Good Morning Haiti… For some!
I awake my first morning, and head to the roof top for some quiet time, here is my setting. I get to wake up to beautiful mountains to my left a few miles away, the ocean to my right about a mile, palm trees everywhere. Its so beautiful. But then I hear it… The screams and gut curdling cries of a young child from my back side. I look but see nothing. I look a little more and a little boy about five or so comes running from the back door of a pinkish looking block home with his mother quick on his heels. She strikes him once, twice, three times… He falls to the ground, she hits him again, and again. He jumps up and she keeps swinging something at him hitting him time and time again. All I can hear are the screams and the cries. He finally out runs her and runs back in the house. The screaming stops. All I can think of is God help that child and heal her heart!
I awoke my second morning still in my hammock to almost the same scenario, but I couldn't see the child or where the screams were coming from. Others on the patio woke up as well, but none of us knew what was happening. Shortly after, the crying and screaming stopped. I laid there thinking about the first child and now a second. Is this going to happen everyday I wondered. Luckily it didn’t. Those were the only days thus far I have heard that. But I wonder, what could be so bad that someone could treat a defenseless beautiful child like that. All I can think, is that there must be a lot of deep inner hurt that has caused them to take their aggression out on them. Is this the cultural norm and how they discipline children here? Is it the effect that the earthquake has left and now this community in almost ruins affecting judgements? What ever it is, I guess I will never know. What I do know Is that I was not raised this way so to witness this was a huge shock to me. The more of the world I see, the more I walk the streets where Jesus did, the more I know that no matter our situation we need to rely on him more and more. Anyone of us could have been that child, or we could have been the shoe shine boy from last month. But God made me us who we are, gave us our families, our lives and made us everything we are today.
As I laid in my hammock I just prayed that the crying would stop. That whom ever was laying their hands on those children would realize the beautiful gift that God has given them. I know God has me here for a multitude of reasons. I am seeing these reasons day by day and week by week. What ever is suppose to happen will happen, and no matter what, we have to role with the punches and ask for help every step of the way.
