The other night my youngest crawled in bed with me. He had a
lot going on inside his little head. We all do right now.
“Mommy, I am sad to leave Haiti because I am really going to
miss my friends at school. I will miss Daly and Brownie too. I’m scared. What
if my friends don’t remember me when I come back? What if our dogs don’t
remember us?”
I say, “They will remember you. You are one hard boy to
forget!”
“But mommy, my friend Z didn’t remember me when I saw him at
the beach. I spent all of Kindergarten and some of first grade with him and he
didn’t even know me!”
I reminded Evan that Ethan didn’t remember most of his first
grade class when we went back to visit the U.S. sixteen months later. I reminded
him that a lot of people come to visit us in Haiti and we sometimes have a hard
time remembering their names too. This didn’t make reassurances any better. This
is the bittersweet reality that generally plays out when you live and have
friends all over the world. Having friends all over the world is awesome. Wondering
where you fit in when you re-enter your friend’s world can sometimes be sad and
scary. Your old spots have been taken and many things have changed. We want to
feel the welcome in “welcome home” but to be honest the home part seems really
awkward. We probably won’t feel “home”. The reality is that we will be living
out of suitcases for the next five months, away from our norm, away from our home.
We believe it will be good. But it will be weird. Our girls have spent very
little (as in only five weeks) to zero time in their entire lives away from our Haiti home. Our
boys don’t remember as much as one might expect them to and certainly aren’t up
to speed with all the changes that have happened since they left.
"Friendship is a place where we go to grow
where it is safe to sprout wings,
and shed old skins,
and try our voices
in new, uncertain notes."
People change. We spent a lot of time with my sister Erin
and her husband Jesse before we move to Haiti. There are many memories still fresh and frozen in our minds exactly as we left them. Auntie Erin and Uncle Jesse have moved twice and
have had a baby since then. Jesse also recently lost two of his fingers in an
accident at work so he is unable to do some of the things (like play guitar
with Evan) that the boys remember fondly. As much as we have talked about the
miracle of baby Hannah and that now we can help Auntie Erin and not just let
her cater to our every whim, it is hard to imagine things different than they
were before. I am thinking of many others whose families and lives have changed quite a bit as well. We tend to freeze frame the people and places that are super special to us at the time we leave them. I remind the boys
they also have added two sisters and that most of our friends and family have
never witnessed us in our dramatic life changes either. I think part of the
scary is the anticipation that we are coming “home” after waiting so long to do so with both of our girls. It
isn’t how we first imagined it and we don’t know exactly how it will be. But we know it
will be so great to all be together…finally!
Places change. The last time I was home with three of the kids
we traveled through several states. We got lost in DFW, Texas looking for the dentist that should
have been right where I left it when we moved from there eight years ago. It was. I
just didn’t recognize any of the roads. They had all changed so much! Elita
Marguerite remarked, “But mom, I thought you knew Texas!” I felt like saying, “Do you know
every road in Haiti???
Well, Haiti is just a speck
on the map compared to Texas!”
Our current little corner of the world is so…little. We are
used to little. We are certain to feel like specks in America, especially
since we plan to take the road trip a great deal farther this time around. We
are currently scheduling travels in not only the giant state of TX, but then
VA, IL, KY, FL, GA, TN, OH, NY, and Canada. The majority of us have been to
less than half or none of all these places. Think fish out of water. That will
be us.
"Friendship is a ship
where we may search together
the same horizons;
one seeing sky,
the other water,
where they meet."
Think about if you were to come to Haiti. Almost
everything looks and feels different. But it is pretty normal to us now. So you
may hear us ask silly things like all of the following that have actually been asked by us (so I'm suspecting it could happen again).
“Oh you are from Oregon?
(Long pause after a “yes” response.) What country is that?”, “Do you have a shower?”, “Is there hot water here?”, “Can I flush the toilet paper?”, “Is it ok to use the microwave?”, “Is it ok to use the hair dryer?”, “You know how to pump gas?”
We all might do things you might think are really weird or even
possibly rude.
For example, in America we always took our shoes
off inside our house and many friends houses. In Haiti we almost always leave our
shoes on inside the house. In America
we always flushed the toilet after use. In Haiti we only flush the toilet when
we can no longer stomach the smell. In Haiti kids are on the rougher side.
They have to be to survive. Our kids live around and go to school with rough
kids. Sometimes our kids are overly rough too. Haiti is really loud. So are we.
Our kids have been conditioned (against their parents will) to believe that in
the event we are blessed with electricity, video games and movies should be
taken advantage of during the entirely of this blessed time. Therefore they are
very much looking forward to 24/7 electricity. I greatly fear their minds have
concocted the notion that they will be electronically stimulated 24/7 when we
enter America
for the entirety of our stay. This is a completely normal notion and response
for a Haitian. Whenever the electricity comes on, everyone who was outside
sitting, selling or just yelling goes inside to watch television and movies and
do nothing else (other than maybe some ironing or hair straightening/curling
while watching television). I kid you not. Don’t think that because Haiti is poor
that almost everyone doesn’t own a television. They do. Or they are at their
neighbors watching.
Different sometimes scares us. I remember dealing with this
when Elita Marguerite arrived stateside and both girls asking questions when
they were alarmed at seeing their grandparents fenceless four acre yard on
Skype. Although you might not feel safe if you come to Haiti, our kids may not
feel safe at your house if you have neither a tall concrete wall with barbed
wire or broken bottles patrolling the top or a security guard with a machete
and gun (or at least a dog that growls and barks a lot like we do).
Our kids might refer to money as “one dollar Ameriken?,
Haitian dolla?, or gourde. They might be freezing in air conditioning in July
in Texas. Our
girls have little to zero experience with machines that do the work of people
for things like laundry or dishes. I’m sure that none of these things will be
an overly obvious big deal. But we will be adapting and processing them all,
just like you would be adapting to the cold water cup bath in December if you
came to Haiti
then. It’s still a shock to your system no matter how much you think you are
prepared for it. I’m imagining that we will all be in a similar state of shock
that will be prolonged by five months. Five months is about as long as it took
me to begin getting used to Haiti.
Though I think the U.S. and Canada will probably afford much softer blows,
it will be hard to adjust to each new place and then readjust to Haiti all over
again. Giant prayer request that we will all do well with this.
"Friendship is a place to hide in,
to abide in-
not to escape the world,
but to face it well."
I know we will be tired. Traveling is tiring. Plus we are
not used to leading the busy American life. We are busy in Haiti but it is
different. There is an end at the end of the day. We hardly ever go out at
night. We simply can’t do some things or get anything else accomplished due to
a blocked road, a closed shop, a limited supply of water or gasoline, a
political manifestation, and not having electricity to run anything. We don’t
have 10-10,000 options like 24 hour Wal-Mart. I can’t even think of a single
place in our town to go plug in my computer to charge. As I write this I have
traveled to the next town over and have plugged in at a beach resort (lucky me
to have such an excuse as consecutive days without electricity). While this is
super frustrating at times it is also very freeing. We sit and read nearly
every night with our family by flashlight or candles. We go to bed early. There
is nothing more we can do and little pressure to do the impossible that very
moment. I know we won’t have these “freedoms” in the states in the same way. A
lot of effort goes into “finding time”. We are already feeling this pressure
begin to creep in while just penciling out our tentative summer schedule. There
is the tendency to leave almost no margin. We know we are going to have to push
through to accomplish our goals and be able to come back to Haiti by
September. We believe it is ok to have seasons of push and pressure. We are looking forward to having a ton of fun too but the truth is,
when I look back at the intensely pressure yet productively filled seasons in
my life, those get-you-to-the-next-thing times, I don’t wish to come home to
them. I’m thankful for those times but more thankful that I survived them and
that they are over. I am trying really hard to be more excited about this trip
than that. I just don’t have much of a reference point (other than focusing on
the faces I desperately long to see again). So we shall see. The scary part for me stems from my warped childhood observances of many a missionary family that came to stay with our family. All I could see was that the parents looked incredibly exhausted. The mom's looked unraveled and homely. Their tyrant children were climbing the walls, breaking our toys, abusing our pets, and constantly asking if there was more food or turning their noses up at what was served. I remember staring at the floor and seeing the toenails of one missionary man. The few that remained were hideously long and so thick I gathered they refused to be cut. These are the memories that stuck in my head of missionary families. If there was anything I didn't want to be it was a missionary. My childhood perceptions of missionaries were critically warped and not based on anything they did on the mission field. I was only judging what I saw in my own home, in my own comfort zone, with no compassion to the fact that they were not in theirs. In hindsight I understand why parents were tired, children went crazy at our house that had five children, lots of toys, and was a place they could let loose after traveling for days, weeks, or months by the point they reached us.
And now I know this could easily be us.
Whether it is out of my own insecurities of what others might think due to potential weird and wild behavior by our tribe, or the simple desire to not turn others off to missions and therefore the Great Commission, I just really don't want that to be us. It is probably one of my worst fears because since childhood I have dreaded becoming "one of those". But here I am. Here we come. Heaven help us!
Change is hard anywhere. Whether we feel ready or not, we
are about to embrace it head on! We are way more excited than scared but please
bear with us in the process and love us even if we are really weird in all your
homes away from home. We are all most excited about seeing dear friends and
family…especially those who have helped keep us going through many
encouragements these past years as Haiti became our home. We are
excited to visit your homes and lives and learn from you. We hope to encourage
you too.
In all honesty, while Haiti is our current home, we don’t
always feel at home here either. Our family looks different than others. We act
different from our neighbors. Expats are spread out. Even those friends that we
relate to most we don’t get to see often if ever in Haiti. We are almost always odd man
out. The other day my daughter came home from school and said, “I don’t feel
like I belong anywhere anymore.” I told her I knew how she felt. She believed
me. We talked about how Jesus traveled around and how he didn’t feel welcome
when he visited his home town of Nazareth.
If the One who made the whole earth felt that way then we should expect to feel this way too. Our journey is not about us. It is about Him. Our ambition is
that we will bring honor and glory to our Savior wherever we are. Thank you for being part of our journey until the day we can say we are truly finally home..."for our citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20). We eagerly await being present with you all soon!
"Therefore we make it our aim,
whether present or absent,
to be well pleasing to Him."
2 Corinthians 5:9
*Quotes are taken from the book Friend Raising by Betty Barnett
