It's the middle of the day when he comes running towards me.

He rolls his head around on my lap, giggling and stretching his little arms towards me. And for what felt like the hundredth time that day, I heard the familiar, Pote m' roll out of his mouth.
"Pick me up, pick me up." Over and over. I'd just finish holding one crying child, and would pick up one of the five little bodies that were waiting at my legs for their turn.

After doing the dishes, washing the clothes, helping with meals, taking care of children in countless ways that day- I just didn't want to pick him up. I didn't even think that I could. I was tired. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to hear a familiar voice from the place I had left behind.
"Why?" I said, "Why do you want me to pick you up? If you tell me why, I'll pick you up."
I look at my little three year old and sigh as I take in his brown eyes bearing into mine.
He looks at me thoughtfully and says, "Paske m' grangou."

Because I'm hungry.

And so I scoop my little boy up and hold him. I hold him with his empty belly in my arms, and love fierce in my heart.

Ill be in mid-conversation when that happens- where I will totally disengage and my mind drifts back to moments like that one. I don't quite realize just how far away I'll be until someone ends up waving their hands at me, asking the concerned and confused comment of, "Hey, are you okay?"

It's hard. It can be really frustrating, trying to engage in conversation and having my mind race back across an ocean.

The time that I spent in Haiti changed me. For good.
But there are a lot of changes that I don't understand, because I don't feel like they are good or bad, but simply ways that I have changed and need to adjust to.

I went from being an extreme extrovert to becoming an introvert. Social venues where I used to thrive now feel so taxing and draining. I zone out in conversation. I feel distant, and I can't fully engage in the usual settings that I used to find so easy. I find myself longing to be by myself more than not.
I don't function the same way. What I find funny, what I find stressful, what makes me really smile...it's all changed.

I've been processing through these changes, sometimes even pleading with God to unchange them.

And then I realize, that sometimes, God changes us despite what we want or feel like would fit better. I feel like we always see change as something that is good or bad, but the ways in which He has decided to change me hasn't been either.
Sometimes I really find myself longing to be an extrovert again. In the life I grew up in Pennsylvania, I was always an extrovert.
And while I was in Haiti...I wasn't. And I'm just now coming to realize the extent of that.
In Haiti I was constantly surrounded by people, and yet...I was always alone. Always, was I alone in my nationality, in my race, in my language.

I could no longer get my energy from being with people, because I was always with people. Being constantly surrounded by humanity all day, forced me to get my energy from being alone with God.

I was always alone with God. Whether I was in a room full of children, or in the littered streets of people, or traveling to different cities or mountains, I was in constant communion with God. I was forever in dialogue with Jesus. I would fall asleep on my Bible and the Spirit would whisper its words throughout the day. Praying unceasingly became a part of my life before I had even known that it was occurring.

Which was not the same as time spent alone, but time continuously and unceasingly spent with Jesus while I was with people. His presence was literally my daily strength, and I found real sustenance from feeding on His Word and by talking with Him.

But now that I'm in a different world, it's like I need to learn it all over again.

A lot of people say to me, "You must miss them...the kids..."

I don't. I don't miss them.

I ache for them.

What is it to miss someone? Because I've missed people before and it was nothing like this.

I feel like every phase of this journey brings a new aspect of love. This side of love has by far been the hardest. Fierce love. It's relentless. Unyielding. Burdensome. It brings forth a kind of pain that I still don't understand, because I both welcome and loathe the hurt it causes me to feel.
Ravaging love...it really has ripped apart my being- of who I am, what I'll do, of how I approach situations.

I think about love a lot. And not the kind of love I guess most girls my age apparently are supposed to be focusing on. I think of love, of the kind of love that has become such a blessing and burden in my life. I think about all that its done for me, of how it has shaped and changed me. How it has humbled me, of how who Jesus is, becomes more beautiful with the more beatings and lashes of love He graces unto me.

I think about faith and hope, and how love remains the greatest (1 Cor.13:13).
Of how you can have the ability to move mountains, and speak in angelic tongues, and can fathom all mysteries and knowledge, and without love, it's all worthless (1 Cor.13). Love is what creates value, what creates worth.
Above all, love each other deeply, for love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8).

It's so cool to have this truth come to life. The more I start loving like my God, my sins keep seeming to fall away. This love has been God's weapon used against me. It has, and continues, to threaten my dreams, to change what I hope for, and to kill the slightest darkness it keeps finding in me.

Really hard things seem to keep happening. Back in the spring the kids were almost evicted from the building. There have been several times where they have almost ran out of food again and again. A few weeks ago I was informed that the women I grew so close to, including Yvenante, would be losing their jobs. A few days ago I found out that another orphanage that I spent time with just lost a big sponsor and now the kids are looking very malnourished.

These past few months have held days where I could do nothing more than to bury my head and get lost in sorrow.
Injustice and oppression are singing in the lives of a piece of humanity where my heart clings.
I think of my kids crying when food runs low, of Yvenante's voice on the telephone saying softly, "I don't know where I'm going to go."

It's unbearable to know that the ones I love so relentlessly are scared and hungry and miss me. It's a kind of pain whose name I don't know. I feel it over and over, and feel as if no one else could possibly understand...and then I feel God's arms fall across my shoulders.
Don't you remember...I gave up my child for you. He was broken and bloody and cried for me. He was scared and unjustified. My boy was brutally executed. I know your pain.

I never realized that when I asked to love more deeply, that this would be the way. That He would allow me even to glimpse His love for Jesus as he suffered in this place, by loving little children who suffer, and through walking alongside victims of poverty and injustice.

And so it's June, and now I currently reside in Quakertown, which is near Philadelphia. Through all of the hard adjustments, aching forms of separation, and longing to be in Haiti, I keep taking steps. I remain hopeful as I pursue my options of heading back and possibly doing school online while I'm there. Every day I'm working through what kind of role God is prodding me into with the orphanage, and what steps I need to take in order to help more wisely, and to bring about real goodness and change for these children.

I am so anxious to return, and yet, I can't help but know that this period of my life has its own purposes, and I get to experience the beauty of everything that goes with walking the day-by-day with Jesus.

Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
-M.T.
This says it all for me- for me to never tire of loving where my heart has been placed, and to never tire of loving wherever the body that holds my heart, stands.