Do I dare believe...

Haiti, my friends, is a country full of joy and pain. Its people are strong in spirit and weak in power. A legacy of betrayal, corruption and need take, like a thief in the night, the grace that begs to be found.

I don’t understand why people have to suffer to live. I can’t understand why those who try to make a difference for the better are found lying in their own blood. I will never understand why millions of dollars that were raised to help have never made it to the people who need it the most.

16 months after my last trip, I found this country in no better condition. I found its people working hard, very hard just to exist.

I am realistic enough to realize that a one week mission trip creates more of an impact in my own heart and life than it does for those I seek to encounter. Experience has taught me that seven short days can upend my world to a point of no return.

Still, I beg that what little I gave can be found in one heart.

This trip was a celebration of a school completed where one only existed in trees and tarps. Where red clay dirt clung like barnacles on all it touched. Where children learn and futures are pondered.

Dare I hope that a new building will harbor new dreams? Dare I believe that one day a child who sits in this new building will bring a new and better future to Haiti?

Yes, my friends, I dare to believe and hope. For I know that the God who moved people here in Maryland to build a school on top of a mountain in Haiti is the God who can change the heart and future of one small child and one hurting nation.

© A Sacred Longing 2009-2011

Do not build towers without a foundation, for our Lord does not care so much for the importance of our works as for the love with which they are done.

-Teresa of Avila

Bondye Bon!

For those of you who have read my blog for at least a year, you know that my trip to Haiti in March 2010 had a significant impact.

It took my breath away.

It changed my vision and gave me new perspective.

My rightness became wrong.

Still and yet, God is good.

As the ebb and flow of life continues, I have had to learn not to float in my own comfort or drown in the riptide of wanting to change everything. Seven days – one simple week – made more of an impact than the 40-something years that passed before it.

Still and yet, God is good.

Realistically, I know those seven days did little to change the lives of the Haitians I encountered. I, however, was forever altered.

Change isn’t always evident to the naked eye. Matters of heart and soul flow deep at first much like a freshwater spring bubbling up from the depths below. I am still bubbling, my friends, with a trickle here and there that gives witness to the process.

Still and yet, God is good.

In five short days, I will leave again for that fractured island. My time there will be the dichotomy that is Haiti. Part of my days will be spent celebrating the school that was built on top of a mountain and the other half will be sharing life with those who remain in tents close to 17 months after the earthquake. Yet, in the midst of extremes there will be One who knits it all together. He is there – always.

Bondye Bon. (Kreyol for God is good)

All the time.

© A Sacred Longing 2009-2011