to be twisted around rocks and skits to be performed. Songs to dance to, hacky sack to play, and endless streams of babies and little ones to be picked up, held, rocked to sleep, fed crackers, or played peekaboo with.

The 'thing' that we've come to do is slower this year, smaller, and our kids respond with the same gentle honor and courage that they work so hard to show each other. Play with snapchat filters and let their phones be passed around by small people they have just met, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have your camera roll filled with selfies or group shots with a finger halfway through the screen. Color pictures. Filter inside when it gets too hot to sit quietly and play hand games until it is their turn at crafts. Play outside games that echo back inside the building with shouts and laughter, because, sometimes, duck, duck, goose and shoulder rides are competitive sports.

Shine with a peace and joy that transforms every moment of putting others before self into a pure act of worship.

Washing water bottles. Saving plates of food. Quietly guarding the steps, so that conversations can be held secure and private. Basketball games at six in the morning. Unloading and re-loading lumber and sheet metal. Being early to the gate for a sober family meeting on the way home. Playing a giant game of chess or snorkeling at the resort. Getting a haircut. Trying genips and fresh sugar cane. Worship becomes an action, is an action, the thing that you would give up something for.

Wake up early to sanitize hospital beds and sand walls before breakfast. Stay up late to sweep and wipe down floors by hand and then to mop them and then mop them again. Move equipment, pick up trash, sanitize and sanitize and sanitize some more. Dislocate a shoulder or get mowed down on the basketball court and pop back up to try it again. Circle up tight on the roof when we've had a night with all of the emotions and sing until until the guitarist's fingers are raw.

Lay hands and pray over each other 'Haitian style,' with twenty-one voices layering over each other in a constant stream of sound, because there is One Who Hears. One Who Hears when they are frustrated because they expected it to be harder, and One Who Hears when they didn't expect it to be this stinking hard.

One Who Hears their faith and their love, their doubt and their questions, their unity and their hurt, their beauty and their mess.

One who watches them more carefully than they scan the night sky for shooting stars or threats of rain. One who knows their goofy comments and their honest conversations long before the words fall from their lips. One who has been preparing their hearts for this thing, this messy, beautiful jumble of an easy, hard, sleep deprived, throw your expectations out the window, sort of a thing.

We're caught up somewhere in that tension again, somewhere part way between fear and peace, just far enough along to see Faithfulness in the road that we've walked, but still tangled up in the darkness and the violence of our own humanity.

Because, there are nights when 1:30 in the morning is beautiful, star lit, gentle, honest. Nights when it is painful and terrifying. Nights when we talk circles around ourselves only to admit that we don't have a stinking clue. And, nights when we simply do not sleep at all.

Days when we work for more hours than there is daylight. Days when we play in a brilliantly blue ocean, and days where it is enough to join in on the dedication of a partially finished surgical center.

Because, really, none of those days are as simple as that -- and none of those nights are either. Sometimes there is snot in the face masks and ugly dead patches in the coral and jelly fish that want to sting you. Sometimes play days have some of the most serious conversations, and sometimes work days are the ones where finger jousting occurs.

We fall. We misstep. We fumble our way through bringing a new youth pastor along on this journey and through reaching back to find closure for old stories. And, somehow, we stumble our way into astounding, sacrificial Grace in the midst of it all.

Because, right here, right now, on this planet, Christ walks beside us.

And, that is enough.