Debrief

I left my small-town, two-gate airport at night and came back at night so I wondered if it really happened or if it was a dream. Waiting at the luggage carousel, ankles itchy from mosquito bites, arms itchy from an old sunburn, the almost empty orange Rx bottle of antibiotic jammed in my pocket; all built a case against the dream theory.

The memories come in snippets, but began to settle into place today. I took my two youngest sisters to visit Grandma for lunch and go for a hike in the woods. First, though, we stopped at the cemetery a few miles from Grandma's. The headstone, recently placed, is regal, fitting, profound. Grandma did a good job designing it. It was cold, so, despite coats and hiking boots, we only stood there a minute. But it was long enough for me to remember the day. Especially the way my 6 inch wedges had pinched my toes. Especially, hopelessness. So much has happened since last July. I'm very thankful for the events of this past week...  

After teaching all afternoon, I was tired and thirsty. Simon* didn't know that, but he waved me into the garden—a grove of fruit trees that grow in the southeast corner of the Colegio Moriah compound. He deftly hacked away at a fresh-picked coconut with his machete, then set the hefty orb in my hands. I tipped my head back and slaked my thirst. Simon is a good man. He does not have a steady job because he's Haitian and the paperwork hasn't gone through. But he works hard, serves at Colegio Moriah in his spare time, and here and there God provides for his family.

Simon's son is 9 months old. He's a hunk—chubby thighs, chubby cheeks, a head of coarse brown curls. I held him for a few minutes during church, before swapping him for an infant with 6 fingers on each hand. Five minutes under a surgeon's care, a few stitches, and a post-op visit is all it would take. But I don't know when or if that will happen. Until it does, the extra appendages dangle uselessly, and I hope they don't get caught in something...damaged...infected.

Another toddler was asleep on the hard wooden pew in front of me. He was sweaty, and beautiful. His eyelids fluttered slightly as voices raised praise in Creole and bass pumped through the old amplifiers. It resonated in my thoracic cavity, echoing off my ribs and messing with my heart's rhythm. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. There is family. I like holding children.

*pseudonym

When we played basketball with middle-schoolers Saturday afternoon in 90* heat, there was a moment when the ball bounced off the backboard and we all reached to catch it. I looked up. The sun was in the corner of my eye, but there was the ball, and there were our outstretched arms: a gradient of color from 100% cocoa to translucent tupelo honey set against a backdrop of crystalline blue. We were all reaching for the same thing: unified. 

There were two things I was not expecting. Well, okay, three. I'll start with the latter: I was not expecting my mission to work. But it did. Despite my tiredness, despite my nerves, despite having to lie down between sessions because I can only take so much stimulation, it was a smashing success. Glory be to God. I taught all the students, and spoke in church four times. I'm glad I had a translator because the pauses gave me space to pray for help. 

Another thing I was not expecting was the paucity of English speakers. Joke's on me. Less than a handful of people I interacted with throughout the week could accommodate my ignorance and speak English to me. Maryah and Kristen were always saving me.

Finally, I was not expecting to find family. "I felt welcomed" is an understatement. "I've never been loved like that" is an overstatement, because I've been loved well my whole life. But you get the point. There is something unspeakably awesome about the gospel's ability to make anyone instant family. It's being touched and held by holiness in a rebellious world. I am in love with the church.

"As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight."

"Two are better than one...a threefold cord is not easily broken." I generally picture that as a husband-wife-child dynamic. But you know, it applies to sisters as well. Working alongside each other for a week in the Dominican changed our relationship. We left the petty grievances of childhood behind and were women together. Why do I pout about being a one-woman team? I have a team. They are my siblings.

I admire Maryah for her service at Colegio Moriah. "Teacher's assistant" may not sound super impressive, but it takes a hero. Those kids don't like to listen. Piecing together the stories of their home-lives rips up your heart. "Maybe that's why the kid doesn't listen." To top if off, there aren't even enough school supplies. The pages of the library books are limp with humidity. There is dirt. The classrooms are dark and stuffy to boot if they aren't on a corner, with multiple walls given to windows. The bathrooms are disgusting—over 400 kids, pre-school to 12th grade, sharing 6 toilets.

The environment is toxic. Until you build up immunity, even treated water makes you sick. Noise pollution keeps you up at night. Someone in the area thinks burning plastic is a good way to get rid of it. There is no public health system to keep the people in check. When Maryah was up half the night coughing, Kristen and I hung out with her under the mosquito netting. Girls talk about lots of things in the middle of the night.

The students, the school, are governed by heroes, but even heroes can only do so much when there isn't enough money.

 Maryah and Kristen rented an entire bus to carry us and a mixture of 20 students, teachers, and friends, to the coast. It takes money, so it doesn't happen a lot. Some of them couldn't swim, even though they are just a half-hour car trip to the water. We tried to teach them. Floating on my back still feels like a miraculous hilarity to me, so it is hard to teach.

All winter I have not let myself go running. I've been trying to give my joints a break, trying to let my body find some sort of equilibrium, trying to keep the stress induced by freezing air to a minimum. That Sunday afternoon, when I finally had a break, when we were all at the shore, I had to run. I had to let it out. With no explanation I took off, sprinting, stretching my stride as long as I could to shock my muscles out of hibernation. It felt so good. A few hundred meters out I slowed, filled my blood with fresh oxygen blown in off the sea.

I turned at the sound of laughter. They had followed: A dozen pairs of legs giving flight. Feet pounded out a beat on the quasi-cement formed at the water's edge. They were a blur of smiles and neon swimsuits. The girls' filmy cover-ups trailed behind. For an afternoon we lived a little like we will in heaven, when we've been freed once and for all from the cages that uniquely constrain each of us.

We had to run. It's what you do when you are happy.

The littlest children are almost always happy. They smile up at you, a mouthful of baby pearls. They are too little to know, but Colegio Moriah is saving their lives. With education, with childhood memories of being safe, fed, and loved at school if not at home, with seeds of the gospel planted in hearts that are fertile like the Caribbean soil, they have a chance at a life that is not a textbook case of evolutionary Darwinism drenched in sin. Survival won't be the plot line of their lives. They will be equipped to serve, to raise resilient children themselves. Equipped to pause and watch the sun rise, its new mercies glinting off palm fronds and corrugated steel roofs. They will taste and see that the Lord is good and be loved by Him. 

They will. If we help the children, they will.

 In high school I was stirred by Alan Paton's 1948 novel, Cry, The Beloved Country, which is themed around apartheid and redemption in South Africa. His book has perhaps subliminally directed my life. At the end of one chapter he wrote: "And money is not something to go mad about, and throw your hat into the air for. Money is for food and clothes and comfort, and a visit to the pictures. Money is to make happy the lives of children. Money is for security, and for dreams, and for hopes, and for purposes. Money is for buying the fruits of the earth, of the land where you were born."

Happy children grow into resilient adults. Make happy the life of a child by sponsoring a student at Colegio Moriah for just $25/month now (click here).