More Patience

More conversations this week. More humility. More discernment and growth. I hear David Crowder's song I will worship ... worship you Lord ... Only you, Lord. This week I let my thoughts get too far on the people here, too mixed up in what we're doing right, wrong, not efficient enough, and only you, Lord becomes only lots of other focuses and my sight gives to blur and I can't see Christ in clear focus. The strain makes me want it more but it takes a few days to reel back the blurry and the clear picture of 'only you, Lord' to come back in clear.

Charles and I drop a friend off at the US Embassy. We enter another side to do paperwork. A uniform man stops us. We freeze. What is it? What is he saying? He is set on his words being understood. He looks a little shell shocked. What is it? Then he says in his half-Creole, broken English words, "It was you. Mwe konnen it was you." What was us? And then his semi-familiar face became recognizable. I remembered. His sick little girl was in the hospital next to our sick little girl. His sicker. He stood at her bedside while we stood at Ava's. He cried tears over a helpless child. The beds were an arm's length apart. We helped them out when we left but we didn't want credit. Charles paid two receipts. A small price for two little lives in that room. Our little one left with us while they stayed. His face said it all this week. He knew it was us and he was shocked to see us. Again gratitude wasn't the word his face spelled. It was stronger. There was a desire to repay us but no means. His soft smile as we left was priceless. He wanted us to go see his wife. Baby girl was having surgery and they were hopeful. We couldn't go by yet but we are hopeful too. That thank you was such unexpected grace on both accounts.

The girls stayed at the Hope Center and Charles and I went to lunch after the Embassy. Almost normal. A friend sat down and met us. Miguelson listened to our lives and we did the same for him. Almost normal having lunch with a friend. The team, the struggles, a million miles away from our thoughts for just a short while. An oasis. Fun. Maybe too much. Sometimes I feel like I'm in the ocean with the current and the waves pounding and I'm swimming to normal. It's the vague sight in the distance but not reachable. So I keep swimming.

Last night we went to dinner in Petionville, an hour and a half away. A team member left us all a little entertainment fund to go do something fun. A dollar that gives volumes. Jaques took us. We celebrated Jaques getting a visa and heading for the States. Our crew plus the interns and Jaques piled into his Trooper and made way on the bumpy road for Li Fior Latte. Abby and Mary wanted pizza so we went for Jaques favorite pizza. It was a nice Italian place. A little lighting, a nice ambiance, good pizza, laughter, conversation about the week. A close normal. A sigh of enough time outside the walls. The only glitch was one moment that I remembered that we missed a wedding we planned to attend. Oh no. We'll never make it. I questioned the possibility of going late. We gave in to the pizza and an apology.

Charles and I went running this morning. I tell him my recent fast revealed I need to keep looking in. Keep looking in. Keep looking for what I can do to change. Keep seeing my sin once and the Savior five times. Keep thinking how I can pour into the people in my realm of influence. Who are they? How can I bless them? What can I do differently? What do they need? I can hear the TVs roaring around us with soccer matches on them. Gol! We hear them roar. A kid gets Charles' attention while we run and points to his watch. Charles gives the time. In English. An instinct. I know the kid doesn't want the time. He wants the watch. Another disappointment. It's hard to adjust to.

Charles comes up the hill from the garden with a five-gallon bucket of beets, cucumbers and all colors of the earth's goodness piled high. Faithfulness. Nourishment. Ready to eat. Thank you for the harvest. It's more than the earth's colored goodness. It's the small seeds planted all over Haiti from God's people and there is a watering that comes even when there is no rain. We just can't see it.

I realize in an interview this week by a team member writing a book that I keep trying to reconcile with myself how to help the poor here. I keep trying to solve the problem. I keep skipping over God's faithfulness to just find the answers. I pray for patience. We can't solve it over night. But I want to ...

I talk to another team member who has come back from the mountain town where BGM works. Where the people live poorer. But richer. The air is cool and the contentment is apparent. Smiles and greetings are a given. Money isn't. One girl sells onions. A team member swaps a small bill for the onions. The girl walks away. When they ask through the interpreter where the girl was going, she said that the small bill was enough to eat and enough to quit selling onions for the day. Another team member returns with tears. She speaks out of a new place. How do they live like that? How do I process it and take it in? How do I see all of this in a week and change? We're all trying to solve it. The more I read this book When Helping Hurts, the more I read in the word patience to the pages. More patience in relationships to form, more patience in development, more patience in learning God. More patience to wait.

I submit a boundaries email to the higher up saying this is what our family needs ... how do I put it on paper? Is that all we need? Some breaks, some meals around the table, some prayers together at bedtime? 35 teams a year, each week with a day in between ... what do we need to serve at our fullest potential?

It's a steady how do we do this on a weekly, daily, moment by moment basis but the goodness in those moments is enough to go to the next.