I've been trying to find the words to say to describe my experience in Haiti, but I have been a person of few words lately. So instead, I will copy and paste what I wrote in my wrap up to our team.
I think I am still in the process of processing. Before we left, I had been reading Ecclesiastes. For some reason, I started reading something else while in Haiti, but while we were on the plane I went back to Ecclesiastes. I started at chapter 5 (which is one of my favorite Bible passages) and read the rest of the book. It was beautiful how relevant it all was to what we’d just experienced, both regarding those who live in Haiti and those of us who want to help them.
Like Gretchen, I am being very careful not to get caught up in a mountaintop experience. It’s so easy to feel motivated after having a spiritual experience. Retreats and Creation are great examples. I’m always so excited when I get home, and ready to make big changes. The hard part is keeping that motivation after I get home. Often it fades after a few months, weeks, or even days. Like everyone else, I’m eager to return to Haiti. I’m eager to continue the good work that’s being done there. I want to be like Paul and be able to say “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7). But Ecclesiastes 5:5 warns us that is better to not make promises to God than to make a promise and not keep it. So I have decided to use the next month as a time of prayer and reflection, to process everything we’ve experienced and not make emotional decisions.
As for my experience with the world since returning home, other than an incident in the airport, on Sunday I felt pretty ok. Even driving in NYC didn’t bother me, and the few hours I spent awake were spent talking to friends. Monday morning I had mixed emotions. I woke up in a panic because I thought I had a parking ticket, then moved my car and took a lukewarm shower (the hot water only worked for about 2 minutes, so it was pretty similar to a Haitian shower). After my shower I started working, and I think that’s when everything hit me. Before I’d left, I’d been frustrated with my job and the users I supported. That frustration came back pretty much right away, but it was a little different. I just had a hard time dealing with people panicking over relatively small things, when there were so many big issues to be taken care of elsewhere. Even my excitement to spend the day in NYC was gone (although that was partly due to the weather) and I left the city without doing anything other than eat breakfast at a Dominican restaurant. My drive still took 15 hours, though, since I was very unmotivated to return home. Coming in to work on Tuesday, I was excited to share my experience with my friends, but found myself very unwilling to talk to the average person who stopped by to ask me about it, since I knew they wouldn’t get it. Focusing is very difficult, although I’m glad that my mom’s birthday and our young adult retreat is happening in the next few days, since it gives me something productive to focus my energy on, instead of being completely restless.
I don’t really know what all this means, since, like I said, I’m still processing. I do know that one of the lessons I was supposed to learn through this experience is that God can use us no matter where we are. A couple times while we were in Haiti, people joked about sending Haitian missionaries to the States. And while the majority of us aren’t lacking in physical needs, there is definitely a spiritual deficit in our country. Instead of seeing the hideousness in what we do, I am working on seeing the beauty in our country, and ways I can increase that beauty in places that are less desirable. God wants us to make the most of the little we have, and if I can prove myself with what He’s given me here, maybe He will be pleased enough to send me back to Haiti to do His work there, for whatever amount of time He deems appropriate.
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