Day By Day

 I'm taking the transition day by day...I don't know if I've made any more progress than the day I got home. It doesn't feel like it. I don't want to feel like my life here in the States is worthless; but I've proven to myself and others that it IS still necessary to make a few changes. For myself. For God. For the people in Haiti. I still find it weird to drive...and I've also found myself "swerving" a little more? I really can't explain that! But opening the fridge or the freezer is weird, too. I think I've lost my appetite because I can't handle all the choices. My third day back at work was good. No one around me knows the turbulence occurring in my heart! When I work with my babies I keep thinking of my OTHER babies back in Haiti. When I'm frustrated with babies who won't stop crying and I know they've had a bottle, a diaper change, and a nap; I can't help but think "Don't you know there are thousands of dying babies in Haiti who are NOT crying even though they have nothing?! They've been sitting in the same diapers filled with waste for who knows how long; they are trying to sleep in 100 degree plus weather, etc., etc........."

I find myself trying to love more and more, more than I ever have before, despite any differences. In Haiti, I found that love is ALL that matters...The situation that keeps coming back to me is still the one with Edwens. I can't get the barrier of love and hate out of my mind. I hate myself some days for allowing this situation to take such a stronghold.

"I have found the paradox that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."-Mother Teresa

I don't think I've ever had such a lesson smack me in the face like this one did; only I'm really realizing the consequences now that I'm home. Usually I'm not a live-in-the-moment kind of person, but this ordeal caused me to focus on nothing but! LOVE. One word, so many connotations, implications, but action....action. Love is an action. You can try to look for love and lessons from God in the every day things....the common things. You can look at the children in Haiti and think "Hey, those are like the kids I saw on that TV where they ask you to donate money...." but you GET there and it's a reality. You have to try to find love where it hurts the most---where it's NOT happening. You have to try to learn the hardest lessons in places where you didn't think lessons could be learned. Only then will you have worked so hard, pushed hard enough, to find release.

Our last morning in Haiti, we traveled back to Grace Village and attended the church service. OH MI GOOOSH as the Haitians would say...INCREDIBLE. So passionate. So moving! So emotional. Despite the fact that I was cradling a girl who had fallen asleep in my arms and was sweating bucketfuls, it didn't matter. I don't remember the last time I went to a church service and felt at home...felt...connected. The gates flooded open that morning. I was chosen for that service. I was flooded with grace and mercy. I don't know why Betline chose me to hold her. I don't know why I was welcomed, just one of many. I don't know why. I may never know why. I don't know why God chose ME. But I do know that God is sovereign and that to every situation in life, we are called to say, "Yes, Lord." We have a choice each time we stumble across hardships. What seemed like hardships before NOW are pebbles. The gates have been opened and I can travel farther than I ever have allowed myself to, without FEAR.