Haraka Haraka Haina Baraka

Settling into a new place is slow, and life flows quickly here, teasing me with the temptation to scramble, to hurry. To forget the many lessons that I have already learned. The things that I have taught, or tried to teach, a half dozen teams of kids. 

 Haraka, haraka, haina baraka. 

(There is no blessing in being rushed – Swahili proverb) 

 Take a deep breath. Slow down. Look back as well as forwards. See the provision. Ask questions. Seek beauty. Hold onto the moments of joy and the moments when transition feels a bit like grief. Because, there is plenty of time for both. 

 Time for the cool of mountain rain to seep through the windows as you work. Time to marvel at tile floors in the house and shops that stock more treasures than you could ever think to use. To rejoice over wifi when it works and unused school supplies jumbled together in tubs that were packed months ago. 

 There is time to unpack these dusty boxes while the kids scatter on the floor to play with alphabet stamps and rubber figures and a viewfinder that keeps them busy for hours. It is enough to download a car racing game on your phone for the boys who always want to borrow it and to stumble your way through teasing conversations. 

 To collect a nine, ten, and eleven year old after church and walk home with the sixteen year old who might just be one of their heroes. Little boy laughter when you are terrible at playing marbles and noisy joy as you run together up the hill to the house. 

 These are familiar patterns. 

 Picking cherries on Sunday afternoon and watching a VBS team devolve into giggles and chase. Walking down quiet, garbage lined streets and the constant sound and movement of market day. Oatmeal for breakfast and cooking over a tiny, two burner stove. 

Games with the toddlers in the courtyard and hours and hours of dreaming and scheming and planning. 

This is new, but this is good. This constant climbing onto motos two or four or five bodies deep. The school bus yard next door that wakes you each morning with a deep rumble. The team that isn't here with HCM but was once at HCM the same time that you were, two or three summers ago. 

Green everywhere you look and tree covered mountains that dip into valleys. Rain and crops that grow and fat cows that laze in fields. Fuzzy colts that refuse to yield the right of way. 

The familiar smell of garbage smoke and neat piles of produce in the market as you duck under too-low tarps. Just different enough from G-town to make your heart ache a little with long forgotten homesickness, for desert sand and herds of shoats meandering down the road. 

And, if, for a moment, there is a lie that says that this place will never be home, you know better than to believe it. Because, tomorrow, things will look different. And, tomorrow, they do. 

Tomorrow, there is a sweet woman who will share her hymn book with you, over exaggerating the words until you can follow along, nudging her daughter she points out the right place in her Bible, the girl falling asleep beside you when the sermon stretches long. There is a neighbor girl to visit on the way home and little boys who jostle and tease for the closest place as we walk. 

There is a conversation to be had in imperfect Creole and new friends who buzz with the stories of a three month YWAM training. A shop to be walked to for the first time without an escort, and a friend to walk part of the way home with anyhow. 

Tomorrow will be Sunday longings for all of the things that were and a hundred different pauses to pray for your kids. You will wish that you could see them, that you could watch the slow but brilliant things that God is doing in their lives, and you will pray a little harder. 

This is Grace. 

It is okay when your heart whispers a little about the things that are missing. When your soul feels like it is fully present in two places at once. There are torn edges in the midst of this Grace. But, the One who Sees universes has never minded the distance when you pray. 

It's been a little over a week. Long enough to begin to see patterns. Short enough to be wrong as often as you are right. And, it is enough to take it one day at a time. Every day a little closer to settled. Every day finding one more thing that you don't yet know. Every day finding one more thing that you do. 

How to get smiles out of sour faced little boys. How to let little girls twist and pull and play with your hair. How to play duck, duck, goose and spin until you are dizzy. How to pray and pray and pray some more. How to trust that there is blessing in holding this space, in taking it slow. 

This is a long obedience in the same direction. It won't be quick. It can't be. It will be messy and exhausting and beautifully Grace drenched. 

And, that will be enough.

Faithful

Out of all of the kids I see on Sunday, I might be the most like the one who is doing his level best not to say goodbye, as if not saying it might save me from the emotions that come with it. 

 I might be most like the little girl at Club who grins for our group picture with a paper plate held confidently in the air, the backside scrawled with the promise from today's game, “God will never leave me!” 

Or, perhaps, a very human combination of the two, some moments her confidence, others his hesitation. Because, there is a new sort of grace waiting for this new adventure, and every interaction this weekend is thrumming with it, with the tension of wanting to hold onto this version of church family and yet of knowing that there are beautiful things coming. 

And, I am challenged to call out the beauty in this moment.

There is beauty and there is Holy here, in this wild mix of emotions. Holy in kids who fall back onto old patterns that I thought we had long forgotten. Holy in the long years that we have spent building this trust and working to speak these languages. Holy in tight hugs that come again and again, and Holy in kids who have to be given specific reason to give any hug at all. 

Because, we have fallen down the rabbit hole tonight, their 6th grade selves walking around in these almost grown forms. And, even if I am no longer tall enough to loop him in a basket hold and swing him back and forth until he settles, I know enough to come to him. Trade a cookie for a hug. Back away before tears are anything but a mist. 

Messy. 

 Holy.

Holy in playing games that I never would have chosen without these kids, and holy in quiet declarations that we are going to stay right here, wherever we are, forever. In dreams of visiting and in maps of Haiti on our palms.

Holy in entire sibling sets who lay claim to parts of this story, overlapping and sharing each other's confidence or quiet trust. Holy in 5th grade girls who scrawl their fears onto notebook pages and then tear them out with a determined pull. “It doesn't have to look perfect,” one of them chides another for being too careful. “You're supposed to be able to tell that they were there.” 

We scribble them out. Rip them into pieces. Throw them away, although more than one girl wants to burn them. Leave our notebooks with the word “Fearless” and the rough edges of these jagged tears. 

Because, torn edges are what we look back on when we fight to prove to ourselves that God is faithful. 

The tears that happen when we pray, when high school voices overlap each other “Haitian style,” hands laid heavy, everyone praying at once. It wasn't what the youth pastor intended. For those who have never heard it before, it sounds distracting, chaotic. But, for so many of our kids, it is the best way that they know of pulling the Holy down to earth. 

It means long talks at cluster and late nights on the roof in Fonds Parisien. It means winter retreat and so many precious things that, when they ask, we can't begin to tell them no. 

 “Draw us into your love, Christ Jesus: and deliver us from fear.” 

(The New Book of Common Prayer, afternoon, October 15th) 

Yes, you can pray. Yes, you can do it all at once, with no one listening in on the words that fall from your lips. Yes, we can hold onto one more tradition, one more pattern. And, yes, when we are done and there are tears in too many eyes, you can have all of the hugs. Your breakout groups will start without you. For now, this is important. 

These torn edges are what we will look back on, hold onto. 

Even tonight, in the moments where we slow down enough to slip into a story, it is the hard things that spill out. The times when their tiny selves weren't doing the things that they knew they “should,” but they were held onto and loved in the midst of it. Times when there were more questions than answers, more hurt than healing. Because, look. We did it then. We can do it now. 

It wasn't easy, but God was faithful. 

“Let nothing disturb you, let nothing dismay: All things are possible. God does not change.” (The New Book of Common Prayer, morning, October 15th) 

And, the reminder is good for my heart too. 

In the seventy four months since moving back, there are thousands of should have's and could have's, tens of thousands of moments that might have gone differently, but, even in the midst of the wild, beautiful mess, we did something right. 

Something to build trust. Something to live Love. Something that looked a little bit like Jesus. 

There is Grace here. There are precious, beautiful kids and dozens of leaders who love the crap out of them. They will continue to weave together this muddled up sort of a church family. Continue to text each other at all hours of the night and snapchat when they should be listening to the message. 

They will gather around tables for dinner, for ice cream. Run circles in the Hub and roll down the hill. Hold space and be family. 

It will be a beautiful, exhausting, messy adventure, but the best kind always are. 

And, even across these two thousand some miles, we will continue to tell each other stories. Look. Look and see what God has done.

Fire By Night, Cloud By Day

Some weekends, I am reminded why we treasure these stories of the Children of Israel, this frightened, anxious, impatient mass of humanity feeling their way forwards in the wilderness. Ten steps forwards. Twenty steps back. Singing as often as they complain and hurting as often as they were healed.

Waiting, each morning, for manna to fall.

We gather the middle schoolers for a gym night, spend the evening running in circles, throwing things at each other, and pulling children off of the bleachers. Jump into the chaos and the emotions and the thousand different things that are going on in their lives right now. Let go of the idea of organized games or planned events, and simply be.

Because, this is manna after a long week. This thing that looks not quite like church, but seems like it might be food anyways. This, "What is it?"

The kids laugh and recognize the strangeness of it, "I would feel bad for anyone new who came tonight."

There are a few new ones here, easy to locate by their focus on actually playing volleyball with a few leaders, while the rest of the gym pulses with movement and this only half verbalized language that they are speaking. The physicality that is Bethel kids on the cusp of things that they don't understand.

We bend hula hoops out of shape and then quietly re-form them. Tie shoelaces together and carefully finesse them back apart. Group and re-group and re-group again. 6th grade, 7th, 8th, boys, girls, the lines between us all summer camp fuzzy, as if, maybe, we can wear family like a second skin, can stay here forever.

Or, at least, until the cloud moves.

They've had a lot of practice at transition, this particular crew of them. Watching as leaders follow that pillar of fire wherever it leads. Well versed in uncertainty, and, hopefully, just as sure of that perfect Love that casts out fear.

One of the 6th grade girls informs me exactly how many miles I will be moving, and we rehearse, over and over again, when I intend on coming back.

Because, we're all a little raw this weekend, the spaces between us fuzzier and filled with echoes of "we" rather than "I."

5th grade girls are indignant, the next morning, at the thought of me leaving, hands on hips and lion cub fierce, as they declare that, "You can't leave. We just got you." as if they can stubborn me into changing my mind.

So, instead, we talk, and decorate covers with wash tape, and scrawl the word "Cherished" onto the next page of their notebooks. Accepted. Beloved. Cherished. If we only have a few weeks together, we're going to fill their heads with the reality of who they are.

This is church. This family. This is mess. This is Grace. This is Love.

These are middle schoolers who are collectively certain that they are my favorite. Royal Family kids who pop forwards when they are given the chance to lay on hands and pray. 6th grade boys who carefully fashion a bracelet out of the toilet paper that is our traditional goodbye.

These are high schoolers who somehow manage to make me cry, who stay late to help with dishes, and who gather on DQ benches until it is later still, leaned in intently as they work together to navigate life.

By morning, the entire nation will be aware of this night with a piercing sort of clarity. But, for now, our griefs and our joys are quieter, more private, more open to this nebulous space in between.

It's hard, sometimes, when you are in the middle, to see the Provision that has come before.

The lectionary reading pulls from Psalm 78. We look back on the Children of Israel, and, with them, we remember.

Remember a God who splits seas and rains manna. Who has spent these years tying us together and building memories. Who forges unlikely kids into family. Who is present in our ever moving mess.

There is ebb and flow here. There is Faithfulness. There is Grace.