It's a bit of an intimidating task to write a blog. It's scary- to pour your heart out over the keys of a computer for anyone to stumble upon. To post some of your most intimate and real of thoughts leaves you feeling bit exposed and vulnerable. There's lots of fear involved. Fear that you won't capture the days quite right with your words. The fear that you'll fail to express your heart at those crucial points, and your words will be taken entirely wrong. Also there's the fear that what you'll write today will no longer pertain to your thoughts viewpoints tomorrow, and your blog becomes a place of regret. There's the fear that perhaps you will go too far or say too much, and suddenly your honesty was just a little too honest. Let's not forget about the fear that what you're choosing to write about isn't interesting and not what people want to hear. And then there's the fear of being misunderstood-- the significantly large fear that has kept me from writing for the past week.
My days have taken a wild change of course in the last month. Nap time and temper tantrums and dirty laundry and bath time now take the place of days that once revolved around spelling words and sticker charts and addition problems. In some ways, it has been good and given me pause I might not necessarily have taken otherwise to reevaluate what I'm doing here. But in other ways, it has been entirely exhausting and overwhelming, leaving me desperately homesick and ready to pack my suitcase.
In the past week, I have wrote many a frustrating word in emails, and had more than one conversation where I fear all I've done is vent on and on about the insanity of my days to poor, sweet Nikki. Her presence has been a tremendously huge blessing in the past few months; to have someone you can voice some of your innermost ugly thoughts to and to know they still understand your heart is more precious than dark chocolate covered almonds. I am thankful daily for that friendship. Pray for her (and Jason) as they finish preparing things for the senior center. Jason is putting the finishing touches on their apartment and Saturday is (hopefully) the big moving day for them. They aren't going far, literally a few paces away. But after living in one bedroom for the last 2 months (and the 2 months this past fall) they are anxious to move into their own place and to open the senior center doors in (hopefully) July. The place is looking beautiful- both the apartment and the senior home- and it's going to be so incredible to see what God does with it all.
The kids continue on with their schooling and studies, and the days hold the typical frustrations: Lovena doesn't want to have anything to do with class, Nana is screaming from the depot, Jahntzy has meandered out front again, the teachers are late, everybody is missing their pencil, I'm constantly chasing puppies from the room. This past week we played the game where you have to fish for candy on a plate of flour, using only your mouth. The kids had a blast, and it ended with Rudlen eating mouthfuls of flour and kids running and screaming and a lot of white dust flying everywhere. We took a market trip on Monday and actually found eggs which was a most exciting discovery. We've gotten more rain in the last two weeks than in the entire time I've been here. The yard was flooded for two days and muddied in some spots for quite a while after that, so hopefully Haiti's wells and rivers will fill back to where they should be. Two of the girls taught me how to cook Haitian rice the other night, and now there are more promises of learning to cook spaghetti and macaroni salad and other assortments of Haitian cuisine.
To be entirely honest and to put it rather bluntly, the past week has felt terribly awful. And here is where the fear of being entirely misunderstood sinks its teeth in deep.
I love this country and I love these children and I love this life, but I am so tired. Precious and few are the hours where I am totally and completely alone. I fall asleep to the sound of Jahntzy's snoring, only to awaken to his wide-eyes directly across the pillow from mine. There's children who come home from the orphanage for dinner and a sleepover with us and, in their usual child-like curiosity, want to know who and what I'm writing on Facebook and can they see so-and-so's picture. We arrive at the orphanage in the morning, where I let go of Jahntzy's hand and another child comes and takes his place. It is constant, and on a scale of 30, incredibly overwhelming.
Most days I go to bed feeling like little more than boo-boo fixer and bottle maker and meal provider and fight breaker-upper and depot-key-holder and cracker-giver. They are children and they need, need, need because that is how life works. But at the end of the day when the house grows quiet, I cannot suppress the feeling that I am little more than that: someone they can get something from. Most days I feel like a worn and tethered door mat in a high-traffic area. They need and they want and does anybody love me for me anymore? It seems like such a selfish cry in the midst of such poverty, and I feel petty for even writing the thought.
On Thursday, in my desperate state of I'm-so-sick-of-consantly-being-surrounded-by-children-I-could-scream, I made a rash decision I would come to regret for days later: I allowed the three-year-old to go into the bathroom unsupervised. Allow me to clarify, there were 3 boys (all 14 years and younger) also in that very same bathroom. So yeah, basically unsupervised. But I simply wanted a quiet cup of coffee, and my brain is not able to make good judgement calls at 7 a.m. My suspicions should've arose when Ricardo came out for the mop, but my naive self wanted so greatly to believe he actually was cleaning up after himself (the kids always make a puddle of the floor when they shower) that I turned a blind eye. And five minutes later comes the call of, "Hannah!" laced with fear and dread and oh-crap-this-is-bad. As it so happens, the Tiny Terror dumped a 1/2 gallon of precious laundry detergent all over the bathroom floor. Nearly a week later and blue liquid still seeps from beneath the washer machine and the floor is slick in spots and the mop stiff with bubbles. I'm still trying to decide if the cup of coffee in silence was worth it.
Basically the day was a downward spiral from there, involving school chaos and an epic 3-year-old tantrum and me sobbing over a text on my phone during nap time. Sadly, there are some things even chocolate cannot fix. I'm averaging about 4 hours of sleep per night, which is so awesome (if only sarcasm had a font…) and Saturday I woke up with Jahntzy's cold-- chills, fever, sore throat, headache, hurting bones. Why is it three-year-old's are the worst share-ers in the world, until it comes to germs? (now it's just a stuffy nose and one of those headaches you almost-but-can't-quite-shake.) I reached a new all-time low in which I basically ignored the children knocking on my door at the orphanage calling my name, and covered my head with my shame and my blanket, whispering, "Anna's not here.." while the tears soaked the pillow. I never intended to be the person who ignores a crying 3-year-old. Jahntzy and I slept alone that night, and since I'm putting it all out there, I'll admit to knocking him out with benadryl so I could enjoy a 7:30 pm bedtime and 7:30 a.m. wake up. Desperate times call for desperate measures, right? Alvin and the Chipmunks just weren't cutting it anymore. We also wore the disc out from playing it so much. Jahntzy basically fended for himself Saturday night into Sunday afternoon, even making (a mess of) his own bottle. Yeah I know, great parenting skills in the making here.
I don't know how to explain it all really, these days. Because the past week has literally been one of the worst weeks ever. Scoots (Haitian boy scouts) camped out on the compound and played their drums and radios late into the night on Saturday. The marching band decided to play right outside our house during nap time on Sunday. And Sunday night a radio blared Haitian music right on the other side of my window until midnight. Last night Jahntzy leaked through his diaper and I rolled over into pee-soaked sheets at 2 a.m. and if I every gave you story and every scenario and every crazy moment, I'd have a blogpost compiled mostly of what looks like whining and complaining and the world's greatest pity party. I will admit, it took me from Thursday to Sunday to get over my state of depression and I have eaten an unhealthy amount of chocolate in the process. But despite the absolute madness, I can sit on the basketball court in the afternoons with 3 kids hanging on me and another 4 trying to converse with me and 5 more who are showing me why they need bandaids and still absolutely love my life. Yes, I do know how completely absurd it all sounds. Check me into a mental facility, because I'm fairly certain I've about lost my mind.
Every night my head hits the pillow and I don't know how I stand to face another day. Except by His grace alone.
As the weeks dwindle down and my time here draws to a close, I'm doing a lot of thinking back and mulling over memories from the past 2 months with fondness and tenderness, as well as a sense of regret. The days here have started to fit like a well-worn glove. And it makes leaving hard because can one simply pick up where they left off with something like this? With the relationships and routines and habits etched into time? There's a certain bittersweetness one can hardly deny, because I know that the Chicago days will come to feel the same-- errand running and babysitting and dinner cooking and family time. And there are things I can't wait to pick back up again there, too. You constantly feel like you are teetering between one world and the other.
Two things remain constant in a world that currently feels like anything but: I am never quite ready to leave, no matter where I am and no matter how much I ache for school days and unbearable heat and sister-time and morning runs. And the other is this: your love and your prayers and your support and your encouragement humble me and overwhelm me every time, no matter what kind of soil my feet are on. You have been the body of Christ to me, and I can't express what that has done for me and how that has changed me. But I am so, so thankful.
Because I've been absolutely terrible at it for the past two months, here are some pictures of what we've been up to recently:
Real make for much more readable story. As a mother I understand much of what you have written, but I did it with much more in the way of creature comforts. Reading your honesty I see a reflection of how God must feel when he deals with our messes. You have pointed me to attempt to walk closer to Jesus and worship Him.
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