I cant. I cant be still. I have so little patience to sit with God. I do love him more than anything else in the world. And I know that he alone offers life. But when he says, be still, I cringe. I think that it is what I want when I have so much going on in my life, wistfully I think that I would so enjoy just spending time with him, but I move too fast. I need to many missions and projects and relationships and people to pour into. Even know Im supposed to be spending time with him and I am blogging. Because I think for right now this is as close as I can get. And I cant stop thinking about how much I would rather read about prayer or write about prayer or pray with someone than just enter the "dark perilous" road of true prayer, where we are left with nothing but ourselves and God. Because you start to realize things like that you dont really trust God. You do nominally but you still make your own scedule, doing what you think is best and the way you think he should use you. What a difficult thing it is to get to know God. And yet it should be our only concern. Knowing Christ JEsus and him crucified. PAul said everything else had lost its meaning for him. All else was rubbish. Strong words.
I still think about Haiti constantly. I go to bed thinking about it, dream about it all night, wake up thinking about it. I was trying to think of what its like and for some reasoon I thought of Avatar which I m sure sounds really ridiculous but he goes into this whole different world and starts to feel like hes a part of that world but then he is still and probably more a part of our world. I have a peace that it is good for me to be here not there. That this is where I should be. And that here I can spread this seed of love for Haiti and how God is using it to transform hearts like mine to far more. And here I am so so equipped to interact with people. Its my culture. My language. There are so many barriers to ministry anywhere else that I do not have in America. A lot of people say they come back from a third world country and appreciate all that they have. I cant really say that I feel that way. I have become extremely aware of our abundant wealth. Even though I knew statistically that we are the richest one percent or whatever it has a whole new meaning for me. But it is not a condecending sort of thing because I think for the most part our lives our just different. And its really not that haitians suffer more than we do. Because so much of the things we struggle with are made possible by the abundance of what we have. I think about the struggles we have with image and food and exercise and the energy we spend and money we spend trying to get to this elusive place where we are healthy and beautiful and how in Haiti thats not even an option. To think about eating healthy. You just eat as much as you can to stay alive. And you eat whatever is being served. And its food so its great. And you dont exercise just for the sake of exercising. Ever really. Your work demands it of you. One time I wa s asking about hiking and I just got blank stares. Because why would it be fun to walk about a mountain? Thats just life. But again this is not to say that haitians are perfect. There are so many things that we do well. Caring for our people. Providing education. Rich conversation. Sanitation. I have come to appreciate our strengths as a country and as a people so much. There are so many things about America I was blind to having never really been anywhere else, and I am so thankful for this insight and the ability to see it a little more from the outside.
I just have to be constantly made aware that God is the reason I loved haiti so much. because I met him there in new and lovely ways. And one thing that was really a gift is that being 5 weeks and being alone and not always being with people who had a thirst for Christ, it was not a spiritual high by any means really. It was more of encountering God in the grittiness of day to day life. In being humbled. All the time. Being made thankful and appreciative for people and things that I usually didnt think much about. It was learning to see a little bit more of how he feels about me. Because I must learn to see how he sees me. That is what will equip me to serve him and people. If I dont begin to grasp the depth of his limitless affection for me, I will demand the affection of everyone else in my life and I will not be able to proclaim the limitless affection he has for them. There is a universiality to the human race, in that we want to be loved in a way that only God can love us. I really think that is at the root of all we do, all of our urge to perform, all of our desire for distractions and pleasures. People in Haiti loved me so well. Without even knowing me. And it has to be God alive in them. There is nothing else that could make sense out of it. I feel like my prayer needs to be, make me more like your orphans Lord. Who love without holding back. Who are not ashamed of their dependece on people. Who are able to accept being loved, not reject it. Who are not afraid of abandonment even though they have been abandoned. Who live in the present. They are very good teachers, orphans. Maybe thats why the bible talks a lot about orphans and widows. Not just because they need us, but because we need them.
Richard Rohr siad we cannot keep searching for the presence of God because it is already here. We cannot keep trying to earn or find something we have already obtained. He said everytime we take another breath it is because God allows us to breath and be alive and he chooses us now and now and now. So we need enough stillness to become aware. I need to realize that God does not like me any more or any less in Haiti. He does not like me less because I am spending money here to buy a plane ticket or a shirt that could save someones life there. Because God alone is good. Haiti is not good, America is not good, no place is good except heaven. There is good in all places because God has come to dwell among us and we can see him in all things if we know what we are looking at. Thats the tricky thing about faith is that once you believe you start to see.
I think I also have to remember though, and I remember feeling this so strongly while I was there, I cannot really minister to haitians in the way that haitians can. Just because I dont and I will never know what it is to be haitian. And as close as we can get, which is extremely close, and as much as we can partner together, (partnership, by they way, is my favorite word to describe our relationship with Haiti and Haitians) there are people like my family, people from my college and high school, even inner city people that I share ground with that only comes from walking the same path of life. God did that purposefully.
God has this way of bringing me back to balanced place when I have drifted to an extreme position on basically everything. This spring that was short term missions. I thought that they were selfish and just made americans appreciate their abundance more and pat themselves on the back for giving up a week of their year and made third world communities no better and if anything perpetuated their belief that white people are superior and they must depend on them. God revealed to me, Krystal, you have no right to say what I can and cannot use for the advancement of my kingdom. If I am using short term missions to bring people to myself and transform hearts, who are you to scoff? He said, in fact, I am going to put you on short term missions for 5 weeks so that you become the very thing you were so scornful of and I can show you the beauty of it when you love and respect the Haitians the way I do and see them through my eyes not your own. And I think my misgivings with short term missions should not be completely disregarded. But the proper response is not to ignore them or have no part but be a part of the transformation from the inside out, just as God calls us to be a part of his body and bride despite all the ungodliness the church often exudes.
I thik most important is obedience to the call of our lives. Because when I try to create my own call based on my knowledge, it will never be as good as what God has in store for me, even though what he is callilng me to may not make sense. There were so many times especially when I first got there where I sure I had made a terrible mistake. That this wasnt where I was supposed to be at all. and then it happened again where I felt so strongly I wasnt supposed to leave. But in hindsight I see the painting he is creating, where if I am obedient he knows what he is doing, and what looks to me like a huge mistake, an accidental splatter, a slipped brushstroke, is entirely intentional. Its a beautiful thing really.
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