Happy New Year, Everyone!
As a new year approaches, I am going to try to blog more frequently instead of putting it off for weeks on end out of fear of being harshly critiqued and judged on what I write. There. I said it. And as my pastor says (or along the lines of), It’s best to let many people know what you’re struggling with/giving up/wanting to work on the better yourself and your habits because it holds you more accountable by doing such. So here I am, letting all of you hold me accountable for blogging more. Enjoy!
The week before Christmas, I had the opportunity to hop on a plane and head back to Haiti for eight days, just like I had done the year before. Joyous was an understatement as I was impatiently awaiting getting back to the same familiar village, the same familiar compound I would be staying in, and mostly to get back to the same familiar faces I fell in love and formed relationships with just 23 miles east of Port-au-Prince. As I was boarding the first plane from my hometown, I continued to pray that God would show my purpose to me while on this trip and that He would let me resonate with His grace and kindness for His people.
Our team had a good game plan: the majority of us would wake up early every morning and start building a house for a man and his family living in the village, while six of us women would teach a Bible study on abstinence and Godly relationships for a group of seventh grade girls. We would all meet back up at the compound for lunch and then head on out again, the builders going to their job site and the Bible study group going to the orphanage and head to VBS when it started a couple hours later. But of course Haiti runs on her own time unlike strict American time. So when the girls didn’t show up to bible study and the children in the orphanage were never there because they were still at school, I started to become internally frustrated with why I was there in the first place. God, I don’t feel like I’m doing much just by jumping around and singing Christmas songs and “Every Move I Make” over and over again at VBS. Show me my purpose and how I can make a difference. Show me how to be more like You. Sitting on my bottom bunk a couple nights after arriving, I got my answer I had been seeking.
Before I left for Haiti, I read Bob Goff’s Love Does, which helps to give the reader a better understanding of loving in such a manner as Christ displays His love for us. He gives us examples of how people say yes to loving others boldly, how to never give up on loving people so authentically, and the way that living out love shapes everything else we do in our lives. He states, “But the kind of love that God created and demonstrated is a costly one because it involves sacrifice and presence. […] It’s a brand of love that doesn’t just think about good things, or agree with them, or talk about them…Love does.” Did I feel convicted when I remembered these things! You see, the first few days in Haiti, not even to mention the past few months in America, I had been more absorbed in what love says and saying how much I love them that I failed to actually follow through with living out this kind of love. Jesus never said that He loved us so much that He would die for us, but only figuratively because it’s the thought that counts right? No. He wasn’t the talk-the-talk kind of guy. If someone needed Him, He was there regardless of the severity of the sacrifice. And when we needed Him the most, He laid down His life for us so that maybe we can learn to love Him by doing just as He did for us and follow Him no matter the cost. If Jesus could make the ultimate sacrifice out of pure love, I could learn how to make time and go out of my way for others also.
And that’s just what I did. The remainder of my days in Haiti became a big adventure I chose to say yes to every morning I awoke. I learned how to clean clothes from a water bucket and how to pump water from a well to give a woman a break from pumping it herself (and so we could laugh at how exhausted I quickly became!). I learned that love is sometimes going into the village and letting the children proudly show us their houses, families, and livestock and sometimes love was spinning laughing children around repeatedly as you try to fight the soreness in your arms. Love meant sharing a difficult testimony I had built walls around in hopes that it would show our seventh grade girls that their worth and identity will always be found in Christ and not in the situations you find yourself in. Love was acting silly with 80 children at VBS as I danced and sung as loud as I could because laughter translates perfectly in every language and nothing is sweeter than a child’s laugh. Actions speak louder than words, and living out love is much more rewarding than what love could say instead.
As I realized the difference between love says and what love does, I became aware of my change in attitude. Maybe my purpose for this trip was not necessarily to change the people in this village but to allow this entire village- 23 miles east of Port-au-Prince- to change me instead. And as this new year approaches and the first day is almost through, I am going to strive to make a conscious daily decision to live out love. It may be hard, but it’ll be worth it.
What’s your new year resolution?
