Torn

I come from my bedroom after talking to Pastor Nahum and I’m shocked all over again at the ridiculous gap between my world and theirs.  He didn't tell me anything I didn't already know but still I’m shaken—dazed.  Why does it have to hit me fresh over and over?  Is this God’s way of preventing me from growing desensitized to the suffering of our Haitian sisters and brothers?  I'm torn as I stare out the window above my kitchen sink trying to make sense of it all.  My back is facing my husband but I don’t know he’s there until I hear his voice gently ask, “Are you okay sweetheart?”

I’m not okay and I’m too weak to act stoic.  As the trees in my backyard blur through the tears, I don't realize how hungry I am to hear his voice inviting me to empty out.  I’m thankful because he’s faithful—always walking with me even in the hard places.  God’s gifts—so many, so wonderful…His wisdom—so perfect, so mysterious…and here we are two separate bodies made as one and it’s perfect like this.  He’s my God-gift, my safe place.  There’s so much inside but at first I only manage to answer short, in a whisper, “It’s Haiti.”   

But then I turn, we lock eyes.  The way he sits there with all of that understanding and compassion on his face—it draws out the unedited version of my thoughts and I’m getting good at talking and crying in unison.  The deeper parts of my heart come pouring out real and raw and I feel a bit wild.  In this moment I forget the proper rules of using a church-girl filter.    

Hurricane Sandy wasn't so nice to Haiti.  Flood waters swept through overwhelming an already devastated people.  

I know the mud hut our twin girls were born in doesn't do well in the rain.  I’d like to deny lots of things about Haiti including the horrific conditions our twin’s father and 3 brothers live in but somehow I forced myself to ask Pastor Nahum how Leon and the boys were doing after Sandy passed.  He said he took them some money, said their roof was seriously leaking so he gave him a tarp.  Then he said they were good—they are fine.   

That’s when I lost it.  I got upset because who is really "fine" living under a tarp in the grossest of conditions?  I look Trey in the eyes and I don’t like the person I am in this moment.  In this instant my whole life feels like hard faith, 36 feels old, and I’m tired.  I should have swallowed down these hard things and looked away but the heart is beating untamed.  I take a deep exasperated breath and I ask the question out loud.  

“How can I live here and love them there?”

It tears me.  It seems sick and wrong to carry on with my first world life after my soul has been touched by the soft voices and dark eyes of 3^rd world children.

  

I take hot showers with running water whenever I want in my home under a roof that doesn't leak, variety of foods fill my pantry and refrigerator.  I get in a car and drive to the store, to visit friends, and to church whenever I please.  Our church buildings are beautiful and filled with pretty people.  I have clothes and shoes I don’t wear because they’re not so trendy anymore so I drop them off at Goodwill and assume I "need" a few new outfits.  In 2 days I’ll spend money to get my hair cut and colored.  I drink a fancy coffee that would cost a daddy a whole week worth of working the fields in the hot sun and here’s the twisted irony of it all—I’m usually talking with a friend about the needs of these daddies in Haiti as I drink it down.  Even now I’m fighting the urge to upgrade to the iPhone 5 even though there’s nothing wrong with my iPhone 4S.    

The last thing I need is consolation and justification from a bunch of 1^st world Americans just like me telling me I shouldn't feel guilty about the things I have and the life I live.  And maybe they would be right—I sort of want them to be right.  But I can't shake the enormous gaping disparity between my life and theirs and I feel like I might throw up.  I feel their little dirty hands reaching for mine, holding on tight, pulling me to join their bare world of play...somehow smiling through the hurt.  I feel the heat bearing down as I sit with a mama sorting beans to feed her 7 children and I know there's not enough.  I feel them fully exposing all of their hearts to love me deeply and the way they offer me literally all they have when I'm with them cuts a pain straight through me and so to live here and love them there tears me.  And when I say I'm torn I'm using the most extreme definition of the word.  Totally torn.  I just want to figure it out—how does a girl live here in all this luxury and still love them without the guilt.  And then there's our children...we didn't adopt our Haitian twin daughters to rescue them from the disease of poverty only to infect them with the disease of greed.   

The more I pour out ugly in the middle of our kitchen the more Trey's quiet gentleness touches me with his unconditional love—he tells me the day is coming when it will all be made right.  He’s my hero like that and I know I’m not alone in this.  

Still I have questions.    

How are we carrying our crosses? 

Did we take a wrong turn?  Maybe we weren't supposed to give the poor so much of our hearts or maybe we should have kept it more business like instead of relational…you know, because maybe then we could enjoy our excess without constantly thinking of their deficiency.  How repulsive is that?  How selfish?  It’s not pretty.

Deep down I may not be able to find blazing clarity but I know one thing.  I want Jesus and it’s in this place, where it seems all wrong in the flesh, where I'm torn, that He’s holding my soul and carefully shaping all my brokenness into a love that looks more like Him.  I believe it.        

I've decided to live in all this luxury and still love the poor is a call to deeper surrender.  It’s a call from Jesus, urging me to follow Him wholeheartedly, fully surrendered...to let go even more.  And there’s not a magic formula.  It's hard.  I’m stumbling through this fallen world, trying to work it out in my own life.  I don’t want to be the person who walks away from Jesus sad because he had so much stuff and he loved it too much (Matthew 19: 21-23).  

I'm Jesus' disciples totally torn as I hear Him talk about how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God and just like His disciples I ask the question, "Then who can be saved?"

I’m torn but this is exactly where I'm supposed be.  Desperate for Jesus, I can’t do this alone.  I can’t stare at the faces of the mommies, daddies, and babies living under tarps and believe they are “fine” when not a single fiber of my soul would consider me or my children “fine” if we had to live that way.    

Jesus open the eyes of my soul to see.  I want to love like You.