Not Comfortable but Joyous

“I try to look for the beauty,” Beverly said, as we strolled along the black-sanded beach after breakfast last Friday.

In Haiti, beauty is abundant. But so is suffering and squalor. There is tragedy continuously at odds with the marvelous creation.

Behind us as we walked rose mountains upon mountains, the closest one, deep green and purple hedging into the aquamarine sea. Palm trees curved over the surf along with tangled jungle greenery and flowers in scarlet and white.

Madanm Beverly and I had come into Ti Goave just the previous evening, squashed tightly into the Patrol SUV along with our hosts Pastor Levy and his wife Madanm Rose, visiting guests from Pennsylvania Juanita and Angela, Juanita’s sponsor daughter Myreline and all their luggage. It wasn’t overly comfortable for anyone. In the trunk the luggage pressed against the back of the four ladies’ heads: Juanita, Angela, Myreline and Beverly cozily acquainted. I nestled against Madanm Rose in the front, straining to keep my leg from impeding with the gear shift as Pastor drove. The AC continuously poured forth cold air so my hands had long ago grown chill. But after the first hour in the car, after we’d eaten our riz et pois, rice and beans take-out and reached the fringes of Port au Prince on our way westward, Pastor started to sing. His rich baritone filled the car and inspired the accompanying altos and sopranos. As we progressed in songs in English and Creole, Pastor’s voice ranged up and down like the hills around us. He sang high and low and repeated choruses with palms lifting from the steering wheel.

“Amazing Grace,” we sang together, as tap-taps and motos and overenthusiastic hatchbacks swerved around us. It wasn’t ideal or conventional or comfortable, but that’s Haiti. It’s Grace.

Our entrance into Ti Goave was preceded by going up a mountain. We cresting the small mountain over which the national road twisted, and the valley and sea spread before us in a scene of golden harmony, as though a reflection of our spirits.

Late afternoon sun made diamonds on the water and the mountains beyond were shadowed into charcoal, edges vague and dreamy. It was almost blinding, and easy to imagine how once the country was—an undiscovered treasure, a tropical paradise, the Pearl of the Caribbean.

In ten minutes more we reached the house, a gorgeous large place within sight of the sea. Walking in the wide front door I knew welcome: the space was expansive and open, airy with high ceilings and those classic white tile floors. This was a place to host, to share love. We were home.

It’s been over a week now. Ten days in this strange place of contradictions. Of contrasts. Of being told to hurry, only to be told to wait. Of waiting and waiting, only to be told you were expected and missed your appointment. Of extreme beauty laid waste and extreme heat rendered bearable or not, depending on the Fortune’s Wheel of electricity, rain, and water supply.

You strain to avoid the sun but sigh at its passing when darkness comes so early in the evening. You’re eager for thunder storms that cool the air and reduce the dust, but quaver at the consequence of washed out streets and flooded homes.

Everything contrasts. Everything contradicts.

My heart, too.

I’m indescribably happy to be here.

Ten days after arrival and I still can’t quite believe I’m here to stay. Yet the joy conflicts with the pain in my heart, the heavy sorrow at the tragedy all around. I ache with love for the wee ones scrambling for attention, marveling at their beauty and weeping for their need.

Recently I stood at the bedside of twins—two one-month old babes laid side by side, sleeping face to face, plump lips occasionally scrunching as they stretched in slumber, minute fingers curling and clenching. They were so perfect I was certain they were dolls. They were tranquil in their oblivion, unheeding of the heat or hunger or loneliness. And who but God could have made them so—with their shining curls, rounded cheeks and long-lashed eyes? Who but God could deliver these twins from their mother’s womb, safe and whole and visibly perfect at nine months, despite an open cervix and history of miscarriages?

As we stood around the bed, gazing at the twins in wonder and selfishly longing for them to wake so we might scoop them up, ensure their warm reality in our arms, their mother explained.

She spoke in Creole to Juanita, who had learned the language while living in Haiti and had kept fluent through continued use. Juanita told us yet incompetent blans in turn what the manman Madanm Eunide said.

“The doctor wanted to sew up her cervix,” she said. “She’d lost three babies before this and her cervix was open. But she said no, she didn’t want the surgery.”

This young manman, teacher of three-year olds at Christian Light School, Petit Goave, gestured. She raised her arms above her head and looked up, past the dingy ceiling of her low-roofed concrete house.

“She said she was trusting in God and didn’t want the operation,” Juanita relayed to us. Eunide shook her head, smiling. Her eyes were large and fringed by thick curling lashes. Braided pigtails bobbed on her head like a school girl. She wore a thin-strapped turquoise dress she surely reserved for home and not company—it was far too revealing for this area and her position as pwofesè.

“The doctor answered that he’d never seen such faith, and when the babies were born, healthy and on time, he said it was a miracle. It wasn’t normal.” Juanita smiled, sweat curling the hairs on her forehead.

We all nodded, sweat beading on our own foreheads, looking down at those foreheads unsullied by sweat or care. Who could call those perfect twins anything but a miracle?

“The doctor said he’d never forget her as long as she lived. And Eunide told him she served a big, big, big, big God.”  Gwo, gwo, gwo, gwo, Eunide had said, grinning.

“Well,” Beverly said, “I hope the doctor remembers that God did this.” She gestured to the babies on the bed.

We all agreed.

Pastor Levy then entered the room, gazing down at the twins as well.Before we left, after Beverly had poured gifts for the babies on the bed where they still slept, he prayed over them and the household.

Madanm Eunide hoped to come back to school in October, giving her another month at home with the twins and her seventeen-month old daughter.

Beverly supplicated her to make an appearance next week when school opens.

“It’s her presence that calms the children,” she said.

Eunide agreed. “Wi, wi,” she said. She posed behind her babies, lying across the bed.

Beverly took pictures to show in the States, where a church group promised to sponsor her, paying for formula for the twins.

As we readied to leave, continuously sweating but helplessly grinning at those wee ones sleeping figi a figi, face to face, they began to fuss in turn. First the one on the left began to scrunch her face pathetically. I laid my hand on her stomach and gently stroked. She quieted without ever opening her eyes. A minute later her twin began to contract her body, curling up her limbs and similarly scrunching her face. I repeated the motion, softly stroking her stomach. She, too, settled without waking.

I wanted to tell Madanm Eunide “bon travay,” good work, for her babies. In the States I’d often expressed that congratulations to parents with adorable babes. But the words seemed out of place here, apart from the humor that might be lost across cultures; here, the words fit, but only when addressed to God.

So I settled for a farewell to Eunide and a final glance at the peaceful, perfect sleeping twins, and considered the immense faith of this woman who lived in a concrete house and depended on donations to feed her children.

Really, she depends on God.

The whole country does. That’s Haiti. That’s Grace.

If we’re honest, we all depend on Grace, even if we don’t recognize that dependence.

Beverly uses the word “Godcidence” to describe those serendipitous occasions in which circumstances are too perfect to be naturally. Some folks call this Fate, some coincidence. Then there are the Faithful, who recognize God’s hand everywhere. Beverly is one of those people.

In the ten days that we’ve been together, having met for the first time in the Miami airport last Monday morning, I’ve lost track of the number of times Beverly has proclaimed she sees God’s hand at work.

His hand is everywhere.

Last Tuesday we attended a conference of Feed My Starving Children CROPPS 3D which provides food to many organizations and missions around Haiti. Worldwide FMSC provides meals for 750,000 people every day.

CROPPS 3D is a smaller program which currently works in 9 countries, Haiti being the most needy. Christian Light School, Pitit Goave is one of the missions provided food by CROPPS, enabled to feed the students a large meal every day they come to school.

At the conference, representatives from missions gathered and listened to FMSC employees advise on networking, support raising and publicizing. We also introduced ourselves and outlined what we do and how blessed we are to be part of CROPPS.

One young man, Andy, Haitian born but educated and Americanized to the point of no accent, repeated his thanks over and over again.

“I don’t want to say too much,” he said, standing up at his table in jeans, an “End World Hunger” t-shirt and “FMSC” hat, “but I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you to all you at FMSC. Without you we couldn’t do what we do.”

As he continued to reiterate his gratitude and give a few more details of his program, a youth center that strives to keep kids off the street, providing tutoring, games, and food, I almost felt impatient.

“You said you didn’t want to say much,” I thought, continuing to wonder if he was Haitian or American. But really, can we ever say thank you enough?

The FMSC staff told us no.

“You can’t say thank you enough to your sponsors,” the Marketing Manager Gwen instructed us. “And say thank you publically.”

Everyone appreciates recognition.

We are all so blessed. That was a consensus at the conference.

We are also all so needy. That was obvious.

Person after person, self-sacrificing, hard-working visionaries, stood up and listed their greatest needs. A few shared previous struggles.

One man continues to work in Site Solay, the infamous slum of Port au Prince reputed to be the most dangerous place in the city. But this school principal has been there so long the young gangsters have grown used to his presence; when they were barefoot children he was working there, teaching school and organizing meals for local kids.

To financially support his mission this man works as a customs officer at the airport. “Most people say pastors don’t work,” he said, “so I work there. But I said I couldn’t go in today, because I had to come here.”

Another woman, Kellie, stood before us to share tips from her school’s cook on preparing the FMSC special Manna Pack Rice which is enriched with essential vitamins and proteins to boost growth and fight the ubiquitous malnutrition.

However, before opening the video she talked of the progress of the school, of the changes in the children. And she confessed she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

“You say to pray for you because you’re young and don’t know what you’re doing,” she said, peering over her reading glasses at Andy, the thankful man from the youth center. “Well, I’m old and I don’t know what I’m doing. God is leading.”

We all laughed. We all agreed.

The name of her ministry is “Grace So Amazing.”

As all the missionaries and managers prayed together later, we asked for continued energy, for encouragement and a fresh awakening every morning. We prayed for commitment to each other and our projects: God’s projects. We prayed for the vision of the young and the wisdom of the experienced.

Some representatives said they need vehicles and drivers. Some need land and materials for construction, most often because their program had expanded and there simply wasn’t enough room for all their people. Some need more workers, faithful fellows to join in the labor. Some need translators, teachers, or medical personnel. We all need funds.

We all need help.

Every person in that room, and in the world, comes before God with myriad problems. We all wake up and face challenges expected and obstacles unforeseen. We all get tired and worn out, feel discouraged and alone.

God holds each one of us in His hand.

God is arranging the intricate details of our lives. He’s looking back on our future having completed the perfect story. He’s filled each of our lives with sheer breathtaking moments of Godcidence.

“I always think of a tapestry,” Beverly said to me last week as we sat beside the ocean, cooled by the sea breezes and watching the clouds brighten from yellow to pink before dulling into mauve as the sun set behind the mountains. Her ever bright, alert brown eyes glinted behind her glasses and she smiled with her whole face, as she always does, every line quite probably the result of squinting from sunshine and smiles. “The front of the tapestry is so beautiful, but the back is all tangled and criss-crossed. That’s what our lives are like. That’s what God’s plan is like. God’s got this.”

Indeed. God’s got this.

He held Madanm Eunide in His hand and blessed her faith. He kept those twins growing inside her and then birthed them perfect and curly-haired. He nodded at the doctor’s awe and demonstrated His glory in this “not natural” birth.

He led Beverly from Port au Prince to little Ti Goave where He had her start a school, after she was sure she’d done her time in Haiti.

He’s grown the school every year. He listened to her prayer for an English teacher and answered with me.

He led me to Haiti ten years ago as a painfully shy fourteen year old with shallow ambitions. He wouldn’t let me get over it, and tugged on my heart continuously. He brought me back again and again. He had me educated, gain some experience and confidence, and now brings me back again, this time to stay.

He’s brought us all to where we are, and whether the place looks promising or horrifying, He is here with us now.

God’s got this. He’s got us.

And He’s not done with us yet.

I can’t see the tapestry yet. I don’t know what the final picture is going to be. I don’t know which characters will make the final cut, and which seemingly important bits will be trimmed away. I know so far there is already an appalling mess on the back where threads criss-cross and overlap and knots hold together the frame. Certainly I’ve tangled quite a few threads in clumsy attempts to direct my life.

But I don’t need to know the future. God knows.

Tomorrow will be Day 11, which marks the longest consecutive stay in Haiti yet. I’m living the dream here, in a place of contrasts, contradictions and discomfort. Things are not conventional. In many ways Haiti is living in the past. Gender roles, dress codes and hand-washed laundry clash with the blue jeans, smart phones and resorts. In every way Haiti is yet surviving by Grace.

It’s not comfortable most of the time, physically. My heat tolerance for temperature and spice is high, but it’s hot. Most days I sweat more than should be possible. Getting into the shower before bed at night is blessed relief, contrasting with that sadness that another day is passed.

Time is at odds. Traffic backs up the road as a pothole claims another wheel victim. A trip that ought to take 10 minutes takes 50 and an expected ride of two hours is completed in 1 hour and fifteen minutes. Lights extinguish as the electricity fails, plunging the house into darkness. Flashlights are found and the power resumes. Concrete dust clogs your nose and lungs in one corner, the stench of latrines and sewage makes you wince, and then the ocean breeze cleanses the air and you look up to see palm fronds swaying in a perfect sky. Babies as flawless as dolls sleep without care on a bed in a small home without screens on the windows or running water.

 “Look for the beauty,” Beverly says.

Beauty is abundant. If we keep our eyes open we will see it. If we keep singing Amazing Grace, keep saying mesi anpil “thank you”, then we’ll start to see it’s true.

God’s got this. The One who made the sun to be the source of life, not the bane of our existence, the One who shaped the mountains to inspire us, the One who molded each finger and toe and eyelash, He’s got this.

Maybe it’s not comfortable, squished tightly together, sweating constantly, swatting at flies. But it’s joyous.