The hate in his eyes took my breath away. I have never wanted to crawl out of my skin so badly. A few men started yelling in my direction and I averted my eyes and kept walking, willing myself to become invisible. It was an eery, creeping thing that I started to feel with their hot stares, something so strange to be felt. It was a directed, pointed kind of hate.
A few mornings later Jimmy hurries towards me and takes my hands. “I’m going to try and make it to the police station now.”
He smiled reassuringly and I tried to mask the tears burning against my eyes as he whispered he loved me and rode off on that motorcycle. I shut the rickety doors to the house and dissolved into a bewildered and overwhelmed mess.

Jesus, why did you let this happen?

Rioting. Burning. Shooting. Attacks. I tried not to imagine what Jimmy may come across on the road. I felt the long swallow in my lungs as I thought about the risks he was taking in order to try and protect me.

For days I asked Jesus where he was, and for days I asked when he was going to act for me. But now…now I began to wonder what it meant if he did not.

I was in a world of red earth and falling rain, of spending days walking miles in the treeless mountains, holding newborns and meeting with families suffering from the hurricane. I was back in the Grand Anse region, racing against sunlight, and shivering as the night wind slithered through the cracks in the walls.
We were back to continue with the housing project and our days were full of working out the plans for 34 houses. It was supposed to be a trip filled with progress and hope and preparation. And it was.

But underneath it all was a fresh, new kind of fear I had yet to feel before.

It was ironic really, having a heavily sought after politician arrested by the US government on the very same day I unknowingly decided to travel to his hometown.
His arrest lead to attacks and violence against Americans and other foreigners in the region. People barricaded the roads, we were stuck, and the information from the outside began to pour in.
“Stay in the house.”
“Don’t go out.”

“You have to find a way out of there.”
After a week of waiting for things to calm down, we started to hear the whispers and questioning of why our house hadn't been burnt down yet, and so we decided to go to the police to help us get out. After a long 12 hours of being passed off to different Haitian riot police and UN soldiers at every checkpoint, we finally made it to a neighboring city. The day after that, we arrived home and I fell upon my bed, wondering why God even let that happen at all.

Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. matthew 10:16

When something hard happens in your life, maybe even something terrible, the thing that everyone always tells you is to just trust God. And this is the understanding that God promises to protect you, that everything will be okay, that He will work everything out, and you don’t need to be afraid.

This was the way I have trusted God. In Romans, He promises to work everything for my good, and I have held on to those words for years and years.

But this year, these last few months even, I have learned something different about what it means to trust God. It was a hard truth to process through, a part in faith that I think we never seem to get to because it is the part in faith that seems like it is too far, too extreme.

I moved to Haiti twice. First, the thought to be permanent, and the second, the actual permanent. The first time I moved to Haiti- I moved to the unknown- where I knew no one at all, where no one spoke my language, and I was caged inside an orphanage with all of its abuse and neglect and suffering.
The second time I moved to Haiti was permanent in my own apartment- with no security, no high walls, no car, and little connections.
In both times, so many called me stupid and naive. Others called me brave. But looking back on those decisions four years later, I realize I was neither.

What I was, was scared. I was so scared to do this thing without so many people supporting me- to move in with strangers, to have to figure out how to survive, to have to take risks, and to feel like a child who doesn’t know how to function in a place so different.

I heard the stories, heard the voices telling me not to do this. Mine was one of them after all.

But this is what God was telling me to do, and so I trusted Him, and I went.

I wasn’t brave, there was something about the way I trusted God that somehow missed the mark of what bravery entailed.

Bravery: the admirable quality of being able to confront frightening things; the quality of having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty.

When I moved to Haiti, I trusted God to protect me, I believed in the cliché that the safest place for me to be is in the center of God’s will.

But back then, I forgot I was a sheep and that there were wolves. That sometimes sheep escape, and sometimes sheep just don’t.

It was as if I trusted God to keep me out of danger, that he would let no harm befall me, that because I trust Him, He would work everything out for my good.

But I think all of these years, I have misread that verse in Romans.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

It never says He will work everything out for my good in this short lifetime of mine. It’s as if now, when I read that verse, I get this feeling that this verse isn’t even talking about me. It’s talking about us, it’s talking about the whole world.

It wasn’t for Peter’s good to be crucified, wasn’t for Stephen’s good to be stoned to death. It wasn’t for Jesus’s good that he was pierced, and beaten, and hung like a butchered animal on the cross.
But it was for our good. Our good.

My trust in God was limited, and I was not brave. I wanted God to work things out always for my good, not for our good. Bravery, true bravery, is when you face and accept all of the possible dangers and frightening things and do it anyways. Bravery is being scared and doing it anyways- not because you believe that God will keep the terrible from happening, but because you know He will always do what is good for the world.

I looked at my watch. 8:50 pm. Jimmy was never late, and if he was, he always called to let me know. Five minutes later my phone rang.

“Hey, I’m coming…I had an accident.”
A police car pulled up to the house shortly after and my heart started to race at seeing the flashing lights.

I started to say his name and lost my words as I saw the blood covering his clothes and the cloth held to his face.

When we got to the hospital, a lump formed in my throat as he removed the cloth to reveal a deep hole dug in his face. That lump stayed for hours in the hospital, and then after as I washed the blood from his body and stains from his clothes. The lump stayed for days after, as I imagined and dreamed of him suddenly collapsing from an untreated head injury.

This was the fifth near-death experience in a single year for this boy of mine. Three accidents, an unfortunate incident of getting caught in a riot, and another of begin held at gunpoint by a couple of thieves. The fifth was suddenly too much.

For years I said that I would never marry. I had my excuses and I never committed, never allowed myself to love someone in that way.

Getting married used to be my biggest fear, and yet now I had a whole new one to work with.

Here I was, sitting outside the hospital, waiting for the doctor to stitch up this boy’s face, this boy that I never meant to love, to whom I would marry in a few months. And I was terrified, so terrified of losing the life I now valued over my own.

There was something about this moment that brought me back to when I was hiding in a house in the Grand Anse.

There is something about intense fear that brings us into a deeper commitment to Jesus.

In the past year, I have come from a trust in God that used to only think for my good, to a trust in God that chooses to continue finding my hope in Him even when He doesn’t answer in a way that is good for me.

Over the past year I have pleaded with God to save friendships that weren’t saved, asked God to end the suffering in the orphanages where I visit, and to protect families affected by the hurricane.

It’s a year later and those friendships ended, the suffering in those orphanages continue, and a little baby died from becoming sick from the living conditions after the hurricane.

God brought me safely out of the Grand Anse, and He has kept my fiancé safe and alive this year.

It’s hard to know why God chooses what He chooses, but He remains God and I remain not. If it was up to me, I would choose all that’s best for me, all that’s best for what my eyes can see for this period of time. I would always choose to remain close to my friends, for those orphanages to be shut down, for that little baby to live. But I am not God and cannot see. I cannot see that if by separating from my friends we will actually be able to lead healthier lives and do more for the world, I cannot see that if by those orphanages remaining open they might reveal a deeper, larger problem to prevent them, I cannot see what that baby might have had to live through if that’s what God chose.
I don’t think it’s ever God’s plan for friends not to reconcile, or for children to suffer, or for babies to die. But because of sin, He uses even the ugliest, hardest of things to do good for us. Us, us the world.

I have learned that trusting God is nothing less then ruthless belief. That when it’s dark and the light doesn’t appear, when it hurts and relief doesn’t come, when it fails and the reason isn’t there, love and faith grow even more.

Jesus begged God to not have to go to the cross, he cried out, asked God pleadingly why He had forsaken him. But Jesus remained obedient. Bloody, broken apart, humiliated, stripped off all that once was his, alone and separated from God.

That is ruthless belief, a kind of love and trust in God that can seem unbearable. It is a trust that rips you apart and breaks your heart. One that has us crawling on our knees just to get through it.

I was driving somewhere in Pennsylvania last month, thinking about all of these things when this cheesy Christian song came on the radio, literally just echoing the entirety of all that was in my head.

I know you’re able and I know you can

Save through the fire with your mighty hand

But even if you don't

My hope is you alone

I know the sorrow, and I know the hurt

Would all go away if You’d just say the word

But even if you don't

My hope is You alone.

I have cried these words a lot this year. I have cried these words too.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it is well with my soul.

This, this is ruthless belief. This is surely what it means to trust Jesus. Because my anxiety, my sorrow, my hurt, all that which I have gone through in the past few years, it all seems to come to these moments where my hands are up and my heart feels finished. Where I am crying from all the pain inside, asking God for the strength to sing it is well with me. That somehow when Jesus is walking beside us, even the pain and suffering which befalls us has us falling more deepy in love with the kind of God He is.

The kind of God I follow walks with me. He is the kind of God that longs to romance me and wrap me up in kindness and sweet things. He is the one who promises me to a land flowing with milk and honey. He is the God who wants nothing more then my love, the God who makes His home within me, who’s voice is in my mind, pleading me to choose the light and all that is good. He is the kind of God who died a horrible death. He is the kind of God worth following.

It is He who gives me strength to sing that it is well. It is He who I follow into the flame and sorrow. It is He who works all things for our good. It is He who gives me every reason to trust.

When Jimmy got down on one knee and asked me to marry him, it was one of my greatest fears coming to life.

Marriage. The commitment I never wanted to make. Fear after fear raced in my thoughts as Jimmy waited for my answer.
He asked me soon after we returned from the Grand Anse, in a grassy land in a voodoo influenced area where we work with five families.I couldn’t seem to look at him, instead I looked out at the vast valleys and rolling hills of Saut D’eau. And I felt God beside me, just loving me, his love overpowering me.

And then I said yes. Yes, in a tongue that is foreign from my own, in a place that used to feel so strange and different, to a man that used to be a stranger a few years ago.
The thing about perfect love is that it casts out fear, and I’m not talking about Jimmy’s love. Jimmy was just as scared of marriage as I was.
But God’s love is so perfect that it casts the fear out of our lives so that we can trust Him to do what He asks, to do good for the world and for each other.
Sometimes we are afraid to get married. Sometimes we fear for our life. Sometimes we fear for their life. Sometimes we fear the fire, and sometimes we fear the good and wonderful things.

But God is there, waiting for us to trust Him entirely, so that He can use our lives, whether in beauty or sorrow, to make all things good for the world.

And He will give us the strength that lies in the confines of our hearts to be brave, and to sing it is well, it is well with my soul.