Waiting...

The Lord has done it this very day;

                 let us rejoice today and be glad.

                                                                      Psalm 118:24

                              

            Waiting…so much of life is about waiting. We could live in the waiting, always looking for the next thing, or we can embrace the moment.

            We left our house at 2am this last Monday, August 26^th, for our journey to Haiti. God provided friends willing to get up in the middle of the night to drive us there. Who needs sleep when you have friends, right Mark and Jen?

            God provided the beautiful smiling faces of friends to greet us in Haiti as well. Nathan, Melissa, Peterson, Annalisa. How blessed are we!

            But first, we had to wait…

            We waited months to come, we waited at the airline ticket counter in distress, hoping we could actually get on the plane (a story I’ll spare you, but if you want details let me know), we waited in Miami for a new battery for our plane…

Then, we arrived.

And waited.

For our first 4 days in Haiti, amidst all the love showered on us by our Haitian friends, I waited to feel like this could actually work.

For 4 days I lounged lethargically, begged my children to drink water, held them when they felt yucky, and prayed that God would bring sleep that just didn’t seem to want to come despite the exhaustion. I waited for Zeke to stop screaming and to actually eat food. I waited for the Cipro to kick in.

            Then, the light. I woke up and it lifted. I felt hope. I felt in my bones the truth I already knew, assured of God’s plan.  But I needed the waiting to get there. God didn’t have to offer me a feeling of hope, because hope and His plan are truth, regardless of my feelings But He did, because He knows our every individual need.

            So…off to the Market! Sydney picked up Macee and I yesterday for the market and the mache, or the indoor and the outdoor market. Macee and I marveled at the air-conditioned inside market.  We ogled the familiar American products, like Crystal Farms cheese of every kind (common at Chief back home, our local grocery store), passed on the apples at $3.00 for 2 and grapes for $5 a handful. We bought probiotic yogurt for lunch and hand sanitizer.

            The outdoor market was the bigger adventure. It was fun to buy fresh carrots from the top of someone’s head and haggle over the largest avacados I’ve ever seen in my life. 

So, this post is clearly not life changing, or even that deep, but the point is…the waiting is always for a purpose, for a season. It is His time, just as much as the fruit of our time in Haiti will be. I’m still waiting…waiting to be able to converse in Creole, waiting to start some programs, waiting for the kids to stop reminding me how hot it is. I’ll always be waiting this side of Heaven.

            But I’m also rejoicing. I’m dancing over the process and whatever He is forming in me along the way.

            This day, whatever it brings…this is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!