Enthralled

Morning has come! We are all more rested this morning. The generator quit at about 4:38 am and the house went quiet, the air went still, and the heat wrapped me like a way too warm electric blanket. In the stillness I heard some rustling, and team captain Rob was up and putting gas in the tank, in a few moments, the generator purred to life, and the fans took off, and in the drone I drifted back to sleep for a bit. By the time we got downstairs house cleaning was fully underway. Each person here at the mission house seems to have a designated task. And they work so hard. I watched as one of the young girls collected a chair, and reached high above a doorway, felt around and came down with a bag of soap, she used a left over piece of plastic from a cornbread muffin bag from our flight into Haiti to put a few finger pinches onto it, and then to go and mix somewhere for some sort of cleaning. Did I mention nothing is wasted here. (I caught them going through our trash last night, recycle here means something different than in our country.) I know it’s a tiny detail, and obscure to most, but I marvel and am enthralled at the difficulties  that these people are subject to and take on with such a graceful ease in their existence. It makes we wonder how I ever get off griping and complaining about anything in my life. I type away on a speedy Macbook Air, hooked up to a battery powered internet router, while people around me scrub clothes, and floors and pans with their bare hands because they have no washing machines, dish washers, or clothes dryers. Strip away technology and life is quickly reduced to something radically different. My trips into Haiti are a safe guard against the callouses that are our culture. We get demanding about what is right and fair, and to a point, there is nothing wrong with that. Here though, you can make your demands, but they fall on deaf ears. A rigid, and course, and cruel climate scoff at you, its derisive face contorts and the Caribbean Island that at one point perhaps glowed with such promise, has become a tomb for the dreams of many. As we drive and walk the streets, I allow the pain of these people to tear at my heart, to rip at the callouses, to bare the raw flesh of my existence. To truly empathize there is nothing like getting in another person’s shoes, but be prepared, they don’t come close to fitting, and these that I wear now feel like wooden clogs to my being. Clumsy, uncomfortable, heavy, and very, very rigid. Already the pain is doing it’s healing, the exposure is purging, the antiseptic of denial while burning, also sterilizes the wounds the pulled callouses leave behind. It’s time to grab a paint brush and improve the wall color, the orphans are loving their new arrangements here. I think they feel safer, and the space is much more functional for everyone. The facility handles people well, we feel blessed to have located such a place for the dollars we had to invest. The air flow is fantastic upstairs and downstairs, it keeps the house so much more functional as a dwelling. So I leave you again for now, be blessed this incredible day!