Nothing 2 Bring

***This is a journal entry I wrote out the night I went back over the border from Haiti to the DR. Noah stayed back in Haiti so I was traveling by myself...

It's a good place to start,on the thoughts of my trip****

Sorry it has taken so long, but, well, I am exhausted. And life with the little ones and no daddy didn't slow down upon my arrival.

*******

August 11,2011

I'm sitting here in a beautiful hotel room by myself

and all I seem to notice is the too lush room with a too large bed and the cold breeze of air condition biting me.

And all I want to really do is cry.

Because at the end of the journey, I am here...

and only one page over in my journal (the last time I could find a moment to write)

I was writing of...

Sitting on a hot verandah where the breeze blows by just enough to keep you from crazy.

Anxiety and fear fill my heart.

I have brought a orphaned Haitian boy, whom I care for like a son, to a clinic in this mission to have an operation on his eyes, in hopes that he will see anew.

Only he won't get the kind of operation my youngest son received just a week prior.

No.

This boy's best was a long dusty road-13 hours to be exact-with no bathrooms and relentless potholes,rain,dust and unbearable discomfort and fear.

This was the road he traveled

to get to a small,stuffy room in a Haitian mission,

where all give their best,

but,still, the A/C goes in and out along with the power.

And I hold him while he waits in a room crammed with the elderly,

grandparents with dark, leathery skin, and stoic silence.

And then he bravely marches back,

a boy with no real home, who cannot see.

He marches back with people he's never met or seen,

to face the unknown with only the hope of sight to drive him forward.

He awakes in the arms of strangers, who hand him off to me,

thrashing wildly in fear and insanity from this thing called anesthesia.

He cannot be rationalized with.

This must make no sense at all in his world, now demented by drugs and new experience.

So he yells that I am not his mother anymore!!!

"You lied to me! You said I could see and I can't see!!!"

And he's wild with fear.

And I'm wild with fear and heartbreak.

And I know he's braver than I.

But I hold my fear inside and hold tight to him, who needs me strong now.

"Why are you holding me so tight?! I feel like I'm in jail. Let me go!!!"

"Stop hurting me!!! It hurts!!!"

It hurts.

All I can do is hold him.

A tight hold.

A grasping hold.

And I wonder if we're like this with God sometimes.

Not understanding parts of the process, raging at him that it doesn't makes sense

and "why don't you just let me go?!"

"Stop holding me so tight in this prison of love."

And so I hold him fierce and and try not to cry

until he simply ceases to fight and slumps heavy into my body

and all I can feel is the deep, heavy breathing.

The breathing of peaceful sleep that I had prayed would come soon for him.

They bring a stretcher in and we slowly slump down into a sleeping position,

a boy and a woman who loves him,

together,

one tired piece of human,

bonded together by fear and trust.

And only then do I let a few tears stream silently down.

Slowly he begins to drink, then eat.

And that night we sleep in a tent, on a rooftop, with little breeze,

and sweat beading up on his forehead in the hot Haitian night.

He sleeps in his underwear, with socks on his hands to protect his eyes from wild, irritated hands that want to explore agitated eyes.

His eyes are covered with plastic lenses, taped to his face, blood and sweat rimming the tape edges.

He wrestles through the night, crying out to touch his eyes, to rip the goggles from his hot face,

trying to ease the discomfort.

in our family tent.

On a rooftop.

Shared with many mosquitos.

I am so grateful for this opportunity for him.

truly.

I am so grateful for doctors who know what the "best" looks like but don't cease to practice under less than best conditions.

I praise God for doctors who weep over my child, though they have met him for only the first time.

Who pray prayers of hope over a boy who has had very few people hope for him.

Who know, like I do, that it's boys like him, who have struggled for everything that God uses to to radical things.

I thank them for being true heros

but also for seeing the hero in this young boy.

And being willing to do brave surgeries in a brave place for brave patients.

But with that said...

as a mom...

I also grieved,

crazy as it may sound.

Because I had hoped that he'd be covered in a Diego blanket,

snuggled under covers in my bed.

He'd be watching cartoons in the air conditioning, with an endless supply of chewable bubble- gum flavored tylenol,

a ceaseless flow of clean water and soap to protect him from infection.

But no.

Not at all.

And after it all.

Today, I left him, slumped and crying in a room alone,

back at the orphanage,

because I was leaving him again.

How can I leave this boy when I've brought so much into his life?

I have brought hope.

And I have brought love.

But with these things also comes loss

and pain.

And I feel that I have ushered these things into his life,also.

But I had to leave him.

And I hate that.

while I went back to the boys he calls brothers.

Without him.

Honestly, it just seems wrong.

How can two people laugh and cry and fear and hope for so much together-

and then just part ways to face the unknown,

seperate?

And he a child.

My prayer is this.

That God will use this pain, all of it, to shape him into the most remarkable man,

who will change his world for God's glory.

I told him once and I mean it.

"Great men are men who can do hard things and do them well."

He will have much practice by manhood.

Whatever role I play in his life,

I can only hope that ultimately it brings much more pleasure than pain.

More hope than hurt.

And that he will not be disappointed.

And I don't believe he will,

be disappointed,

because his God will show up in his life,

in His way.

Not mine.

And it will be perfect.