Sorrow

We are on our way again! We have arrived in Detroit, safe and sound, luggage safely stowed for the night, supper over, and in for a few hours of rest before the long day push tomorrow to move people and goods in to Haiti's desperate land. There is so much joy in this journey for us. We go to gather our children who have served tirelessly for three months. We go with a doctor, we go with experienced team members, we go with provisions, we go with love and much faith.  I have contemplated something deep and profound over the last few weeks. Our deepest joys are discovered at our moments of deepest sorrow. Joy and sorrow are inseparable companions. Link together, they take us on a life journey at once incredible and yet at moments incredibly disturbing. One wonders about this reality, scarred by evil and negligent choices, and yet rapture, inescapable and profound is all around us. We traveled quickly through the Michigan countryside today and the spring landscape was magnificent! Trees in bloom, green, green grass. As we raced along my emotions were firing, so many, so brilliantly, like fireworks of the soul. As we move toward this reunion with our kids though, something churns within me, happiness abounds on one hand and yet homecoming will bring it's own pain for them and us as well. New things have changed forever their young lives, they have been branded by poverty for they have lived among the least of these. They have seen the steady hands of people subdued by neglect, forsaken, and yet surviving. In this place among these people they have loved and sacrificed, and now they will pay the price for doing so. They will suffer loss, and desolation, they will feel the sting of sorrow, and their hearts will cry, torn between realities. I know this because of my own sorrows, because of my path, because I sensed it in Kelly's post last night.

And from this we run, don't we? Why sorrow, why pain? What is your answer. To addictions and affairs, to media, to all kinds of escapes we run. Often in panic. But wait a moment, what if we had this all wrong, what if sorrow was actually our friend, the friend who keeps it real, the friend who talks back to our insane ways, who rebukes our frivolous and ill spent time. The friend who is the only one who can introduce us to another remarkable friend, joy. And that friend, oh what stunning revelations that friend brings, such appreciation and wonder, and soul bliss. And so I am reminded tonight of these two companions of mine, we go to Haiti and both travel with us. I feel the presence of both tonight. I feel them often as I journey, for too long I have embraced the one while trying to bury the other. To somehow explain away it's purpose, like it has no place among us, but alas, there was a plan after all. The Divine Creator instituted a sense of loss within us lest we be forever lost to joy. I am beholden to my friend sorrow tonight, welcome you are at my door, for therein I discover the unending dimensions of another, for Joy comes with the morning, at breaking dawn sorrow steps aside for joys embrace. Pray for us this trip, for we will experience both in great measures. You cannot go to Haiti and not! That is what makes me proud of every team member who has ever gone with us, my family, and all who support us. To take this journey is to take a massive risk, and one from which when you return, you are forever changed! Pray for my kids, for this journey is not yet complete for them. We anticipate great joy in our reunion tomorrow evening, even now time slows it's margins, bends and warps with it's silly ways, and then we will rejoice! Perhaps this is not the most upbeat post I have written, and I have written a few, but it is real! So very real! My stomach is doing butterfly's, I tense like a cat about to spring, launch is upon us, and back to Haiti we go! Blessings to all tonight!