“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

I had a hard time adjusting back to “regular” life. I was irritable at how selfish everyone-including myself- seemed to be. How the smallest inconveniences were treated as a life or death catastrophe. Your latte wasn’t the right temperature, you couldn’t find a close enough parking spot or the all-time worst thing to ever happen- the WiFi was slow. Life at home wasn’t just difficult mentally but it became physically and spiritually painful. I had grown to cherish the Haitian pace of life without the over stimulation of social media and the 24-hour news cycle. I couldn’t even keep a T.V. on for a long time for the first few days because of the noise and the news that was fixated on things that just didn’t seem to matter. I felt like I was the only one who had the right perspective. That everyone else was just floating through life blissfully unaware that only about 1,300 miles away children I had just held in my arms were starving. 

Everyday life had become a process in which I endured rather than something I enjoyed. From the moment my head hit the pillow in my apartment I dreamed of being back. A cloud had descended and created a film over my everyday life. Work seemed frivolous, what people cared about and talked about seems shallow, and I just felt completely isolated from all of my friends and family. Physically this was painful. Spiritually this was all confusing and frustrating. 

What was I supposed to just go on now that I had seen this pain and heartache? Why was I born somewhere with abundance and with privilege and others were denied? Spiritually I didn’t like the questions that bloomed, and emotionally I struggled with the fact that God didn’t feel as near as the shouts of the world seemed to control my attention. I like to think of that time of my life as the “aftershock” of an earthquake that disrupted my life. 

There would be moments, just fleeting moments when little things would send me back there but it wasn’t blissful reminiscent memories but in a gut-wrenching longing; an aftershock wreaking havoc through my mind. My old life felt so boring and pointless. Nothing I did here in my mind made any difference. I felt powerless here and didn’t know how to explain what we saw down there to anyone back here. It all felt like a dream, like nothing we saw could have ever actually have happened. I know that my life wouldn’t be the same after holding those children in my arms and seeing what we had seen. How could I not see life differently after praying with parents who were sitting there watching their children die of starvation in a hospital because there wasn’t enough food to go around.

I couldn’t wait to be back. I couldn’t wait to smell the salt air mixed once again with the distinctive smell of the Haitian dirt that I longed to sit in playing with kids. I knew that nothing could ever replicate the trip I just took, the miracles I just witnessed. But anxiousness took root. While I would never have the first trip to Haiti again I would be able to have familiarity with the people and realistic expectations for what we would find. The only thing that got me through that first week was knowing that someday I would be back and that I’d see those beautiful faces again.

I had signed up for a trip to go down and do some good deeds in a country that was and is in desperate need of something good. I signed up thinking that we were going to do some work, get some pictures, and get back on the plane and the only thing to be changed would be the people that we came in contact with. I never thought that I would be different. What ended up happening was something I never expected. In our quest to help rebuild Haiti I learned that in order to be able to help we first had to tear down the walls in our own lives separating us from compassion, humility, from pain, and be willing to rebuild ourselves.

Haiti had been broken down by the earthquake and felt the aftershocks in physical tremors but also in the overarching consequences to its economy, infrastructure, and culture. The aftershocks are still continuing to this day as little by little Haiti tries to rebuild. How do they continue on in the face of excruciating tragedy and overwhelming need? They continue rebuilding one day at a time because they have hope for a better future.

Hope is a funny thing. It’s a word thrown around in church culture so often it’s desensitized us to its meaning. The church talks about it, preaches about it, reads about it, but what does it actually look like? Can you even see it or is it something that you can only feel? A concept or theory that can’t be tangibly grasped in our hands? Where can I get hope if I’ve run out? I don’t think it’s something you can catch like a disease or pick up at the store. I think hope is something you have to build. Something that you have to lay down like a foundation for your life. Brick by brick you lay the groundwork for hope to be able to take hold of your life and on that foundation everything else gets built around it. 

Like any foundation, hope can crack and decay. It can feel the effects of time and neglect; that’s when I believe people feel as if they’ve lost it, hope. I think there is a reason people lose their hope or walk around hopeless and it’s not because they enjoy the feeling of despair. We live in a society that doesn’t teach us to desire to hope but the desire to have. If hope is something you build then it’s a process, it’s something you need to intentionally work on daily to maintain. Fixating on instant gratification and having over hoping we’ve lost our way in the process of developing our own hope and we’ve been left feeling more empty than ever before filling the void with cheap substitutes. 

Even those with the best of perspectives and priorities can get distracted by the magnitude of the rebuild in our lives and feel defeated. In that defeat, the devotion falters and priority of maintaining our hope and our faith slips away. In Nehemiah (a book I’ve become more familiar with since we’ve returned to Haiti) there’s a declaration made in chapter 5 verse 16- “Instead, I devoted myself to the work on this wall.” Instead. Instead of feeling defeated, instead of being distracted, instead of giving in they will be devoted. Even when you don’t see progress. Even when you think that your efforts and work can’t possibly make a difference. Be Devoted to the Demolition of strongholds and the maintenance of the foundations of hope, grace, love, and faith in your life. 

I’ve realized that Haiti isn’t a lens or a standard in which I should compare the rest of my life but it is a magnifying glass to my disjointed priorities. There have been areas in my life both mentally, spiritually, and physically that I’ve neglected to give proper attention to and I believe that is probably why I’ve missed so many signs and opportunities that God has laid in my path. 

Haiti might just be an island forgotten about by so many but to me, it has become the birthplace of renewed hope in my life. To start again from the ground up. But in order to rebuild the damaged and burned walls of my life just like the ruins in Haiti I had to first tear down the leftover wreckage and start the work one brick at a time. Slowly and sometimes painfully progress moves at its own pace but it can be survived when you have hope that the end result is worth it. You just have to wake up every day devoted and determined to pick up one brick, one lego, or one child at a time.

A few months later

Journal Entry- October 25, 2016

Nothing could ever be compared to this view. Mountains on my left, a glimpse of the crystal clear blue water on my right, and a little hand tugging me along a dirt path. This was my happy place. If I could pick a single moment to live in for the rest of my life, I think I would have to pick this one. Bags of packed food were stuffed in my backpack and children were laughing and dancing around me and my team, yep this is definitely a version of heaven on earth. I followed my teammates and guide up the side of this mountain where we were going house to house praying with people in this community and providing them with as much food as we could after Hurricane Matthew had done its damage through the already struggling community. Just a bit further our guide kept calling but I didn’t mind; I was more than slightly mesmerized by the view so we could keep climbing as long as these little ones could come with us. 

It was only on the way down that I realized how far we had gone and the tiny footpaths and rocky slopes we had climbed. We were in an area of Mountrouis where kids from the Hope School lived. These were kids that I had met back in June when we were here for a whirlwind of seven days. I had fallen in love with these students and this place and I knew that the new members of our team were already falling in love with Haiti even though it had only been a few days. Our team hadn’t been able to make it over to the Hope School yet but tomorrow they would get to see some of these same kids at the school our church-sponsored. Little did these kids know that we had a big surprise for them tomorrow. We had soccer jerseys for all the kids at our school. Back in June, we had brought Superhero capes for all the kids but the soccer jerseys would be very special for each of them to bring home.

As we were brought into houses that looked more like campsites I was overwhelmed by the faces of love and joy that looked back at me. The bags of food we handed them would never be enough but they knew that for now, that was all we had. By American standards, we gave them nothing but by their Haitian standards we were giving them a liferaft amidst the storm. These beautiful people saw beyond the bag of rice, beans, spaghetti, and oil; to them, they saw God’s provision and hope. Each home we entered I tried to desperately memorize the faces and linger a little longer to speak with them about why we were there. My heart weighed heavier the lighter my pack felt. As we worked our way back down the mountain the little girl that held my hand-pulled free and took off laughing up the path ahead. She darted faster than I could believe on these rocky hills, but she was determined. I watched amazed as she ran up to her friends who turned and waved back at me. One of the little boys started waving his hands over his head yelling at me in Creole. Before I could ask our guide what he said he took off and ducked in what must have been his house. Carefully, I tried to navigate my way up the path to the children waiting for me to meet them. The little boy came running back towards the group waving his arms. As the wind picked up I looked back to my friends beside me. When we turned the little boy had once again reached his friends this time wearing one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen. I saw the flicker of a Superman cape on his back. A cape I had personally helped pass out last June to the kids we taught at Vacation Bible School. As the cape flickered in the wind I felt something grow inside me. Something that was catching like wildfire along the foothills of Haiti- HOPE.