I was glad for the night quickly falling so that no one could see the tears sliding down my face as I envisioned myself trying to let go of them on Friday.
                I finally slipped into the night and made my way to my favorite coconut tree at the edge of our property. As soon as I collapsed against its familiar slant the sobs racked my body.
                I stayed there like that for a long time- leaning up against the coconut tree, taking in the stars and sky, listening to the falling mangos, shivering from the sea wind, crying and talking to God.
                “Kisa w’ap fe isit la, Courtney?” My oldest, Richard, pops out of nowhere and makes me jump. “What are you doing here?”

Richard

I told him I was talking to God, and then we started talking about God. “I always talk to God. I ask Him to help me to write better in school because it’s hard for me,” He says and makes me smile. And then we talked about other things. Like the first orphanage he lived in, and how his parents finally were able to afford to take care of him and came for him. How he only lived with them three months because his father then died. How he has been here ever since. He told me he watched a little girl die in the hospital. He said he watched them put her in a coffin and burn it. He told me he was afraid.

                And then Yvenante calls for him to collect the fallen mangos before the goats get them, and so I’m left with my God and sky once again. And my heart is bowed to the lowest of places, and offered up to the highest of them. I cried out to my God listening in the skies, and to the God listening in the home He has made in my heart. I cried for the people He has given to me, that He has given me an unquenchable love for. Somewhere in the Haitian night, I was having a conversation with God full of marvel, tears, laughter, and worship, and I would have been content to stay like that forever.
                I hear running footsteps. “Are you finished talking with God?” Richard asks me.
                I smile at him through the dark and get up to leave with him. “Pa janm,” I say.
                Never.

That was a few nights before I left to come back to the states. A few nights before everything changed yet again for me. A few nights before I would say the impossible goodbyes I had dreaded for weeks. And somehow that day still came despite how much I had begged for it not to, and I left.

With over 20 hours spent in airports, a car accident coming back from the airport, and then dealing with a viral illness and sinus infection, toe infection, four cases of ringworm, strep throat, high fevers, and muscle bruising from the accident the week since I have been back, only to find out that I have mononucleosis, it has been a lot rougher than I had anticipated on adjusting back to life here.

To say I miss my nineteen kids wouldn't be enough. I ache for them. My arms ache not to be empty, and my tongue longs to have a foreign language roll off so thoughtlessly. I worry about them. I find myself worrying about what seems as less important, like if someone holds them or tucks them in when they get sick, or if they are just getting pushed aside when they cry. I wonder about people getting them to smile when they are sad, when the sadness reaches farther than the taken toy or scraped knee.

The first night I got back, I crawled into my bed and sobbed my eyes out. My kids were gone, and Haiti was thousands of miles away. There was no carrying sleeping children to bed; instead I carried myself off to bed, with no persistent toddlers tugging on my clothes, and no pairs of brown eyes peering under my mosquito net asking if I was sleeping.
I could go on and on about missing them and about all that I miss about my life in Haiti, but there aren't enough words.

I think back on the last month, how it was so rich of God’s goodness and yet such a struggle with discouragement. I remember so many mornings waking up to Monique’s hands already raised high into the air, already praising Jesus before she even gets out of bed. I remember a night sitting under the Haitian sky with Yvenante and listening to her pray, and as she whispered “amen”, a star streaked across the sky. I think about worshipping God with the Haitian people a few weeks ago, on the day the earthquake hit four years earlier, in a church that had been completely flattened and now stands amidst the rubble. God’s marks are all over, impossible not to see. They are like fingerprints all over a window, except the marks make you see more clearly, not less. But I also remember all of the discouragement. I remember going weeks and weeks without ever leaving the orphanage. I remember my plans falling through to take my kids to the beach the night before we would go, after a month of planning. I can remember so many days where I thought that discouragement would simply take over, where every hope I had of bringing change would prove void. But something I hadn’t expected happened. Somehow, all of the discouragement and disappointment just ended up bringing more passion into my heart, more love for the oppressed. A greater thirst to see the afflicted empowered.

Coming back to the states has just increased that even more. I keep finding that this passion that burns in my soul for hurting people remains in me no matter where I am. I wrote this over nine months ago after spending some time at a homeless shelter near Norristown,
These are the forgotten. The one the world knows exists but refuses to do anything about. And one part of me feels so sad and desperate that I just long to curl up and weep at the feet of Jesus. But the other part of me is angry, is mad. I want to storm the temple and fling the tables on their sides like the One I serve. I want to rip the veil from the eyes of Christians like Jesus did when He died. Jesus didn’t just show me these things only to transform my heart. I don’t just want to listen to their voices with my ears, I want to listen with my life. I want to take action. I want to cross lines and tear things apart. I want apathy and complacency burned. I want to be a controversy like the One who looked into the eyes of the Pharisees and rebuked them.

There’s a quote that says something like, “If you want to do the work of a prophet, you need not a scepter but a hoe.” I love that. I just didn’t realize that it would begin resonating with me so soon into my young life.

“So, what’s next?” Somehow those words manage to come up in every conversation, no matter how long or how little I will be talking with someone. I never know how to answer that question, because really, I’m just waiting on God. There are so many opportunities, so many paths that can be taken, but instead of being overwhelmed by it, I feel like God has already taken off that burden. Just be still. Just be still and wait. Be still and know who I am, He seems to whisper. And for once, I feel like I am so eager to listen. One of my favorite quotes was said by Martin Luther. “I know not the way God leads me, but well do I know my Guide.” I have learned these words, and I am tasting their joy right now in my life.

So as of now, I don’t know what’s next. I know the desires and passions of my heart, I know the longing I have to be back in Haiti. But I also know that it’s time for me to be still and to listen closely to my God, and so that’s what Im doing.

I think back to a day where Yvenante and I were laying on the concrete outside the kitchen, exhausted from washing clothes and preparing lunch. I remember taking it all in. The waft of flies, the smell of bean sauce and rice cooking, the hot equator-sun on my face, Yvenante lying next to me, her voice raised to the clouds, saying, “Amen, Amen, Amen!” I remember her voice sounding like a song. And it’s the song I’m still singing. Because Amen to all that God has done, and Amen to all that He is doing! Amen. Amen. Amen. I know Yvenante has sung those words today like every other day, and even from a country away, I feel my voice lifting with hers too, praising the God who does it all.

99 new pairs of underwear hanging on the line.

My girls!

First time going to church since they came to the orphanage.

Killing my first chicken

And then learning to prepare it