Thankful

Last week was a colossal adventure of a very different kind – Megan had some meetings come up that were extremely important for her to attend back in Baton Rouge. Soooo the two of us hopped a plane back to the good ol’ US of A. I was going to just keep the trip on the down low, after all we were only there for 3 days, but I got such a massive dose of culture shock and perspective on time in Haiti that I have to write about it.

It all starts in the PAP airport on Tuesday morning. I’m feeling really weird about the whole idea of going to America – I’m excited but we’re leaving the kids and its just kind of weird timing. This was certainly not a trip I was expecting to make a few weeks ago. We’re going through security checkpoint number one and all these Haitians are trying to cut me in line to get through the metal detector and one lady who shows up in front of me keeps trying to shove my duffle off the belt so her bag can go through the x-ray scanner first. Megan steps back and yells at these people in Creole, “We are all going to the same place!” Haha. At security checkpoint number two an officer, or something like one, pulls my purse off the belt and rummages through it rather intensely. After another minute of this I look at Megan, and starting to get annoyed say, “I have never had anybody rifle through my stuff like this. What is he looking for??” She doesn’t know. And half a minute later he finds what he’s looking for… a pocketknife thing with giant plier claws hanging off the front of it. I am HORRIFIED! It got in there earlier in the week when we were moving the very last load from the old house and I used it to cut the mosquito net off our bed. When I was done, I just threw it in my purse. And now here I am trying to bring a knife onto our airplane. Oops… Good thing it wasn’t still there when we went through checkpoint number 3, right?

Once we’re inside the terminal with plenty of time to spare before our flight we grab some coffee and I spot a group of Methodists with their matching red shirts. (Don’t shoot me, but some of the matching shirts I’ve seen short-term church and mission groups wear have been atrocious. Thanks for the laughs guys. [I guess in this case though it is helpful because I’ve been trying to find Methodists since I’ve been here.]) Megan and I go talk to these fine people before boarding our plane to the land of the free, home of the brave, etc.

We make it to Miami and seat ourselves at a Mexican restaurant just in time to see that the verdict of the Casey Anthony trial is about to be read. Both of us are like, who is this exactly? What did she do again?... Since we’ve been living in Haiti which is similar to living under a rock. We quickly surmise that she has killed her child. Hm. (Or not, according to the jury) Welcome back.

Looking around this airport with eyes used to seeing Haiti, Haiti, and more Haiti but eyes that have also grown up in America, half the time I spend going about our layover (and the rest of the trip for that matter) as though this were very normal. The other half I am in awe of all the things around me. This airport has more infrastructure and contains more technology than the whole city of Port au Prince, best I can tell. We’re sitting in this fancy wine bar having a glass of wine outside our gate before the plane shows up and there’s music playing through a sound system. No doubt there is different music playing in the shop next door that is different from the shop next to it. They’re all air conditioned. This place is impeccably furnished and decorated, there are fancy wine dispenser gadgets because in America we don’t have to pour our own wine, the technology can do it for us. For the first time in over a month it’s the middle of the afternoon and we’re not drowning in our own sweat. We sit and talk about this strange place; and the place we just came from.

After we land in New Orleans I’m in the not very large bathroom near baggage claim and have another very distinct moment of, what is going on? I look up and notice that there are more lights in this not very large bathroom than there are in our entire house, our very nice house. The toilet flushes automatically taking the toilet paper with it before I can even get my shorts up. Most people in this world can’t even flush their toilets. And if I knew what I thought about this, I would tell you what I thought about this. But instead I can only share my observations and let you tell me what you think because that’s what I spent the rest of the trip puzzling over – what do I think about this? What does this mean?

On Thursday, Megan and I are driving to New Orleans so we can fly out in the morning. We make a pit stop in Baton Rouge so that I can see a doctor at the hospital just to check on my abscesses and make sure everything is all good. He takes one look at it and is like, “Oh yea, that’s staph.” I feel like my head is getting sucked into a vacuum, like the room is wooshing past me. I can’t believe that this is staph, that I’ve had it not knowing what it was for at least two weeks and taking whatever meds. The doctor says my Haitian doctor did a good job with the I&D and assures me that its fine to go back to Haiti before loading me down with the appropriate medications to take.

I drive back to New Orleans while Megan sleeps next to me in the passenger seat and my head is back in that vacuum. I think about my friends who have been in the hospital from staph and how serious this stuff can get. I feel overcome with how blessed I am to have my legs right now in good working order. In fact I’m tearing up a little bit over it (Megan wakes up just in time to see that and laugh).

It all comes clearly into focus for me how God has been working out everything for our good here: From leading us to this new house just before our lease ran out on the old one; where Thorsten lives upstairs who just finished building a beautiful school and is helping us with supplies and machinery for ours, and where my very competent and sweet doctor lives across the street and checked on me everyday when I was sick. I think of God keeping the staph from gnawing my legs off, of all the people that prayed for me in English and in Creole. Us making a random trip to the states just in time to get some meds and have my leg looked at. God turning our day-to-day adventures, and mistakes, into good things like the mango curry bomb incident or that time we got pulled over at a police checkpoint and things should not have gone well for us, but went fine and we made our appointment. Now the school is starting and everything is coming together. And we KNOW this isn’t by our own power. It just couldn’t be. The things that happen here are too great, too random, too incredible to be accomplished by what any person is doing. God is demonstrating his power and his deep love for his people.

We take things so day-by-day here. Unlike in America, we don’t have our days scheduled out down to the hour, we just can’t. Sometimes that can be a bit frustrating, but God makes it work; we can follow where he leads us because we don’t already have this clear idea plotted out that we’re dead set on of where we want to go. Life in Haiti has been beautiful, messy, hard, and so so difficult for me to explain. But it all just felt clear and peaceful and right in my soul when I had that time to step back from my Haiti life, the chaos of being in the middle of it, and see what it has been; what God has done.

I leave in exactly 3 weeks (I think). I cannot believe how fast this summer has flown by. I’m in awe of what God has done here right before my very eyes; in this place, in and through Megan’s life, and in my own. And I’m excited to see what lies ahead in the next 21 days.