I can
measure my anxiety level by the length of my fingernails. When they’re
moderately long, well-trimmed and evenly rounded, things are smooth and the
stress is usual, manageable, something to shrug about. When they’re stubby,
frayed and uneven, half-torn and half-polished, the stress is rising, sloshing
about my ears and something to avoid conversation about.
Today the
nails are stubby, frayed, uneven, and rapidly sloshed with semi-transparent
polish after a cleaning, necessary after I’d scraped off all the charming red
polish. True, painting your nails, making them look nice and taste unpleasant
is a definite defense against biting; but thus far I’ve never encountered a
polish I couldn’t stomach. Polish-scraping is a sure sign of stress, too. When
I’m worrying my fingernails with my teeth (a grisly habit, I know), I’m
worried.
Three days
remain until departure.
Uncertainty
looms ahead, along with certain struggles, miscommunications and awkwardness.
On Monday morning disguising itself as Sunday night my long-suffering parents
and I will clamber ourselves and luggage into their sedan and cruise down
deserted streets to Boston airport. They’ll pull up to the curb, we’ll hug
farewell, and then I’ll be pushing luggage up to the check-in counter. Most
likely one piece will be overweight and hoisting it onto the scale will be a
strain on stress-tight muscles. It’s not easy to lift 70 odd pounds (at least
not for me.)
Preferably
only one bag will exceed expectations and join its fellow on the journey to
Haiti, arriving when I do to greet me cheerily from the conveyor belt in
Toussaint Louverture airport. When my mother bought me a new suitcase last
summer before Korea, I purposely chose the amazingly light-weight and
audaciously red roller case. Curled up like a fetus I can fit myself inside.
(It’s aptly sized for smuggling back a Haitian child or two.) The build makes
the case strong but capable, and the color renders it easy to spot amidst the
dismal black crowd of average luggage.
Right now
that case lies semi-packed on my bedroom floor. I’ve been stepping over it for
the past few days, occasionally ruffling something out or wedging something in,
attempting to re-shuffle weight. By now I’ve warmed to the idea of paying the
extra expense to forgo the worry of weight-compliance. After all, if the case
can happily expand to house 75 pounds of material, who am I to deny it that
pleasure?
In past
years packing duffel bags for Haiti was a weighty business, pun intended, where
teams or groups would meet together (hopefully over pizza) and systematically
pack bags to 50 pounds or a graceful 49. Inevitably, despite the redistribution
of goods and careful placement on scales, at least one bag would tip the scale
at the airport, the digital numbers flashing a scandalized 51.3 or, goodness,
52.1! Depending on the attendant, these bags might be waved on with grace, or
forced open on the airport floor to be once again reconstructed.
The last
time I went to Haiti my comrade and I really thought the attendant was joking
when he told us that fifth bag was not allowed.
“You’re
kidding,” we said.
He wasn’t.
Travel to
Haiti at that time limited check-baggage to solely two bags. Our fifth,
excitedly filled bag was an illegal alien barred from crossing the border. We
had no choice but to make the call to our already departed chauffer, by now on
the freeway homeward, and squat down on the floor to make the cut. Some things
were sacrificed, but the necessities were saved, praise God. And several
minutes later our harassed driver, my comrade’s husband, arrived back at
curbside where I could hand him the now depleted illegal bag. The other four
were checked through, to the attendant’s relief (he really was upset for us),
and we shook our heads, shrugged already sore shoulders, and carried on with
our carry-ons. C’est la vie.
This will
be the first time I venture to Haiti on my own. Fortunately I am not making the
entire trek solo, but should meet my co-worker in Miami before we board the
same plane to Port au Prince. And, of course, we never go alone. The God who
looks back on my life as a memory, the God who went before me to Korea and
stood beside me all the time, the God who devastated my heart when first He
called me to Haiti in 2006, that same gracious, omnipresent, incomprehensibly
caring God will be with me, as He’s with me now, assuring me that all will be
well.
All will be
well. All is well.
This we
must take on faith. If we don’t, we will be overcome by the worries of life.
Our fingernails will never grow. We’ll forever look like ragged, haggard
desperados with grisly habits. Not an image I prefer.
This
morning I spoke again with my co-worker, the woman who founded the school where
I’m going, an abundantly energetic and hardy person. She told me about the plan
for next week, from arrival in PAP on Monday afternoon to departure to the
intended Petit Goave Thursday morning.
“Our
tentative plan,” she said. “Everything in Haiti is tentative.”
Truth, I
agreed.
“Flexible is the key word,” she reminded
me recently.
Yes, indeed.
Flexible.
Tentative. Planned.
Oh, but we
will see.
So much
uncertainty. My nails are ragged.
But life is
uncertain. “The only thing for certain is uncertainty,” a Darryl Worley’s country
song rings, defiantly optimistic.
Life is a
calendar marked with our expeditions, appointments and events, many of which
will be crossed out, rescheduled, foregone in favor of something else. With
God, that something else is guaranteed to be something better.
I don’t
know what’s in store in Haiti. I know it will be like nothing past and defy the
expectations I’ve determinedly avoided. I know it will be hard; source after
source has assured me Haiti is a hard place to live.
But I know
it will be good.
God is
good. All the time.
See that?
Repeat.
Repeat
again.
Say it until
you’re soothed by the flow of those words. Until it rings in your ears.
That’s the
ring of Truth.
I’m sorry
if right now it seems untrue. If right now things are dark, things are hard,
life is bleak and all your hope is lost. Despair is a natural part of life,
too.
But you
will survive. We can survive.
There’s an
old National Geographic magazine in
my bedside table drawer. I’ve kept it there for years, stuffed down amid a
mystique of pencils, markers, note cards, batteries and actually I don’t know
what. It’s there for when life is hard, for when things are bleak and dark and
completely unfair.
The part to
which I turn is from the journal of American photographer Joel Sartore exploring
a new rainforest park preserve in Bolivia.
Rainforests are amazing places with infinite variety of birds, beasts
and plants, complex ecosystems that present some of the most exotic beauties in
the world. And the deadliest.
Sartore and
his journalist partner Steve Kemper stay in [squalid] jungle conditions. Accompanying
photos give us stomach-turning proof. There, in their mess tent where the table
is laid for dinner, insects swarm, covering clean plate and utensils. Awaiting
a herd of wild pigs four of them stay a few days in a canopy platform, confined
to ten or so square feet where they use a bucket for a toilet and sleep beneath
urinating bats. It’s too hot to sleep on their stomachs. The pigs never come.
While
hiking through the forest Sartore picks the wrong leaf to use as toilet paper.
It’s painfully toxic. The two Americans listen to their hosts’ stories of
toothache and fevers and infection able to be cured by antibiotics and basic
care. They see children play in sewage-infested water.
After they
leave Bolivia, Sartore discovers he’s been bitten by a parasite. At the time of
the article’s publishing he’d undergone surgery and three weeks of IV
treatment. He was possibly cured. [I’ve looked him up and he appears to be
thriving now.]
What a place, I think, every time I read
this article of Bolivian rainforest. So much inspiring beauty and vivid life in
the rainforest, and so much squalor and danger for the inhabitants.
Sartore and
Kemper leave that place, infected perhaps, with more than disease. They will
surely never forget the people they got to know, the ones for whom this place
is their reality.
Compassion
and empathy forbid the words “at least.” I will not say “at least you don’t
live there!” That’s not the point. Nor is it, “things could always be worse,”
(although I do believe this.) The point, the reason I keep this magazine with
its provocative article, is the humanity. Humankind is resilient beyond
possibility. We can endure, even thrive, under indescribable adversity. And
somewhere, always, there is beauty.
In Madidi,
Bolivia, there is beauty in butterfly wings, sunlight through the canopy,
flashing macaw feathers, dark-spotted jaguars, cloud-shrouded mountains. There
is danger in poisonous leaves, ravaging pigs, carnivorous fish, swarming
insects, contaminated water. Contrast. We see it everywhere. Many travelers
have noted the jarring contrast between the beauty of the environment, the
hearts of the people, and the horrific circumstances of war, disease, rape,
poverty and death.
God has not
given up on the world. He could have given us up when Eve heeded that sneaky
serpent, when Adam excused his disobedience. He perhaps should have casted us
off as hopeless and started fresh.
But He
didn’t.
Therefore
we are not permitted to give up on the world either.
Haiti is a
place of contrasts as much as Bolivia or Uganda where Katie Davis meets beauty
and brokenness. In Haiti brilliant fuchsia bougainvillea adorns walls and
sidewalks even inside the dust-ridden city. Frangipani lends vanilla fragrance
to courtyards. Coconut palms sway across the blue sky in the same refreshing
dance they do in any tropical paradise. Sunrise is a golden crown over purple
mountains. Mountainside houses shine like low-hung stars, their earthly roots
invisible against the night sky. Children present brilliant smiles, their teeth
defiantly white despite lack of dental visits or regular brushing.
You’ve
heard about the ugly things against which these lovely ones spar: the sewage,
the trash heaps, the hovels, the latrines, the sores, the scars, the festering.
There is an
immeasurable amount of need.
An amount
we can’t ascertain with airport scales. An amount we can’t satisfy with a
truckload of overweight luggage. An amount we can’t hope to overcome.
Only God
can meet that need.
Katie Davis
says that she feels sometimes like she’s emptying the ocean with an eyedropper.
There is so much need. Too much need. How can she make a difference? How can
she ever empty that ocean of need with her diminutive eyedropper?
Well, she
can’t.
We cannot
fix the world. It’s a broken place that will ever be filled with contrasts of
God’s Creation and Sin’s Destruction. Man’s destruction.
Thankfully,
we don’t need to fix the world. God doesn’t expect us to, and we certainly
shouldn’t expect it of ourselves. To do so would only lead to disappointment,
and despair, that sadly certain part of life.
Katie
cannot empty the ocean with an eyedropper. I cannot bring to Haiti enough
supplies, enough papers, books, crayons, slates, alphabet charts, balls,
shirts, shoes and bubbles, enough band-aids to sate the yawning chasm of need.
There will always be another child wanting. I am not enough. You are not,
either.
But God is.
Life is
uncertainty and challenge and fright, a tide of overwhelming circumstances that
sloshes about your ears, sometimes over your head, breaks against your back,
knocks against your knees and pulls at your ankles while they sink in the sand.
It makes you bite your nails and lose focus.
If you’ve
ever been to the ocean, however, you know that it’s not just about salt
stinging your eyes or pebbles gouging your soles or seagulls swooping past your
head. It’s also about the ceaseless break of waves on shore, the lullaby of
tide, the swirl of pale-green foam on blue-green water, the smoothness of rock,
brick and glass, rendered soft in the toss of tide and time. It’s about sand
between your toes and wind in your hair. It’s about diamonds on the water when
the sun breaks over the horizon or the moon shines down.
Life is a
contrast of need and fulfillment, struggle and ease, defeat and victory.
Places like
Bolivia, Uganda, and Haiti are picture-proof. Dwelling there is guaranteed to
devastate.
My
fingernails are not totally devastated. Scraping off polish is tedious, so
often by the time it’s nearly eradicated the urge to chew has diminished.
Anxiety found its outlet in gouging white lines along each fingertip, plowing a
path through the polish. Possibly by Monday morning, disguising itself as
Sunday night, around 2 AM when we must depart for the airport, possibly by then
they’ll look worse. More stubby, frayed, and uneven.
But maybe not. Possibly I’ll roll
back my shoulders, stretch out my knees, and shake out my hands, letting alone
my harassed fingernails. Possibly I’ll accept I know nothing and trust God with
everything. Possibly I will be able to practice what I preach: have faith!
There’s more packing to do. More
rearranging, wedging, wrapping, and creative folding. More hoisting, sweating,
sighing, and possible gnashing of teeth. However, I know with peace that those
needy children, their needy parents, their needy neighbors, their needy grandsons
and their needy babies, their needs are not mine to meet. They will not be
fulfilled whether I bring down ten clipboards or twenty, hula hoops or bubbles,
thick chalk or thin chalk. They don’t depend on me. I am not the heroine. I’m
not the savior of the world.
Praise God, that job’s already
taken.
My job is to teach. My job is to
reach out beyond the comfortable complacency of my little blue bedroom and
tree-engulfed backyard. My job is to stand before a room of students so I can
stand among them, a teachable teacher. My job is to stand before churches and
tell about those students, present the needs we have seen. My job is to write
about those needs. My job is to tell God all about what He already knows, and
ask Him to do something. To help me do something. To help me help others know to do something.
So on Monday morning disguised as
Sunday night I’ll head off to Haiti. (“World-traveler,” people keep calling me.
Go to Korea once and you’re qualified.) With wiser, stronger, better people I
will join and work.
It’s going to be hard. It’s going
to be a daily encounter with contrasts, and with the choice to despair over the
challenges and heartbreaks, or to rejoice over the victories and laughter.
Because there is always something
to laugh about, if only the absurdity of reality. Absurd realities such as
working in a building void of electricity although this is 2016. Of leaving a
life of convenience and consistency, independence and freedom for third-world
conditions and limitations. Of languages not quite meeting and laughter as the
common tongue.
We can always laugh.
And we can always love. Love itself
is a victory, always returned in some fashion, expected or unprecedented.
Perhaps reflected in kind, perhaps paid forward. The more we love, the more we
are loved. If you’re Christian, you believe God is love, and the more Godliness
you give, the more you receive. As my dear friend says, “the more Jesus you
give, the more Jesus you get.” Blessings abound. Love abounds, frayed
fingernails and all.
“That love is the reason I just
keep filling up my little eyedropper, keep filling it up and emptying my ocean
one drop at a time. I’m not here to eliminate poverty, to eradicate disease, to
put a stop to people abandoning babies. I’m just here to love” (Davis 16).
3 Now
listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to
this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is
your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” ~James 4:13-15
Davis,
Katie, and Beth Clark. Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love
and Redemption. New York: Howard, 2011. Print.
Sartore, Joel. “Bugging
Out.” National Geographic 197.3
(2000): 24-29. Print.
Worley, Darryl. Sounds like
Life. Stroudavarious Records, 2009. CD.
