Where Darkness Can’t Destroy

  I was watching a movie with two of my close friends when I was to receive the worst news I have ever received in my life. That morning I had a Board meeting where we would be introducing our Haitian staff to our Board in the states. Anytime my world in Haiti gets to clash with my world in the States, I get incredibly excited and anxious, and needless to say, I was feeling both of those things by the time the meeting came around. I was both annoyed and confused because the time for the meeting arrived, and my brother-n-law, David, was late. Since everyone else was there, we went ahead with the meeting.

After a while, the meeting ended and I was so frustrated that David didn’t show up because he was our only full-time staff member, and the person that helped us think up Ansanm in the first place. 

Jimmy and I must have called him a dozen times that day, but his phone was off. This only made us more frustrated, because we had talked to him before about making sure that he charged his phone when the city power came on.

It eventually got dark and I was watching that movie with some friends when my husband, Jimmy, showed up and told us to turn off the TV. We thought he was joking around until he grabbed the remote and turned it off himself.

“David’s dead.” Jimmy said without looking at me. “Someone killed him.”

It was this abrupt kind of thing, from going from watching a Disney movie to that. I remember a few minutes of silence, of a numb, unfeeling kind of moment passing. And then all of a sudden, this rushing kind of reality pouring into my body, because then, right away, I knew it to be true.

Because David wouldn’t miss that meeting. 
  

That night was the worst night of my life. Ironically, it rained, and so on our 2 minute drive home, Jimmy and I wrecked the motorcycle in some mud. But without a word, we just got up and drove the rest of the way home. His siblings came over and spent the night with us, and we spent the night trying to decide if the phone call we just got was really true, or if there was a chance he wasn’t really gone.

The next day, Jimmy drove to where David had left for the weekend to attend a friend’s wedding. And when he finally came home, he began telling us the horrors that he learned. 

He found David’s body in a morgue, except his face was too disfigured to look much like him anymore. David’s landlord had found his body in the room he was renting. Someone had murdered him with a cement block and wire, and the details are too grotesque and brutal to fully explain. 

A lot of missionaries go to live overseas, but never end up making a home for themselves there, and this is a pretty big reason why many people are unable to stay for a long time. 

Before I moved to Haiti, I had sat down and talked with a few friends who lived overseas, and they had given me a piece of advice: That when I move to Haiti, I needed to make a home, and not a “mission field”. And so I have tried really hard to make Haiti my home. And I can honestly say that it is my home now.

But when a place becomes your home, things get a lot more personal. A lot more.

When I first moved to Haiti, I could talk about the injustice I witnessed, the poverty that I came across, the difficulties of living in a developing nation. I tried to encourage others while they were facing certain situations, but if I was being real with myself, I had no idea what it felt like to be them. 

           But things are different now.

This is year 5 for me. I am a different kind of missionary now, and if I’m being honest, I’m a different kind of Courtney now too- a Courtney that has been torn up by injustice, and has been worn down by trauma. A Courtney that doesn’t need to simply talk about what she has seen, but someone who now talks about what has happened to her and the ones that she loves.

I haven’t been able to write a blog post for over a year. I have tried four times, and after finishing each one, I have ripped up my words and have throw them away in tears, every time, like I was in some movie scene or something.
For me, my blogs aren’t some kind of newsletter or a way of sending out an update. When I write on here, it’s like an outpouring of my heart onto paper and screen, where I try to be as honest and vulnerable as possible. I have always found that in being vulnerable, we create space for things like inspiration, and healing, and a way for others to relate and find strength and hope in their own lives.
But sometimes being vulnerable just hurts too much, and pouring out your heart suddenly feels like you are crossing a line that causes too much pain. And so I couldn’t write for a long time.

           I used to think I understood injustice, that I knew about grief and fear. After all, I had lost loved ones before coming here, I had been hurt by other people, I had experienced fear before.
But I didn’t truly understand what those things were or the depth of what they could feel like until I came to Haiti, and made Haiti my home.

When we think 
of home, we
usually think of 
the place 
where we feel
most loved and
comfortable, 
where we have 
wonderful 
memories 
to cherish. 
But I think
home is also 
where we grow 
up and where we 
learn…a lot. 
Home is where 
we have gotten 
hurt, have had 
some fights, 
and where there 
is always a lot 
of mess 
and a lot 
of issues too.

I love Haiti. Haiti has given me my husband-the most wonderful and important person in my life. I have fallen in love here and gotten married, I have learned to love deep here, and have experienced so much about hospitality from my friends. I cried with my sister-n-law after she gave birth to my perfect niece. I have celebrated every kind of holiday here, worship in church here, and I take my dogs on long walks in my neighborhood. 

           Haiti is beautiful, with sparkling, clear sea water, with towering mountains that take your breath away. Haiti is a rush of culture and beauty. Haitian food tastes like home, listening to Creole sounds like home, everything wonderful about this country now screams home inside of me.

But it still gets dark even when you’re home.

When I got married to my husband, I also gained a huge, wonderful, Haitian family. I suddenly had numerous cousins and siblings, countless aunts and uncles to make me laugh, and a doting mother-n-law. 

Jimmy’s best friend, and closest brother, was David. He stood by Jimmy as his best man at our wedding. He was a flirt with my friends, and the oldest sibling who found a way to help each and every one of his 10 brothers and sisters go farther in life. He was the one always giving everyone advice, the one who had a million projects going on so he was never home. He helped us dream up Ansanm, and he was at our house six days out of seven. 

He was really annoying when he played games because he was so competitive, and he was the only Haitian I have ever met who liked his eggs sunny-side up.
David was the one we would have chosen to be godfather to our future kids. He was the one we would have chosen to direct Ansanm while we were away.
But then we lost him, and I began to experience injustice and grief like I never had.

When they found David’s body, they also found the murder weapon, and other evidence in the room which would have made it the most simple thing in the world to catch his killer and find justice if we were in the States. But this was Haiti, so nothing like that happened.
There was no trial, no investigation. Some uneducated policemen in that office gave back crucial evidence to the suspect’s family even though that wasn’t supposed to happen, and instead of arresting the other suspects in that same house, they didn’t, and when they returned to the house, they had already grabbed what they could and ran into the mountains. They ended up arresting someone, only because Jimmy did his own investigation, but that was it, and nothing ever happened with that. All leads pointed to this exact person who was arrested, and yet nothing happened. Nothing at all.
This month marks one year since David was murdered, and we never got close to getting justice for him.
This time last year, David had left a wedding with around $300 on him and his phone, and that was enough to make someone want to murder him.

I have experienced so many things that have grieved my heart. I have sat with my friends for months trying to receive medical care, I have had friends flee to my house under gunfire, have been stolen from, have lost neighbors to failed abortions and have seen other neighbors mourning their poisoned dog after being robbed. I have lost count of the dead bodies I have had to pass by in the street and the horrid untreated diseases of the living. I have been scared my husband won’t come home so many times, and we have had to make decisions that I would have never had to make in the U.S. I have mourned over children that I deeply love who have been sold to other people and have been trafficked. Home is hard, and having Haiti become my home has been harder, because now it’s me who hurts and grieves and feels the sting of injustice.
But all of this has made me remember something Jesus said.


“If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
John 14:23

When Jesus came, he came in the flesh. He became a man, and became like us. He didn’t come to his “mission field”. He came to make His home with us.

Jesus isn’t some faraway God, but a God who knows pain and suffering. One who sobbed over his friend’s body, who knows what it’s like to bleed, one who has been spat at and cursed out with words that slice you open like razors. He was betrayed by his close friend, was lied to, was used for other people’s gain. He’s a God that knows plenty about pain, plenty about grief, plenty about murder.
He came into this world holy, pure, and unstained. And he left this world with holes in his hands, a crown made out of thorns, and a body that was tossed into a tomb. And yet he still left this world holy, and pure, and unstained. He was murdered by us, tortured by us, hurt in every way possible by us. And yet, he still chose to die for us. And yet, he still wants to make his home with us.

My heart can feel like a pretty ugly and dark place sometimes. And yet despite that, God still wants to make it his home. 

I am walking out of a year of gore, and hurt, disappointment, and grief. I’m walking out with some scars. But I’m walking out of a year where I am that much more thankful for the kind of God I serve. 

2018 was dressed in wilderness, and I wouldn’t ever choose to go back there. But Jesus? He chose to walk into the wilderness. He had the choice and went.
But every moment I spent in the wilderness, God was right there, near me! He was there, just like he was with Israel in the cloud, telling me, “I love you. I love you.”
“I love you.”

Every time I broke down, he told me “I love you."
Every time my body trembled with fear, he said, “Here I am, I love you.”
Every time grief and sorrow overwhelmed me, he said, “I know how this hurts, I hurt like that too because I love you.”
It surprised me, because even in the wilderness, I was ready to hear him say that. And it surprised me to realize that my heart believed him every time he told me he loved me, even after all that he allowed me to lose.
And it was because of our home, because true love lives at home. And real, true love is something that can be trusted.

Home is this place where it can get really dark at night, and yet you always have the best night’s sleep. When you’re home, you feel safe, and loved, and okay.

And God makes His home with us, and He made his home with me. And He makes me know how loved I am even when the world does not.
He knows all of our pain, because He lived it in the flesh. He lived and hurt and wept and broke. He lived. And He lives.
He lives in us and creates this beautiful home with us, and even when it’s night all around you, and it’s dark and terrifying, and just really rough, He reminds us of His cross, and of His love.
And that’s how I can believe everything He tells me.

I really loved David, and I really miss him. We all do. It’s been an impossible kind of reality-this losing him. But if losing David has taught me anything, it’s taught me a lot about love.
Jimmy taught me about love when he bought food for the person who most likely killed his brother, so that they wouldn’t go hungry during the first week they spent in jail.
A little girl in our program named Widline taught me about love as she wept over David, her teacher. She clung to me at his funeral, and I’ll never forget how unashamed she was to openly love someone by mourning for them.
God taught me a lot about love, about the way he shared in my grief, in the way He provided for us, in the way He protected us and surrounded us with people we needed.
And now, I want to take all that I have learned about love, and act. I want to love openly and unashamed like Widline, love radically and big like my husband, and be someone who shares and protects and helps to provide for those who need it, just like God always does for me.

  In 1 John, John says, "We love because he first loved us."
And so here it is. A family in our program desperately needs a home. Their current house is a tent that gets flooded every time it rains. It's unsafe, it's scary, it's hard.
This beautiful mom’s name is  Forestal, and she has four sweet children. Right now we are sponsoring her kids to attend school, and this past weekend she attended a training to receive a loan to start up a small business. We will be helping out with food costs while she gets her business to a good place. But they need a home, a place to feel safe and protected, and get a good night's sleep, where they don't have to fear the rain..
The total cost we need to raise to build her a house is $3500. So, we need to purchase 350 blocks. Would you consider purchasing a block for $10 each? The house we are hoping to build for their family is pictured below!

Here is the link to donate, and please designate the donation for Blocks or House.

https://ansanmhaiti.org/take-action


Sending much love to everyone reading this post, I pray that all of you have found your home, your real home, where no reaches of darkness can destroy.