Keeping On

And we are off! Mom and I have been planning a spring trip tentatively for a few months, not quite sure what that would look like. For years, our family was taking two trips in every year, once in the spring and once in the fall. We hit a burn out period in all varieties of the term and had to make it important that we were getting away and recovering so that we could continue to give both in ministry at home and in Haiti. For the past 4 years God has provided Mom and I with the opportunity to go for a spring trip based around outreach at the orphanage. As I have stated in many blogs before this, the orphanage is where my heart is. I was going to Haiti a few years before the orphanage opened but always searching for my niche. It became very obvious as soon as those first couple of precious kids became ours. Anyways, we have been planning a trip but due to unforeseen medical issues, we were unable to go at the time we thought was going to work out. At the last minute, we checked tickets for a week out and low and behold, God turned what we thought was a red light into a very definite green light! Our household has been a flurry of activity but God has had His hand on every aspect of it. It helps that we are all becoming old pros at this. We left the house at 3:30am with 4 suitcases, 2 carry-ons and 2 backpacks. It has all come together so beautifully but that has only added to the feelings of the whole thing being very surreal. Even as we were hugging our guys goodbye and lining up in the security check line with sleep still blurring the edges of my eyes and mind, it felt like a faraway dream. Don’t worry, God decided to shake things up a bit! He seems to do that on these trips just to keep us on our toes and thankfully I have learned to laugh along with Him... most of the time!

Everything went smoothly for myself going through security. I used to completely stress out when I was a bit younger, always scrambling to remember everything. ‘Take off shoes, take off jacket, liquids in separate container, computer in separate container, do I put my boarding pass back in my bag or carry it with me? What about my passport? Better carry it with me... but dang it... it has a paper clip. Will a paper clip make the scanner go off?’ And then I accidentally but quite dramatically drop my backpack with 6 books in it across the floor or something equally as appalling in my mind. And still manage to get pulled from the security line for my enormous hair to be patted down... like I could be hiding something in there! That was a two second window into the thought patterns of Krystle’s brain by the way. All of that to say, security checks are pretty simple for me nowadays. I have a system and it works well. Today was nothing different. Mom however, had a completely different experience at 4:30 this morning. I won’t go into great detail since she is still not far enough removed from the situation to laugh as much as I did. They pulled her bag to search for something suspicious and found ‘airport contraband’ within. You would think it would have been simple from there to simply throw it away and move on, but no. They proceeded to empty every single item from her superbly packed suitcase so they could swab the whole thing down. It took them 30 minutes to do the whole bag and search her person again. She was not a very happy camper but it didn’t keep her down for long. It only got better when 5 minutes before boarding she realized they had forgotten a whole bin of her things back at the security area... Goodness gracious!
The final report is that we have managed to obtain and keep all of our possessions... except for the one item of contraband that must not be named. (Just a hint, she will probably tell you if you ask her when we get home.). After all this craziness, I had also managed to take one of the guys phones and make it all the way through security and practically onto the plane before we all realized it. Thankfully, the very sweet lady at the cafe offered to run it back down to the front. We were just on a roll this morning. Like a mudslide down a mountain, apparently! Ha! All of this just reminded me of why I’m doing this though. So many times people assume I do it simply because I think it is fun, an adventure in life that earns another stamp in my passport. In all actuality, it isn’t easy for me at all. I constantly feel like I am being pulled in two directions and never completely content in either. Wanting both but only able to have one at a time. Why God has my heart in that place right now,

I do not know. But I DO know that He has a reason and that He has me right where he wants me. This constant need to keep moving, to keep helping, to keep searching, to keep growing and to just keep ‘keeping on’ drives me on past where my comfort zone long ago stopped. I doubt myself all the time. I question God as to His reasons. And sometimes, like today, He tells me to just stop thinking so much. I am learning to find contentment where I am at in the moment and letting God figure out what that looks like for my future. Right now, I am filled with gratitude that He has allowed this to be a part of my life. This country, this ministry, these people who have long ago become my family. Let’s see what adventures He leads us through this week!

P.S. I started this blog while in the airport on one of our layovers... The rest of the trip went just as planned if not better. No troubles getting through the airport with our bags, as Rob and Ronald were there to be our escorts. The drive to St. Marc was about two hours and it was dark half way through the trip but just allowed us to see the country in all of its Caribbean glory as the sun was setting. It reminds me of the island from the book (or movie) “Life of Pi”... for all appearances, it is a beautiful island but if you stay it will eventually wear you down and eat away at you until there is nothing left. That is what these people live with. From faraway you see beauty but it is actually only a thinly veiled disguise for desolation, poverty and pain. All thoughts along those lines were washed from my mind as we walked into the orphanage and we were greeted by a small, delighted hoard of smiling, screaming children. What a homecoming it was! That is as much as you get for tonight though because selfishly, I am too tired to continue! Off to bed we go and I will write more tomorrow. Blessings!