August 8th, 2014
You say I am a great gift, chosen and commissioned by You to give up my life in love. My life’s purpose is to reveal Your heart, the One who dwells within me.
Day one of sickness. I lay in a pool of sweat on my bed. I am grateful to have a bed and a building to lie inside after seeing the shacks held up by sticks on the drive in our first night. I know you have called me to this country that is arguably the poorest in the world. How is it that I can share Your heart unless they know for at least a moment that I can in some way relate to them? At the end of the day I realize that I am still blessed materially far more than many of these will ever see.
In the room I was placed in were two other Haitians, and one of their feet were about an arm’s length from my head. We were packed in a room in the shape of a ‘U’. I lay in the bed humbled and prayed that the Holy Spirit would speak to them somehow. One of the individuals was an elderly woman who at one point had to get out of her bed to go pee with an I.V. in her arm, which meant she went in a tub beside my bed. A small child was then brought into the room where I listened to her cry, “Why mommy? Why?” as she received a shot. I also heard the chuckles of the other staff in the room as the third Haitian began to snore.
To paint a picture, I lay in a hospital bed today on sheets that were clearly used by someone. The stains of someone else’s drops of blood were proof. The door to the room was open and there was a real tree in the lobby maybe ten feet away. The lobby had an open, barred roof, which meant that the flies or any other bugs were free to come and hang out with me in my bed. I cling to your words Lord that you did not bring me here to be given over to death. My I.V. was painful and by far the worst I ever had. Something was not right because my blood was coming out all over my arm. It was then I realized they do not have the privilege of having a highly trained, tested, and licensed physician on staff. Pain developed quickly in the bend of my arm and got progressively worse. Not only did the needle seem to be in my arm incorrectly, it was left there for three hours as I waited for my test results.
A thought came to mind: “Feel their pain and just be in this hot room with them.” Then I began to think: How could Jesus feel my pain physically, spiritually, or mentally? How could He feel their pain, and how could He relate and feel the pain of every hurting soul in the world? God chose to send His only Son to die on the cross to bear our sins, our hurts, our pains. Jesus knew the comforts of Home in Heaven, but He chose to leave it all as He was sent by God the Father. Jesus humbled Himself so that you and I could know the Father and walk in a relationship with Him.
…So how can I truly have compassion for Haiti, for every man, woman, and child except I die to myself, pick up my cross and follow you Jesus. If I only came to Haiti to be miserable, to spend my time looking forward to the next country, and to say, “I will never come back,” it would be as if I forgot about these people. For me to tell myself, “it was not real,” would be to go on through life selfishly as though I never came to Haiti at all. God please help me! I do not know that God is calling me to come back here, but I know He is not calling me to forget these people. I praise God that Jesus did not get back to Heaven from Earth and say “I am never going back there again.” In fact God tells us in His word that Jesus is waiting for the command to go gather His people, where He will return in glory, fulfilling our hope of an eternal future with Christ Jesus in Heaven.
