I had been away for over a month, the longest span of time I had been away from Haiti in a while. After weeks in America, and a week in England, my being so deeply ached to return to the little ones I knew were waiting on me. The day after I landed, I sped to the orphanage, expecting the excited hellos, the mob of endless rejoicing of being together again, the shouting of each other's names...
But I stepped back in the orphanage and it was silent. There was no mob and no cheering. No smiles and no excitement. All of the kids were sleeping, sprawled out all over the floors. The place was terribly dirty, the floors were covered in filth, in human waste, and a foul smell filled the rooms. And they were sleeping on those floors, walking barefoot on those floors.

Three of the girls ran up to me and clung to me. "I missed you" they said quietly, but there was no joy in their voices. We just stood like that for a long time, as I felt them sigh against my chest.

Slowly they started to wake up, and more of my dear little friends ran up to me, and there was something in the way their eyes were set, something of hurt, something sad. Precious ears, scalps, and limbs covered in oozing sores and scabies came to find me.
One by one they wake up, and I begin to remember, I begin to remember what is real.
A reality where Wendi pulls his mask up and tries to shut himself off from everyone, where Rezinald, usually so energetic, is crying simply because he is sad, where Nickenson vomits his entire meal because he was made to eat so much, where Gaelle closes her eyes and tries not to touch her shaved, blistering head.
Megan and I left as the sun was setting, and we said nothing for the three taptap rides home. I returned home, and instead of returning with the joy of being reunited, I returned with a gaping hurt in my chest.

For months I have been thinking through and struggling with the fact that Jesus was a man of sorrows, that he was acquainted with grief.
And it was like as soon as I started to wonder what that meant, to think about those things, he started showing me.

For months now I have been wrestling with sorrow, have been struggling with a grief deep-set inside me. It was like I was suddenly becoming painfully aware of how all of the things that have been etched into my heart from years of working in the midst of injustice, pain, and suffering, were finally affecting me. I started struggling with stress and anxiety, things more foreign to me than how Haiti used to feel.
The fact is there is just so much suffering, and sometimes, just not a lot you can do about it all. I became so discouraged, so brokenhearted from it all.
I started feeling small, so incredibly more than just inadequate, but of realizing that it would be impossible for me to fill the role God has been laying before me.

This weird thing happened where I woke up one day and realized that God had answered every one of my prayers, and I mean every prayer. I started shrinking into myself, I started feeling unworthy, unable, and terrified. I started warring with God to not become the person he wants me to be.
Suddenly I couldn't handle the pressure of having so many wonderful people rooting for me, supporting and encouraging me. So much love, kindness, and hope was being set on my back and it felt as if it was stifling me, as if I couldn't think from the weight of it all. It was just too much for my spirit to handle.
I started listening to a voice in my life, a voice telling me I was worthless, that I'm nothing, and that I am not someone usable. That I have nothing to offer the kingdom.
I had never listened to such voices before, but now I couldn't seem to get it out of my head, and stop it from leaking into my heart.

It was a dark place, a dark place of letting someone else define who I was, of letting hurtful things sink into my being, of feeling so vulnerable and hurt that it started to affect the way I simply exist each day.

Courtney, God is good. God is so good in fact that you can pray your little prayers, the feeble things that they are, and expect Him to do it. But the thing is, you can't think like Him, you can't even bear to behold His thoughts. You can't expect Him not to do more than you ask.
Know that all of those feelings you are feeling are real. You are small. You are incompetent. You don't have the wisdom you need. You are not able. That's the whole point. You can't even do what you want because what you want isn't enough. God wants something bigger and you have to deal with it.

That hurting in your heart- that you aren't enough, that you cannot do this, that you have no worth? Let yourself know it, let yourself know that it's true. Become less, and He will become more through your life, and He will satisfy all of the hurt in your heart. It's going to be embarrassing because everyone is going to see your sin, and realize the truth that you have nothing to offer. Don't try and hide it. Let everyone know it. Be vulnerable. Let everyone see how you are nothing, and how incredible God is. Don't get in the way. Don't pretend anything.

I wrote that months ago, and only one thing has made it possible for me to begin listening to those words, to not remain lost in the hurt in my heart, and in the overwhelming effects of unabated suffering.

The Lord your God is in your midst

a mighty one who will save

he will rejoice over you with gladness

he will quiet you by his love

he will exult over you with loud singing.

Zephaniah 3:17

How God loves me frustrates my ways. The way in which He does it lures me into changing, into wanting to fight for what is good and right and best. How He loves me has me agreeing to surrender to becoming who He wants me to be, and what He wants me to do. How He loves me silences the farthest reach of my heart.
I am so sure of the way that He loves me, not in the sense that I understand it, but that I have come to accept the unbelievable as my normal, as this is how He loves me at all times. The love of Jesus is steady. Even when His voice seems quiet and His hands feel closed, his love is steady.
Jesus knew sorrow deeply, he was known for it. And yet Jesus continually spoke of great joy, and great change. He prods me to not just understand sorrow, to be well aquatinted with grief, but to also experience full joy and change that baffles me.

Every Saturday we have this odd group of people come to the house- my students, motorcycle driver, good friends and their families, our neighbors, even our landlord. We spend the morning just reading the Bible together, and talking about Jesus.
Each morning I get to watch Yvenante walk out the door and go to school, a dream that she whispered to me almost three years ago. Every day I get to see Yvenante with her child, together. I not only get to see Jesus keep their family together, but I get to be part of it.
Every week I get to teach my students English and get to watch God grow those conversations deeper than just talking about a language. I get to watch children stay with their parents and go to school. More beautifully so, I get to watch as my friends help others, as they start pleading their cause. I get to watch them fight for those who need, give out of their own pockets, open up their homes, stand up for ones who need a voice and an advocate.

There is such deep, deep joy here, in seeing Jesus' steady love pulse in and out of each day. Sorrow, injustice, and suffering are across the world. And that's why we have to be in the world. We have to reap good. We have to bring relief and comfort. We need to bring joy and love to ones who know great suffering and much sorrow.

It's weird how "to look" and "to see" have the same action, but hold such different meanings, that when you look at or for something, there is a reason and intention in that, but when you see something, something is coming into sight that you weren't looking for.
Through all of this strange wrestling and struggling, I haven't been searching for hope in it all. I haven't looked for it. But regardless of me not looking for it, God keeps making me see hope everywhere.

I have seen hope in Caille a l'eau, on a tiny little island not even on the map, as I'm walking wearily beside the shore as Yvenante's uncle throws coconuts out of the trees and tells me about his life and his hope for his family.

I have seen hope as I walk through Jerizal ém with Jimmy as he stretches his hand towards a woman's house, a widow that he knows is struggling to take care of her children. He starts talking excitedly about fixing her house up, about sending her children to school, and trying to figure out ways to help her get back on her feet. The hope rises out of him and threatens to permeate all of Jerizalém.

I have seen hope in Zoranje, in Lindia's family finally getting a piece of land to have their own garden for a source of food and commerce. Lindia stands before my eyes, bigger, healthier, and she smiles, and it is then that this hope fills my being- that God has remembered her. That he has brought her out of the dark place, and into a place where there is hope. I look at Lindia and I feel God giving me the hope I stopped being able to see for all of the kids still in the situation she used to be in.

God's love beckons hope in the smallest, most simple of moments. Hope comes in things of joy- of driving through the fog of Kenscoff, of rain soaking you to the bone, of finally driving a motorcycle here and simply remembering something that you love.
Hope is something you can't talk about. It takes away the words that were on your lips just a moment before. Hope quiets you.
Hope is what reminds me that God is in my midst. Hope is the way God is kind to you in the midst of grief, hope is His way of letting me see the things that I don't know how to look for. Hope is the thing God presses into that gaping wound in your chest . It is what happens after the part where he completely, and utterly silences you by the way He loves you. Hope, I think, is the place where deep sorrow meets great joy, the place where you come to know the Jesus who wept bitterly over Lazarus, and brought the greatest joy the world has ever known.