We wait in hope for the Lord; He is our help and our shield.

We wait in hope for the Lord; He is our help and our shield.  In Him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.  May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.  Psalm 33:20—22

        Psalm 90 tells us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.  I am slowly learning how to do this.  Slowly,  I like to think I have a teachable spirit, a moldable heart, but God often reminds me it takes a while for me to grasp the things of Him, let them sink into my soul and then be transformed into something I never thought or imagined.  I never thought I would be a stay at home mom, who homeschooled…but through time God changed my heart, my desires my wants, my needs.  My life looks nothing like I dreamed growing up, or thought it would look like even into my young adult life.  It still doesn’t at times, and something in my soul says it’s not going to look the same after this last trip.  Last week I sat on a plane headed back to an island that I have fallen in love with, and not for any of the reasons you should love going to an island in the Caribbean for.  I sat next to a sweet retired couple who was headed somewhere in Southeast Asia for a sight-seeing tour.  They loved to travel, and they shared the very long list of countries they had seen and experienced during this phase of their lives.  Wonderful countries, exciting countries full of history and charm.  Then, the sweet older man asked me where I was headed.  I answered…Haiti.  He looked at me with a blank stare and said, “Why in the world would you want to go to hell.”  I didn’t know whether I wanted to punch him in the face or completely agree because I knew exactly what he meant.  It’s a place like no other.  Not only is it a fourth world country, who would completely collapse if it wasn’t for the help of others, it’s a dark place, a place of spiritual warfare that takes place daily.  It is a place where demon catchers roam the streets looking for the possessed, and a place where human sacrifice still at times takes place.  A place where evil lurks to triumph and to keep families oppressed.  From the moment you step off the plane into the chaos of Haiti, you step into the grace, love, mercy and protection of the Holy God who goes before you.  This is not a feeling I experience to often in the United States where freedom freely rings, and safety is pretty apparent.  I sat at a sporting event last night, and as our national anthem played, and I stared at our old glory, the red white and blue, I couldn’t help but to think of all the sacrifice that went into securing the freedom I so freely feel in the United States.  I too often take it for granted.  I don’t know that I trust God as much in the United States as I do in Haiti.  Here I have my car with heated seats (most most favorite thing, my comfortable home, a closet full of clothes, shoes and who knows what else.  I am surrounded by family and friends.  I have over 1o places I can get clean water from if you count the outdoor hosepipes!  No well, no buckets, no boiling water.  Anna Lee opened the fridge yesterday and said, “Mom, it’s so full.”  I had just gone to the grocery store, one that isn’t armed with UN soldiers and doesn’t sell fish with eye balls.  My safety is found in all my comforts of home.  I think that is why I am so captivated by a place others describe so ugly.  Because when you are there, you have no other option but to depend on the One True King, the one who can command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.  The Psalms come alive in my heart every time I step off that plane, and every time I do, God teaches me something different, something valuable to tuck away when I return to comfort.  I am finding myself more uncomfortable every time I return.  Which I think is comical because every time I return I say I am never going back, but God knows my heart better than that.  This adoption journey has taken sooooo long.  Let me repeat that….sooooo long.  I have watched a little girl turn one, two and almost three in a few months.  I thought for sure this journey would be different.  How I have longed for it to be different.  I am so thankful I have a Father who loves me enough to give me this journey, and a Pastor who challenges me to LOVE the journey.  It’s hard to love something that is often times filled with pain, but after this last trip I see a little more clearly.  We were never meant to just go and come home with a child.  We were meant to go.  To go and love, to go and work, to go and grow, to go and experience, to take our own child there and let her experience.  We weren’t meant to just bring a child home, we were meant to love the ones who will never come home.  We were meant to go and encourage those serving there who have selflessly left the comforts of the US for a life given to Him.  We met an incredible family who sold everything and left the comfort of home, to move to a one room apartment, and raise their family in a place full of uncertainties.  They have started a roof-top garden to teach these kids at the orphanage how to grow food, how to sustain themselves, how to eat healthier and how to possibly provide one day for themselves.  They give selflessly of themselves to better the lives of those less fortune.  That, is caring for the orphans.  They raise their kids 2 American children, and 2 Haitian children, in a place that doesn’t have children’s hospitals and a minute clinic on every corner of the street.  They can’t send them outside to play without protection.  They can’t go to the local Wal-Mart or the parent teacher store when they run out of school supplies.  They don’t have Clorox wipes and for the love they don’t have hot water!  The cold showers are what do me in!  But they DO have the only thing that matters…They have Jesus.  And He radiates from them.

        I just watched some good friends pack their lives into a 12x12 pod.  They have sold everything and moved to Mexico for a life of serving Jesus.  As I watched them sort through every piece of their life from their junk drawer down to their closets, I realized stuff really doesn’t matter.  As attached we get to things sometimes it really doesn’t matter.  What matters is that we live a life learning to number our days, for Him.  I realized how little I really pray for missionaries.  I realized how little I really pray for those who trade it all in to live a life just for Him.  I realize how often I don’t pray for the health of their kids, because I take a co-pay and an office visit for granted.  I sat in a waiting room for an hour the other day.  Normally this would frustrate me because of my “to do” list.  Not anymore.  I am grateful for doctors and nurses.  In Haiti you wait for an American team to come to your village and then stand in line for hours for medical treatment, and if you are one of the lucky ones, you can visit the doctor, but the ratio is about 1 doctor to every 10,000 Haitians.  The stories are always the same from under privileged countries, Us Americans are blessed, and we don’t realize it until we visit those who we think aren’t.  That is not the picture I want to paint here.  What the Haitians don’t have in things, they make up for in Jesus.  They worship like I have never seen worship, arms held high to the One who carries them through each day.  They sing, they dance, they pray all day.  They laugh with laughter that comes from deep and they love, in ways that I don’t think some Americans are capable.  They worship the One True King because in often cases, that’s ALL they HAVE.  That’s the part that keeps bringing me back.  Their churches aren't pretty buildings, with padded pews.  Their church consist of a concrete pad and a pavilion if their lucky.  We sat on the benches that the orphanage kids eat lunch on, under the hot sun, with the terrible Haiti smell all around us, but our hearts worshipped…because they worshipped.  Our churches put them to shame, but their worship puts ours to shame.  We drag ourselves to church on Sunday morning wishing for more sleep, and fussing with our families because we are late and no one likes what they are wearing.  They rush to church and show up at 7 to worship for 5 more hours because that’s where their freedom is found.  SO, to little old man on the plane, Yes, I was headed back to hell but, ONLY, because I know the Savior that has already conquered it!

        And, on top of all that, there are 65+ plus kids that I have fallen in love with that live there.  They ask each day you leave, “You come tomorrow?”  I love the days I get to say yes, “I will come back tomorrow.”  The last day you have to tell them no, I have to go home, is almost unbearable.  The look in their faces…is indescribable….it gets me every time.  That is why we return.  That is why we work, that is why we embrace the uncomfortable conditions because that’s what Jesus did.  I am thankful today for a long adoption journey, because in it I have experienced Him in ways like no other.  I really don’t know if Lily will ever come home, because I cannot see the Lord’s ultimate plan. I am still leaning on the prayers of an unwavering eight year old.  Before we left Anna Lee prayed, “God, please let Lily come home this trip.”  Now that we are back home without her, her prayers have changed, “Lord, please watch over all the kids in the orphanage, meet their needs and please bring Lily home on the next trip!”  She has a hope that inspires me.  There is not one ounce of her that believes the Lord isn’t going to bring her sister home.  She has seen everything I have seen and she still has an incredible believe in the Almighty who saves.  She too has had a love birthed in her for the things uncomfortable.  Without this long journey, she would not be the same person.  God doesn’t waste anything.  He uses it all for His glory.  We are jars of clay, being molded, learning to number our days.  We are now planning for the next trip!

Praise the Lord.  Praise the Lord, O my soul.  I will praise the Lord, all my life; I will sing praise  Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save.  When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.  Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the  Lord his God, the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them-the Lord, who remains faithful forever.  He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry.  The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous.  The Lord watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.  The Lord reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations.  Praise the Lord.   Psalm 146