I heard his voice coming out of the telephone, but it felt like I was drifting far away.
“I woke up to the wailing coming from their house,” he said, “It was so loud, Courtney.”
“I woke up to the wailing coming from their house,” he said, “It was so loud, Courtney.”
Heartbreak was something that I could suddenly physically feel. I could feel it there, my heart beginning to break apart in my core.
I thought of her, little baby Fosemone. 13 months old and so much life yet to behold and live. 13 months old and taken by an unrelenting rainy season in a hurricane-shredded place.
“We’re too late,”I whispered at the voice coming out of my phone. “We’re too late,” I sobbed and thought of the new house we had just finished building for her family.
I roamed through the rooms of my parent’s house in Pennsylvania until I fell against my mom. The miles and ocean separating me from Haiti suddenly felt unbearably far. I had never felt so far from home.
I had thought I was busy in August and September, traveling and organizing and meeting with families to set up schooling and start up some smalls way to jumpstart some income for them. I was busy. But then October came, and with it, hurricane Matthew.
Port-au-Prince was relatively untouched, as if nothing had passed over Haiti at all. But then reports from the South started leaking in, and I began to cry and ache for days for people whom I did not know, and friends I had yet to hear from.
“Look at this.” Someone handed Jimmy their phone. He looked at pictures of the Grand Anse region, pictures of where so many of his family members live, where he spent so much of his childhood.
I watched his face fall and then give me a look as if to say, “Let’s go.”
So we did.
Port-au-Prince was relatively untouched, as if nothing had passed over Haiti at all. But then reports from the South started leaking in, and I began to cry and ache for days for people whom I did not know, and friends I had yet to hear from.
“Look at this.” Someone handed Jimmy their phone. He looked at pictures of the Grand Anse region, pictures of where so many of his family members live, where he spent so much of his childhood.
I watched his face fall and then give me a look as if to say, “Let’s go.”
So we did.
The next few weeks became a non-stop rush at finding supplies and searching for things like tarps for some temporary relief. Our days in Palmis were long and exhausting, and arriving there was journey enough. We would go walking every day under the maddening downpours, searching out how friends and families had fared.
Elderly women with broken bones, newborns without roofs over their heads, the blind being robbed of what remained. I remember walking past a man well into his advanced years. He just sat there on the ground, staring at his home and gardens and trees in disbelief. There was something about seeing total loss in a person’s eyes, something that makes forgetting impossible.
I tried to imagine his home as he probably was. Lush and green- in the most fruitful of areas in Haiti. His house, his gardens and livelihood all gone in a matter of hours.
One afternoon, by the time we had made it to Jimmy’s aunt and uncle’s, it was already beginning to pour. We all hurried under the small tarp covering some of their belongings. I watched as his cousin wrapped her baby boy tight against her chest. We looked at the wreckage of their house. Jimmy held his head in his hands and cried.
“Don’t rush through your pain.” My mentor and friend told me when I arrived back to the States for a few weeks. She is always saying things like that, annoyingly hard and good things that I need to hear. “Maybe you need to start asking what God is trying to do through all of your pain.”
I had decided to come back to the States at last minute because I was all broken apart. Every day had become a day spent in tears, it was a new, foreign kind of sadness. A new kind of broken. Joy was always something I have breathed. Joy was natural, something easy and familiar to my nature. But not now.
I had decided to come back to the States at last minute because I was all broken apart. Every day had become a day spent in tears, it was a new, foreign kind of sadness. A new kind of broken. Joy was always something I have breathed. Joy was natural, something easy and familiar to my nature. But not now.
Come get me, I began to beg God. Come get me.
Joy seemed like an unattainable thing now. How could I offer up my heart to Jesus with it being such a sad and lonely and ugly place? I knew Jesus wanted to be invited into my mess, but I didn't know how. Sadness seemed to replace all of the areas of my life where God's presence had always so abundantly filled up before. And I missed Him, I missed feeling Him right there, missed being able to talk with Him, and walk with Him, and spend my time with Him. But shame controlled my life. I was so ashamed to be struggling with such pain and sadness, ashamed to be so low.
I didn't want to be such a wreck of a girl. I was ashamed to be unable to share in the fun my family wanted to have with me being back, ashamed to admit that I was overwhelmed and hurting in front of churches, ashamed that my boyfriend had to keep taking care of me in sickness and walking alongside of me in my sorrow. I felt such shame every time I met up with friends and supporters and burst into tears.
But it was these very people who began to show me how to let God into my hurting heart.
For I will satisfy the weary soul and every languishing soul I will replenish.
Jeremiah 31:25
Talk and pray with those who breathe life into you, and Courtney, say yes to all that breathes life into you. My "second-mom" said softly and firmly to me a few hours after I received news of Fosemone's death. She looked into my eyes, into the mess of my soul, and reminded me that I need love. That receiving love, God's love, is the most important thing we can do in life, without receiving love first, we are unable to give love at all. It was in that moment that I began to remember what it is like to receive God's love from the most obvious of places: other people.
Other people keep our souls alive, just like food and water does with our body. -Donald Miller
It was my family, listening and searching out the hard things I have held inside for so long, prodding me to speak and be heard. It was my church, in the way they listen to you with not only their ears, but with their spirits, encouraging you, uplifting you, reminding you of the way Jesus so hears us. It was my boyfriend, running miles to get a small thing of relief in my sickness. When all I feel is alone, he reminds me that I am actually not, that he is incessantly and continually there for me. It was my friends, making me smile- the smallest form of joy, and the way each has walked alongside of me in such important and strange ways.
And really, the only thing that each of them are doing is loving me as Jesus. Searching my heart, listening in spirit, walking beside me, and just being there for me. I have never seemed to realize that I am indeed supposed to be loved by others in the same way I am supposed to love others.
On the cross, Jesus held the guilt and remorse of the world, the despair and ruin of every soul, the wickedness of every heart, and the darkness of every sin. Most of my life, I have focused on how Jesus physically suffered for us, but now I have begun to realize the even heavier burden in which he bore. A burden so great that his Father, the one true God, actually turned away from him. Jesus became utterly alone in the world as we will never be.
God is always with us, but on the cross, Jesus felt total separation from God. Jesus sacrificed what was actually the only thing that matters- being with God.
In this long year, I keep thinking about this moment- this moment where Jesus becomes alone, where he experiences being betrayed and his closest friends abandoning him, where he has to watch his mother weep for him, where he has to choose to bear unbearable pain. The emotional pain of Jesus is a blaring truth to me that he is the only one who is able to bear such pain and suffering, it is as if when I look at the cross, Jesus is looking right at me, out of so much love and longing, saying,
Let me be God.
Don't take my place.
Don't bear that which you cannot.
You are not capable as I am.
It is in this moment where I realize that I am actually unable to handle my pain and sorrow, because although I strive to be like him, I am not him.
"...Thus says the Lord, 'The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness, when Israel sought for rest, the Lord appeared to him from far away, I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you, again I will build you'..."
This year had been all sword in my life, attack after attack, trial and another trial waiting it, and I have lived through it. For so many months, I have felt so lost in this wilderness-kind of confusion, of not knowing how to praise God even though he has brought me out from under the sword, in not knowing how to find joy again. But I have found grace, and God has appeared every time I search for Him. He has so loved me, has been so faithful in all of my struggling.
Since returning back to Haiti, we have decided to take the month of December to rest from our work in Palmis, where we are working on rebuilding homes from the hurricane. Jimmy and I had both gotten so sick at different points that we had begun to think I had malaria, and he himself had to go on IV for a day.
December has been full of good things- of birthdays and weddings, of celebration and Christmas. It has been a month of letting joy leak into my body, and learning to receive love from people, and learning to choose all that breathes life into my life.
In that chapter in Jeremiah, God goes on to talk about the joy that He will once again restore in His people, the way they will sing and languish no more. He says He will turn their mourning for joy, and will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.
The other day I went walking in Santo to where my favorite mango tree stands, and the goats all walk home together when the sun begins to lie down. While I was there I kept thinking about what I had heard from a Haitian speaking on Jeremiah, he kept using the phrase, "mete pye w' ate." Put your feet on the ground. For some reason, these words remind me of how I am to find joy. I am to choose it, to place myself in it, to put my feet on the ground and walk, and do something about it. I am to let others love me, and I am to love others, and I will find joy in doing both. I need to mete pye m' ate and look at my friends, who struggle with joy because they can't provide for their kids, or don't have the money to get married, or can't sign their own names. I need to walk with my friends who have lost everything in a storm, friends who have lost a baby without warning...
I am to be a cause for joy in their lives, just as so many have been the cause for joy in mine.
Jesus in our cause for joy. He is in you. He is in me. And we are never alone.
