Hospital Visit

Yesterday I finally succumbed and went to the doctor. We went to Hospital St. Nicholas in Saint-Marc. Ryan drove the car, and Lisa accompanied us, for which I was beyond grateful. Lisa is a nurse and works at this hospital (though today was a day off for her), so she knows the ins and outs of the hospital, knows her way around, and knows the staff (who's good and who's bad). She got me expedited service, translated for me with her fluent Creole, and overall guided me through the process of the entire day, making me feel confident and secure.

When we first got to the hospital, we had to stop by a little window where there was a little form we had to fill out, and as Lisa helped me to fill mine out, suddenly I turned my head. A woman behind me had broken out into loud, heart-rending sobs. She was sitting on the steps, her head between her knees, crying inconsolably. Lisa looked at her with compassion in her eyes. "You know," she said, "When you work in this field, your life often intersects with other people's lives on the very worst day of their life." When I walked by her I handed her a Clif bar that I happened to have in my purse. But how shallow it felt, as if eating something could make everything all better.

It definitely put my condition into perspective, though, to go through the gates and see the other patients. The first person we saw had a massive growth on the right side of his jaw and neck. It was about the size of a softball, and he had endeavored to conceal it somewhat with a bit of checkered cloth attached to the inside of the brim of his baseball cap. What is that? We all wondered. Another person we saw was an old woman with white hair, sitting on the ground on a quilt in the area where there were benches set up for people to wait for their appointments. Lisa said her family had dumped her here, and that that is a regular practice, for people to abandon their elderly at the hospital. She was extremely thin and looked so sad and hopeless.

I saw the doctor and he suspected Malaria and Hepatitis A. He prescribed some additional blood tests and a urine sample to check for various things. Lisa was so great! She knew the hospital's lab would be closed by that time of day, so she just went into the emergency room and grabbed the urine sample sticks. "I can read this myself," she announced. So we got that done at no additional charge. :-) Then we went to a private lab for the other tests. My malaria results came back positive, and my hemoglobin count came back normal, but I'll have to wait until Monday for the other results, including the Hep A test.

Gotcha!

So! I had Malaria ON TOP of Hepatitis. (Probably. The Hepatitis part isn't confirmed yet. But there's definitely inflammation of my liver for some reason.) No wonder I felt awful!

A little praise session

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation!

Oh my soul, praise Him, for He is thy health and salvation!

All ye who hear, now to His temple draw near. 

Join me in glad adoration.

Oh, Lord, I rejoice in your goodness! I delight in your mercy! I find great pleasure in your presence! Thank you for doing everything necessary to purify me and refine me through this taste of suffering. I look forward to what you will do to temper me. Make me more useful for Thy kingdom, O Lord. I rejoice in the indwelling life of Christ that gives me strength and brings You glory. I press in to know more of Your fullness. It is far more important, O Lord, that I learn to draw from you your divine strength and grace than it is to recover from being sick. Let me not lose this lesson or put it off for another occasion. Let me not shrink back from the fullness of what it is you want to reveal to me through this trial.

Sing praise to God who reigns above, the God of all creation,

The God of power, the God of love, the God of our salvation.

With healing balm my soul He fills, and every faithless murmur stills:

To God all praise and glory.

Lord Jesus, I rejoice that you are the victor, and even in the midst of the oppression and evil and sickness and confusion here in Haiti, you are triumphant! All things are under your feet. There is nothing that is hid from Your eyes. And I look forward to the day when Your glory is lifted high from one corner of this land to the other, when darkness is eliminated and the true light of the gospel blazes into the hearts of men and women everywhere. I ask for you to bring that day quickly. Come and break the powers of darkness. Rebuke the strongholds of evil and suffering and oppression, and cause every obstacle to flee before your invading presence. I rejoice that I get to be a part of this work here in Haiti, and I look forward to what you will continue to do through your power to change this nation.

Thus, all my toilsome way along, I sing aloud Thy praises,

That earth may hear the grateful song my voice unwearied raises.

Be joyful in the Lord, my heart, both soul and body bear your part:

To God all praise and glory.

Wonderful Savior, I rejoice that there is nothing beneath your notice, nothing that surprises you, and nothing that your goodness has not allowed to enter into my life for my good. I confess that the goodness of God has allowed me to participate in this mini taste of suffering. I rejoice that there is nothing that can destroy me or come against me except what your hand allows. I trust you with what you are doing.

Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven;

To His feet thy tribute bring.

Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,

Evermore His praises sing:

Alleluia! Alleluia!

Praise the everlasting King.

Random stuff from my brain

Mostly regarding this sickness...

I have been in bed all day and done nothing, but I have felt a bit better. The abdominal pain is not so strong as it used to be, and I was actually able to eat a few bites of a granola bar, a few bites of some vegetable stir-fry, and drink a whole cup of fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice.

Spiritually, today has been very dry. I have scarcely thought about God. I was too absorbed in reading about Hepatitis and doing other random stuff online (read: doing Christmas shopping for my family. Sshhh! Don't tell! I got it almost all done in one day, from the comfort of my bed, without ever having to maneuver through crowds, fight for parking spaces, get cold, or feel guilty when I pass the bell-ringers. I think I'll do it like this every year!). The rest of my sickness has been rich with sermons, Scripture, and spiritual thoughts, but not today. I'm regretting that. A whole day is almost gone, and I could have spent it with Jesus.

Eric Ludy tells a story of one day when Leslie was sick and asked him to pray for her. He took a major and decisive stand for health and said no to the enemy. He was hit 28 times in the next 52 days by major health issues, but none of them stuck, because he rose up and said no to them each time.

This somewhat parallels my situation, because I took a major stand in prayer for someone else's health, and the next day I was sick with this. I have just succumbed and taken the hit. Do I need to be standing up against my own sickness? How do I do that? Eric would say it's time to "hit 'em in the teeth." What exactly does that mean?

I've been researching what to eat when I do start eating again, and apparently, these are some of the do's and don't's for properly nutrifying your body when it's recovering from Hepatitis A. (I'm just taking off with that self-diagnosis...how purposeful should I be about getting this actually confirmed by someone knowledgeable?)

Sheep liver. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

DO
Eat vegetables, steamed vegetables, and pureed vegetable soups.
Drink fresh vegetable juices (carrot juice! carrot beet cucumber! carrot spinach beet! Add garlic! MMMM)
Eat fresh fruits (up to 3 a day)
Several sources mentioned milk thistle. What in the world is that?

DON'T
Eat meat, dairy, refined foods, artificial sweeteners, vitamin A, or fat. Oils seem to be a big stress on the liver, and chemicals seem to be a big toxin.
Drink coffee or tea or anything caffeinated
Consume alcohol (duh!)

I could go for a nice pureed vegetable soup right now. The one I had at Moulin Sur Mer on Monday was just right. Wouldn't mind another bowl of that.

This is really random (and ironic), but my mouth is also watering for a nice dish of liver'n'onions.

You know what? People have been asking me what is one of the things I want to have first when I get back to Tennessee. Well now I know. A good ol' Tennessee platter of liver'n'onions. Yeah. Mmmm.

Add to that the list Mary Chris suggested to me today: Christmas truffles, Amish friendship bread, and Virginia ham...all of which are currently on my no-no list, but they won't be by the time I get back home!

Now I'm talking like someone who has been fasting for 5 1/2 days. This makes it a very, very dangerous moment to look at cookbooks. I was looking at this one and this one today, and they made me actually favorably tantalized with something as blah and option-less as the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.

That really shows I'm getting weird.

Mom? Are you smiling yet?

Speaking of smiling, if laughter is the best medicine, then I got a full dose of it today by reading the reviews on this item at Amazon.com. Maybe I'm just under-entertained these days, but I was laughing out loud.

Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer

Oh, yeah.

Stocking stuffer idea: Buy one for only $4.88 and attach a couple of little tags with your favorite quotes from the reviews. Or buy one for each member of your family and attach a different tag to each one. Sure to cause gales of laughter around the tree, especially if your family members are in a hepatitis-induced brain state that finds this stuff funny. Please note that I do not receive any compensation for this product endorsement.

This post has officially lived up to its name. That is enough. I hereby shut off the faucet of random verbal flow. Thank you for listening.

The Gospel for Invalids

Here I am, in bed with a mysterious, undiagnosed sickness. I've been sick since Saturday night, and it has caused me to do a lot of thinking about what the gospel has to say to someone in my condition.

I'm not used to being sick. I don't understand sickness. I'm the one who always bounces back right away. I'm the one who always has lots of energy. I've had minor issues (colds, flu, sinus infections, etc.) but I never could comprehend being really knocked down by something painful. Even spraining my MCL in my knee and limping for 12 weeks wasn't a big deal. I was undaunted. It would get better. I felt like my body was generally invincible, and the minor issues that did come my way would just be at a level that I could handle.

I even went so far as to think to myself, "Even if I had some kind of severe pain, why couldn't I just ignore it and carry on?" Obviously, I had a high level of naivete regarding sickness and pain and chronic illness. (I still do--but I'm just now getting a taste of what it's like to be knocked down by sickness.)

My symptoms are severe and constant abdominal pain, utter repulsion by food, dark urine, fever, fatigue, and utter uselessness. I have simply been unable to function.

So usually what I would do is just wait for it to go away. Rest, let it take its course, and be up and around again when I feel better. If I have a fever, I let it burn up the infection. If I have an upset stomach, I just stop eating for a little while and it passes.

When this fever lasted only a very short time (maybe 8 hours), I was like, "Good. It's just a minor issue. My immune system got it under control really quickly." I didn't even ask for prayer. I was expecting it to be over. Only I couldn't eat. It wasn't that I was nauseous, it was just that the pain in my upper abdomen made it forbiddingly prohibitive to eat. It wasn't a digestive issue; food I ate I kept down perfectly, but the sheer act of will that I had to exert in order to eat even a few bites was usually more than I could muster. It doesn't take years of medical school to figure out that when you don't eat for a couple of days, you won't have much strength. So I kept waiting, thinking, "I'm weak from lack of food, but when I start eating again, I'll regain my strength, and I'll be fine." Well, I'm still waiting, and the abdominal pain is continuous, and I've pretty much given up on the thought of eating anytime in the near future. It's okay. I can afford to lose the weight. And I've fasted for 5-day stretches before, so I know that the body can keep going (and function normally) despite lack of food for extended periods, so I'm not too worried about the not eating part.

Yet.

But the thought does come, "Uh...if you're planning on waiting it out, this can only go on so long if you're not eating, and what if your abdominal pain doesn't go away?"

I still think my abdominal pain will go away. I still expect it to gradually diminish, and I keep thinking it'll be any time now that I get my appetite back. But so far it hasn't shown any signs of stopping.

For me to not eat, and to not find any pleasure in eating, and in fact to be so utterly repulsed by even the yummiest foods on earth that they might as well be a rotting corpse, is totally unlike me.

It's still kind of incomprehensible to me that I can't just "decide" to be better and go on to the creche and teach school. I can't really understand how I could possibly dislike food when I've always liked it, and the food didn't change, and I was never a picky eater, and even with the rare foods that were distasteful, I just resolved to have a good attitude about eating them and I did fine at clearing my whole plate.

So for the last few days, I've been lying flat on my back on my bed, enduring the misery in my abdomen, thinking, listening to sermons, and reading things about faith, and healing, and what the gospel says to someone in my condition.

Lots of questions

• What does the Bible actually say about healing? What does God promise us, and what does He not promise?
• What about people like Joni Earekson Tada who endure lifelong, constant illness and pain?
• Does living by faith mean that I just get up out of bed, no matter what my symptoms are, and carry on, no matter how I'm feeling?
• How can I look unto Jesus and have His divine power flow through me in my weakness in order to display His strength? How does that feel? What does that look like? 
• What is the difference between proper faith that takes God at His word and receives real divine aid, and mere human willpower, or worse, blatant stupidity?
• Is this sickness because of my sin? If so, why didn't it go away when I confessed and repented of every sin I could think of?
• Am I giving legal ground to the enemy by succumbing to the weakness and pain and going to bed for this, instead of continuing on with the work that God has for me? 
• When God's word says one thing, and I look in the natural realm and see the opposite, how do I realistically operate by God's word? Does "Fact - Faith - Experience" apply to healing as well as to spiritual victory?

Several weapons 

While searching for the answers to these questions, and in the midst of being dragged through the symptoms and misery and pain and suffering of illness, I have employed several weapons that have been useful and effective at keeping me sharp, cheerful, and undaunted in the midst of discouraging sickness when I'm ready for it to be over. (Now, I grant that someone might be reading this who has dealt with ongoing health issues for months or years, while mine has lasted for less than a week, and you might be tempted to scoff that I know nothing about really being discouraged at sickness and ready for it to be over. Okay, I'll admit it. I know nothing. But I venture to list these weapons anyway, because they are based on truth, and their effectiveness does not diminish with time.)

The weapon of rejoicing. I purposely sing songs of praise with all the strength I can muster, whether I feel like rejoicing or not. When I don't have strength to sing, I let YouTube help me by singing to me. I choose to rejoice as an act of my will, and I do not consult my feelings to see if "I'm cheering up" or "it's working." Rather, rejoicing is a statement to the heavenly realms that I trust God to work all things together for good and to triumph through my situation for His glory. In addition to songs of praise, I make verbal declarations of rejoicing, for instance, "Lord, I rejoice that you have brought this upon me. I look forward to seeing what you will do with this situation. I trust you and place myself completely in your hands." I also meditate on some of the sublimest lyrics that have stood the test of time, and I enter into the truth of what they say. Consider the following for rejoicing:

Now shall my inward joys arise,

And burst into a song;

Almighty love inspires my heart,

And pleasure tunes my tongue.

--Isaac Watts, 1709

And let this feeble body fail,

And let it faint or die;

My soul shall quit this mournful vale,

And soar to worlds on high,

Chorus:

And I’ll sing hallelujah,

And you’ll sing hallelujah,

And we’ll all sing hallelujah,

When we arrive at home.

Shall join the disembodied saints,

And find its long-sought rest,

The only bliss for which it pants,

In my Redeemer’s breast.

Oh what are all my suff’rings here,

If, Lord, Thou count me meet

With that enraptured host t’appear,

And worship at Thy feet!

Give joy or grief, give ease or pain,

Take life or friends away,

But let me find them all again,

In that eternal day.

--Charles Wesley, 1759

The weapon of truth. The enemy likes to use unpleasant circumstances like sickness as an occasion to plant lies in our lives. When you're lying in bed, fighting with pain, it's a prime opportunity for your mind to go around and around with thoughts like "Can you believe God would do this to you?" "What kind of a Christian are you to not be able to find the faith to get well?" "You're just a wimp, and your pain tolerance is probably just lower than everyone else's, and most people would be able to keep going through this, so I don't know why you can't just get with the program and stop moaning about your stomach hurting." "Probably this is malaria, or hepatitis, or dengue fever, or something rare and incurable that you're going to have forever." And on and on it goes. So I deliberately choose to focus on the truth. I repeat what is true about the goodness of God, the power of God, the love of God, the amazing wonder of what Jesus did for us on the cross, and any other thing that is true. I fill my mind with truth so that there is no room left for the condemning, lie-based thoughts of the enemy. And when I'm feeling weak and helpless and my grasp on the truth is tenuous, I ask the people who come to check on me, "Tell me the truth. Remind me of the truth. Preach the truth to me." Truth never fails to cast out lies and set your feet on a firm foundation.

The weapon of fixing my gaze on Jesus. Whatever storms are going on around me, I need only gaze at Jesus, contemplate His nature, meditate on His character, reflect on what He has revealed about Himself in His word, draw close to Him, and seek intimacy with Him. When my gaze is locked on his face, all the troubles in the world fade away, but when I look around and see the winds and the waves boisterous, that is when I begin to sink. Jesus is everything. The more I am consumed by Him, connected to Him, and intimate with Him, the more He sustains me in every moment, even through the most difficult parts of the road.

The Gospel applied to me

Here are the voices that I've been listening to as I search through what the Word of God has to offer to me in my sickness.

• Scripture
• Ellerslie teaching on healing: Does God Still Heal?, The Test of Faith, and other messages
• A.B. Simpson's book The Gospel of Healing
• Other stories from my memory of people like George Mueller, Hudson Taylor, Jonathan Goforth, R.A. Torrey, and C.T. Studd, which I can't quote exactly but I know follow along the same lines

In order to briefly summarize what I have gleaned from these sources, the results of my study are that I have become convinced of the following:

1) Healing is for today
2) It is the will of God and part of the very nature of God to heal
3) Healing was purchased at the cross and is freely available to every believer
4) We access healing the same way we access forgiveness, namely, by faith
5) I am invited to take this healing for myself

Do I see this taking place in the natural realm? No. Do I see the church enjoying the fruits of this truth? No. I see scattered, random examples of healing here and there, and that's it. But laying aside all preconceptions and filters and prejudices and "this-is-the-way-I've-been-trained-to-see-this-topic," I truly believe this is the clear teaching of Scripture, and therefore, whether my experience lines up with it or not, I should be able to bank on it.

One common theme among all these voices is that of the tension between the natural realm (I feel sick) and the spiritual realm (God's word says I am healed). How ought we to properly handle this dichotomy? The consensus seems to be this: We line up our thinking with the Word of God and begin to believe it, bank on it, and walk by it, before we ever see results in the natural realm, and the results in the natural realm will always follow. God's word cannot be broken, and no matter how opposite things look to the way He says they are, He will always act according to His word. Illustration: Jesus says about Lazarus, "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God." There. Word of God pronounced. It is utterly true, faithful, and trustworthy. But what immediately happens in the natural realm? Lazarus dies. Uh oh. Did Jesus lie? Did he get it wrong? Four days later, the protest is, "Lord, by this time he stinketh." Everything in the natural realm is contradicting the declaration of Jesus. But who has the final word? "Lazarus, come forth," Jesus cries, and the Resurrection and the Life vindicates his reputation, even after having allowed the situation to progress beyond the point of impossibility.

One other aspect that seems to be highlighted to more or less extent is that of our weakness being met by God's indwelling strength. It's not that our weakness goes away, it's that His power is shown through our weakness, so that He gets the glory for what is obviously otherwise an impossibility for such a weak creature as us. A. B. Simpson says,

"Do not, then, wonder if nature still will often fail you. His healing is not nature, it is grace, it is Christ, it is the bodily life of the risen Lord. It is the vital energy of the body that went up to the right hand of God; and it never faints and it never fails those who trust it. IT IS CHRIST WHO IS YOUR LIFE; Christ's body for your body as His Spirit was for your spirit. Therefore do not wonder if there should be trials. They come to show your need of Christ and throw you back upon Him. And to know this, and so to put on His strength in our weakness, and live in it moment by moment, is perfect healing."

Therefore, there is an emphasis on conscious, continual dependence on Christ himself for what we are absolutely unable to do.

I ask for healing

Belief inevitably leads to action, and so for my own part, I had nothing left to do but to talk to God about it and make my trembling attempt to access what seems literally too good to be true.

So at about 6:15 this morning, my thinking went like this:

"If God has provided healing for me, and all I have to do is take it, then I might as well take it. If God has provided healing for me, then what will I do? I will get up and take a shower as if it was a normal school day where I work at the creche. I will go to our morning prayer meeting at 7:30 like I always do. And I will be willing to go to the creche if God asks me to, depending on His strength to get through the day." (So far this week I have struggled to survive standing up long enough to take a shower, and I have missed our morning prayer every day.)

I sat up in bed, looked up to heaven, and said a prayer along these lines. It was very calm and serious and matter-of-fact, as I was taking God at His word and expecting Him to fulfill what He had promised.

"Lord, I believe you have promised me in your word that I have healing. I take that as fact and thank you for the healing that you have already provided. I look to you for your strength to face this day, and I rejoice that you are training me to depend on you and access your grace for even my broken-down body."

What would happen? Would I instantly spring out of bed, magically restored to energetic wholeness? Not in my case.

My abdominal pain grew worse when I walked, and I stumbled miserably towards the shower. It cost me more energy than I thought I had to take the shower, and with a lump in my throat, I was crying out to Jesus for help to depend on Him and truly access His healing power. I didn't feel anything. I didn't feel any help, any special presence, any strength, nothing. My calves were cramping from standing up by the time I was done with the shower, and I fell back into bed, exhausted, where I lay for the next 30 minutes, trying to recover strength for the next part (taking the flight of stairs and making it through prayer meeting).

The one bright ray of joy I did experience was a flash of insight. This continual dependence is the exact same thing I need in order to fight my sin problems, I thought. Even if it was worth nothing else, it was showing me what it looked like to depend consciously on Jesus every moment. Never before had I experienced such a need to look to him for strength on a second-by-second basis. God is training me through this, so if I learn how to do it here, it will overlap perfectly in the spiritual realm, where everything is a bit more intangible and therefore I might not have gotten the message so clearly.

At 7:30, I got up and walked slowly down to Ryan and Sheena's. Sheena opened the door and told me that prayer meeting was actually going to be in the 3rd floor apartment today. Great. That means I'll have to mount to the 3rd floor. Annie joined us, and as we proceeded together up to the apartment, they asked me how I was feeling.

I explained that I was feeling about the same, but briefly explained about the prayer I had prayed that morning, and boldly stated that I was lining up with the Word of God and asking God for the healing I believed He promised me in His word. All the time I was saying this, I could scarcely keep from bursting into tears, because I felt so absolutely miserable and everything I was saying was so far from my actual experience. I admitted that I was in severe and constant pain, but that I was trusting God to live out His life through me and thus give me strength.

I had to rest and bury my head on my arm on the railing on the way up the two flights of stairs. At the prayer meeting, all I could manage was a feeble prayer, mostly focused on myself. The kids prayed for me and it was precious.

After prayer, I said to Ryan, "I'm willing to go to the creche today and work in the school." It cost me a great effort to say it, so that again I was near tears. I didn't think I could do it, but I was willing to put God to the test and discover His strength if that was what He wanted. I continued, "But, I'm also willing for you to nix that idea if you don't think it's wise." He replied, "I don't think you should go to the creche." A wave of relief washed over me. "I think you should go to bed and rest, read your Bible, and pray today," he said. "You're willing to go if that's where God's leading you, but as the leader of this organization, I'm saying that's not where God is leading you." I accepted that and went back to my room, where I lay back down on my bed and rested, flat on my back, utterly grateful that I wasn't asked to go yet.

Over the course of the day today, little by little, I have found that I have more strength. I was able to actually wash my dishes today, which had been piling up in the sink since Saturday, where, absolutely unable to face the task, I had left them with a hopeless sort of attitude. I was able to actually sit up and receive some visitors today. All my students from the creche came with Teacher James to see me and visit for a while, perhaps half an hour. That was precious. They prayed for me and I thanked them for coming and told them I missed them and hoped to see them soon. I was able to be up and about my room a little more, not flat on my back in bed all day. And while I didn't bother to try to eat anything, I didn't feel quite as repulsed by the very thought of food as I used to. My abdominal pain is still there, but I believe I have a slight measure of relief there, too, after not having any sign of letup for the past few days.

So I don't know what God is doing health-wise in my body, but I am trusting Him to do what is best, and I am willing to take Him at His word about my healing, even before my body aligns perfectly with what His Word says about it.

Do I have answers to all my questions? No.

Do I understand what I'm doing? Not exactly.

Is it working? I'm not sure yet.

But I don't have anything to lose (except perhaps reputation--looking like a fool for pressing on in this direction), so I'm going to go ahead and stick to it.

In The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence makes this enlightening comment:

"The first way in which the soul is united with God is through salvation, solely by His grace. This is followed by a period in which a saved soul comes to know God through a series of experiences, some of which bring the soul into closer union with Him and some take it further away. The soul learns which activities bring God's presence nearer and remains in His presence by practicing those activities." 

If nothing else, God is training my soul. Which activities bring me nearer to Him and all that He has for me? Let me practice those activities and remain continually in His presence. And regarding healing, which activities bring me closer in line with God's will and stated purpose for my body's health? Let me discover what those activities are and practice them. This is a learning experience. I don't know how to do it right. But I trust the Master Professor to teach me, and keep me in the right way, and allow me to grow in faith and in the experience of His power.

Lovely encouragement

Lord, we come before Thee now,
At Thy feet we humbly bow;
Oh do not our suit disdain;
Shall we seek Thee, Lord, in vain?

Lord, on Thee our souls depend;
In compassion new descend;
Fill our hearts with Thy rich grace,
Tune our lips to sing Thy praise.

In Thine own appointed way
Now we seek Thee, here we stay;
Lord, we know not how to go,
Till a blessing Thou bestow.

Send some message from Thy word
That may joy and peace afford;
Let Thy Spirit now impart
Full salvation to each heart.

Comfort those who weep and mourn;
Let the time of joy return;
Those who are cast down lift up,
Strong in faith, in love and hope.

Grant that all may seek and find
Thee a God supremely kind;
Heal the sick, the captive free,
Let us all rejoice in Thee.

--William Hammond, 1745

From the Sacred Harp, Gainsville (number 70t)

Ruins at Club Indigo

The residential apartments here at Club Indigo apparently got damaged in the earthquake, and no one has repaired them since. I took a little stroll through the third floor balcony of these apartments, looking in the rooms to see if there was anything in them, and it was quite the fun photo shoot!

Doesn't this kind of thing just stimulate your imagination with the stories that could be written? Wouldn't it be fun to create a whole elaborate world of characters and background, and then make it into a movie or illustrate your book with these photos? (Of course, it would have to be a proper photographer who gets the light right and everything, but ahh... the possibilities are endless.)

Something like this...

The three children crept cautiously up the stairs, knowing that they could be watched, but determined to find the treasure that their map had led them to expect would be here. They looked over their shoulder with every rustling branch and tried to tiptoe through the crackling leaves that littered the balconies. Thick, lush trees had invaded with their green branches, and a thick carpet of leaves and seed pods rested there, seemingly untouched by human footfalls for years.

"What was that?" Andrea whispered between clenched teeth. All three children froze. If anyone was following them, it would be easy enough for him to duck into any one of the open rooms that they were passing and remain undetected. No one spoke. They cautiously peered in all directions. Not a sound was to be heard, so they pressed onward.

"I think this is it," Snyder said under his breath. The children paused before a rotten, warped old door. They took a deep breath. Would their long search at last come to an end?  Without touching the door, they slipped inside and looked around.

Inside the room was a pile of rubble. "I don't know if this is safe," Preston said. He was always looking out for the safety of the group. "This whole structure could be unstable."

"Oh, let's not worry about that," Andrea said. "If it has stood all this time, surely it's not going to crumble any more under our weight. I vote we dig through the rubble. The treasure must be buried under here somewhere!"


Disregarding the gathering darkness, the children plunged in with a will, setting to work removing the stones and chunks of debris. It was hard, backbreaking work, requiring them to move the pieces from one part of the room to another in order to ensure that they had thoroughly searched each part of the floor. Their fingers ached and their hands were rubbed raw.

Suddenly there was a loud crash from outside.

Snyder went to look. A piece of the railing had fallen over, its rotten pillars finally giving way under the weight of time and decay. He breathed a sigh of relief and reported to the other two what had happened.

"That's not good," Preston said. "A railing doesn't just fall over. We have been shifting the weight of this whole pile of rubble from one part of the floor to another. We know the structure is unsound."

The children agreed to be extra careful as they continued to search through the debris.

Suddenly, there was a glint! A flash of metal. A bit of smooth wood. A chest! The children cleared away the last remaining bits of stones and dust and pulled the chest over into the light. It was heavy.

(Something like that.) 

Tricking Gmail out of trimming your signature

I highly disapprove of Gmail's current procedure of making your signature disappear under "trimmed content" when you send a message. I want my signature to appear, or I wouldn't have written it there in the first place. I should not be forced into sending a message that looks like this.

I looked online for advice, and the best thing Google has to offer to fix this is the "Signature Tweaks" lab, which "Places your signature before the quoted text in a reply, and removes the "--" line that appears before signatures."

However, unfortunately, this doesn't work for me, because it only applies to a programmed signature, the kind that that you see at the end of professional emails, perhaps with a company slogan, phone number, or web site address. I have my signature block turned off and enter my signature manually, so the signature tweaks lab doesn't apply to me.

I'm talking about Gmail hiding my plain old name. Whether I type it as my name, an initial, or a nickname, it somehow knows. "HA!" it says, "I'm going to gobble up that word, and turn it gray, and hide it under a gray ellipsis so that hardly anyone will ever see it or know it was ever there."

This is not the only trimming that Gmail does. When I recently moved, I sent my family a quick email containing my new mailing address. This was useful, never-before-seen content to them, so it would have made sense for Gmail to deliver the email properly and display the information I sent. Not so fast. This is what happened to the email:

Now granted, you can mouse over the little gray box and click on it to "Show trimmed content."

When you do, the censored material comes up.

I do not like that. I do not appreciate Gmail forcing me to do it this way. I am not happy that they have offered no solution to the problem. People on Google message boards have been complaining about this problem for more than two years, and no fix has been offered. The default procedure should be to show your signature, and from there people should be able to choose whether or not to turn it off.

Why I don't like my signature to be trimmed

1) The proper form of a letter includes a salutation at the beginning and a closing signature at the end. In this age of texting, chats, and IM correspondence, we have dismissed all courtesy forms and we simply say what we want to say to each other without any preliminaries. Excuse me, but the letters I send out by email are NOT text messages. They are not facebook posts. They are personal correspondence, and they still benefit from the grace and dignity of a traditional salutation and signature.

2) Hiding the signature is a subtle way of hinting that it's useless to put it there in the first place, since no one is ever going to see it anyway. Therefore it is not merely a passive thing--it's an active one, chipping away at our habits, ever-so-gently training the entire Gmail population to drop this custom, and contributing to the massive dumbing-down of our already-illiterate society.

3) I find it rude to receive an unsigned letter, and it is appalling to discover too late that I committed the error myself through no fault of my own. The censor's shears neatly snipped that one word, "Rebekah," off the bottom, put it into a little gray box, and left the message with an absurd-looking "Sincerely," dangling in solitude at the end of the letter.

What you can do about it

It appears that Gmail is not about to fix this problem anytime soon. Petitions and complaints have been appearing on Google message boards for at least two years, and it hasn't done any good.

Here is a collection of ideas that you can use to preserve your signature from the sneaky gray shears.

Important note: Repetition is death. If you use any of these more than a few times in a row, Google will learn and begin to trim it, too. So keep it varied, and you'll be safe. The key to preserving your signature is for the part AFTER your signature to look to Google's robots like something important and unique (because to them, your name is neither).

Best Idea by Anonymous Commenter on June 11, 2014:

Other ideas:

• Write a line of unique text after your signature. 
• Save a P.S. for the end. (Note: If you actually prefix your P.S. with the letters P.S., gmail will still turn your name gray but not hide it completely. If you do not use the letters P.S., gmail does not recognize your name to turn it gray.)
• List and describe your attachments. 
• Say something funny. 
• Put in an inspirational quote 
• Decorate the line after your name with special characters. Here are a few ideas:
  ~ • ~ • ~ • ~
  ~ • ~ ♥ ~ • ~
  ♦ • ♦ • ♦
  ■ ♦ ■ ♦ ■
  •○•○•○•○•
  ♪♫♪♫♪♫♪
  ░▒▓▒░
  ☺
• Make up your own patterns with the ALT key and the numbers on the numeric keypad.
  Alt + 1 = ☺
  Alt + 2 = ☻
  Alt + 3 = ♥
  Alt + 4 = ♦
  Alt + 5 = ♣
  Alt + 6 = ♠
  Alt + 7 = •
  Alt + 8 = ◘
  Alt + 9 = ○
  Alt + 10 = ◙
  Alt + 13 = ♪
  Alt + 14 = ♫
  Alt + 15 = ☼
  Alt + 176 = ░
  Alt + 177 = ▒
  Alt + 178 = ▓
  Alt + 254 = ■
• A discreet way to do it is to just hit enter a couple of times and add one period at the very bottom of the message. 
• Another discreet way to do it is to add some text at the bottom and color it white. (It will be visible to the recipient if he makes a selection over that portion of the message, though, so say something decent.)
• User dougwoodrow on this page offered the good idea of inserting the current time stamp at the end of every email. "[15:02:21 29/01/2013] End of message."

Now for the next step...

Tricking Gmail out of trimming all your FRIENDS' signatures

So far my only idea for this is that all my friends follow one or more of the suggestions above when they write their emails. Any other suggestions?

The Gospel for Christians

I hope Mr. J. doesn't mind me using the title of his blog for the title of this post.

It’s just that I need the gospel right now.

What does the gospel have to offer to me when I am fighting the continuous presence of one of my worst qualities?

This quality is emerging with increasing destructiveness and I am getting alarmed as it threatens to sabotage all the good things that God has given me to do. This area of failure starts as a hidden fault, incubated where no one can see it, and kept out of sight for as long as I can hide it. I pull all sorts of stunts to appear as if my life demonstrates the exact opposite of this fault, but sooner or later it comes out, and little by little, I can no longer hide the evidence of it. People start to see it, but at the beginning, their politeness keeps them from saying anything, and I deceive myself into thinking that they don’t see it yet, even though I know they must. All the while, the rancid poison spreads until it is unmistakable. People start getting upset as the destruction touches them and contaminates what they are trying to do. And I start to experience failure, not just inner personal failure in a hidden part of my character, but real failure—failure of a venture that I was supposed to be good at, failure of a project that I seemed ideally suited for, failure of some good work that I was trying to do.

This problem has plagued me all of my life, but the failure gets bigger and bigger with each successive repetition, as the stakes get higher and the project that I was undertaking gets more important.

This flaw, this SIN, as I should properly call it, has already caused me colossal failure in a previous job. My boss was unhappy with me, I was unhappy with myself, and the task I was supposed to accomplish got significantly disrupted because of my actions.

That experience drove me to my knees and caused me to seek God like never before, and He led me through the process that culminated in my going to Ellerslie and experiencing the triumph of the power of the gospel like never before. I was taught the very things I needed to know in order to confront the sabotaging effects of the flesh. I started putting them into practice.

But now I’m rusty. I have fallen and I can’t remember how to get back up on my feet. I know I was on my feet, and I was walking, but I need to review and refresh how to do it.

What I need is obedience instead of this disobedience.

What I need is victory over the poisonous canker of this behavior.

What I need is power to live the impossible life, not a pep talk to just “try harder.”

What I need is the gospel.

What does the gospel say to someone in my condition? 

~ ~ ~
The answer comes

~ ~ ~

The day after I wrote the thoughts above, I was doing a bit of cleaning in my room and somehow I started thinking about money. A thought occurred to me and I asked myself what I would do if I suddenly had to pay more to live here than I used to. But instantly the reassuring answer came: “Well, I would just ask God for it, and He would provide whatever I needed to fulfill His call.” 

Then God suggested to my mind my question from last night.

“If you can trust me to provide all the money you need in order to fulfill my call on your life, can you not trust me to provide all the strength to overcome this particular quality in your life?”

Ah!

Of course!

Why would I think that God would withhold that from me? Why would I think that He could easily provide money but not the grace to overcome this debilitating sin? Of course—I can come to Him, beseeching Him for the currency of “anti-wickedness,” and I can obtain as much abundance as I need in order to overcome my own worst qualities. No matter how great and deep-rooted is my problem, His grace surpasses my sin.

Ah!

The beauty of it.

Grace is the answer to my sin. Grace is the currency that reaches all the way past the limits of my rebellion and scoops me up and brings me back to the Father.

And that is the gospel.

That is what had to happen in my salvation in the first place, and that is what will happen again and again whenever sin rears its ugly head. Grace deals with sin. Grace overcomes sin. Grace. Grace. Grace.

Ah!

The wonder of the gospel.

God, thank you for preaching the gospel to me yet again. I needed it. You are so good. 

~ ~ ~

Thoughts

~ ~ ~

So it comes down yet again to faith and grace. Faith is trusting God to do the impossible, and grace is God's supply of the power to obey. 

And fear has no place. I was getting consumed with fear. Can you sense it? In that first section, you can tell that I was looking at creeping encroachment of the slimy tentacles of this dark rebellion, and I started getting really afraid that yet again, it would consume me and wreck all the good things that God was doing in my life. But why should anything erase all my triumph? I am in Christ! There is nothing that can conquer HIM. And He has given unto me all things that pertain unto life and godliness, including the victory over this persistent sin that comes knocking, knocking, knocking. Guess what? I don't have to let it in!


-------
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The Gospel for Invalids

Mwen malad

(Creole for "I'm sick.")

In bed with a fever all day. Please pray!

Meditating on this Spurgeon quote in Eric Ludy's message "Beautified by a Scar:"

Suppose that your record should be:

From birth a sufferer, 

through life a struggler, 

at home a wrestler, 

and abroad a soldier and a cross-bearer – 

and notwithstanding all this you proved to be full of joy and peace, 

through strong believing in God; 

tried to the uttermost, 

yet found faithful. 

In such a chronicle there is something worth remembering.

There is no glory in being a featherbed soldier, 

a man bedecked with gorgeous medals, 

but never beautified by a scar, 

or ennobled by a wound. 

All that you ever hear of such a soldier is that his spurs jingle on the pavement as he walks. 

There is no history for this carpet knight. 

He is just a dandy.

He never smelled gunpowder in battle in his life. 

If he did, he fetched out his cologne to kill the offensive odor. 

Oh, if we could be wise enough to choose, 

even were as wise as the Lord Himself,

we would choose the troubles which He has appointed to us, 

and we would not spare ourselves a single pang. 

--Charles Spurgeon

Cleaning day

I had been wanting to clean out the cubbies in the schoolroom, and do it with bleach in order to make it as inhospitable to bugs as possible. So one day I brought a bunch of cleaning rags, a jug of Clorox, and some rubber gloves, and I set to work scrubbing out each cubby.

The kids helped me, and I was amazed at the quality of their work. I honestly have to admit, I expected to have to do the job entirely by myself, but they wanted to help, and when they did, wow! they were far more effective than anyone I've ever seen! They scrubbed with true elbow grease and got everything not just a little bit better, but perfectly spotless! I was so blessed by their efforts! What I expected to have to be a big fight where I would have to be the grumpy one turned out to be a very pleasant day. We were singing together as we worked, and we all felt triumphant at the good results of our labor at the end.

The only victim of the day's work was my pretty dress. Before I left for the creche, I had an inkling that I should wear some junky cleaning clothes for this job, but for some reason I dismissed that idea and said to myself, "I won't get that dirty."

Then, as I was pouring the bleach in the bucket, I gulped. "Oh. Right. This is bleach water."

I very gingerly immersed my cleaning rag into the bucket, squeezed it out carefully, and walked over to the cubbies with the cloth at arm's length.

Then, without thinking of the fact that I needed to explain about bleach water to the kids, I handed out cleaning rags to the ones who wanted to help. They splashed the rags in and pulled them out, dripping everywhere, flinging their hands carelessly in every direction.

"AAh!" I yelped. "This is bleach water!" I tried to explain what it would do to our clothes, but all to no avail. By the end of the day, my dress was liberally sprinkled with random white polka dots of all shapes and sizes.

When I got home, I said to myself, "Well, the dress is unwearable already, so I might as well just see if I can rescue it by bleaching the whole thing. I don't have anything to lose." So I immersed the whole thing in bleach, and it instantly turned white, except for the thread that it was sewn with, which remained lime green.

I threw the dress in the washing machine with a few other white things. I came back later and opened the washing machine lid. The whole center post was uprooted and tilted sideways in the machine. Taken aback, I dug my clothes out and discovered that it was my dress's fault. One of the ties had gotten wrapped so tightly around the middle that it broke. Three strands of braided fabric just ripped in two, and the machine got all topsy-turvy, and somehow a good-sized hole had gotten rubbed into the fabric right in the front of the dress.

Alas for the dress. It would have looked pretty as a white dress. Maybe I can still sew the tie back together and add a creative floral applique to patch the hole.

But at least the cubbies are really clean!

Dogs in Haiti

This post is especially for my sister, who, I'm sure, would like to know what the dogs look like here. 

A Haiti Fast

In the book Rees Howells, Intercessor by Norman Grubb, it talks about the concept of gaining a place of intercession by walking in another person's shoes, so to speak, and identifying with them in their suffering. Rees Howells often was led by God to walk through the same suffering as another person in order to pray effectively for them. The dedication and love that he expressed in being willing to identify with another person's hardship was powerfully used by God, and as he gained a place of intercession for a certain person or group of people, his prayers were often miraculously and dramatically answered.

Suggestion:

As you pray for Haiti, why not consider gaining a place of intercession through a special Haiti fast? You can't all just fly to Haiti on a plane, but you can identify with the average Haitian in a special way through sharing the food that they eat and giving up your regular meals in the way that you would if you did come here to live.

Please seek the Lord for direction before doing any fast, and do it at His bidding, not mine.

Here is how it would look to eat like the Haitians here:

• You can have 3 meals a day. 
• You have four menu choices: Spaghetti noodles, beans & rice, cornmeal, or flour & water pudding. You can add salt, and if you want to be really Haitian, add MSG. The Haitians call it Maggie. (You can pray for me extra as you consider that I have to participate in this with every plate of food I eat.) You can add a small amount of ketchup to your spaghetti. You can add beans to your conrmeal if you wish, and you can cook the cornmeal in water or in chicken bouillon broth. You can also add a pool of oil to the top of any of these. These menu choices are for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Mix and match as you like.
• You can have as much food on your plate as you want. You will probably want a large plateful at each meal in order to tide you over until your next meal.
• If you have dietary constraints such as being gluten-free, you will simply have to skip the meals where  spaghetti or "flour pudding" was served, without supplementing a substitute.
• For one meal a day (usually dinner), you can have meat. Your choices are chicken, hot dog, or fish. Amount: Chicken or fish: you can have one bite-size piece. Hot dog: you can have two (inch-long) slices.
• For one meal a day, you can have vegetables. You can choose between 2 pieces of diced potato or 3 rings sliced from an onion and cooked. Three times a week, you can add two tablespoons of tomato sauce. Once a week, you can add a spoonful of peas. 

~~~~~~

Recipes:

Flour & Water pudding

Boil water. Add flour with a whisk until it is a thick consistency like pudding. You may add sugar and cinnamon to taste, if desired.

Cornmeal
Buy yellow grits and prepare as directed on the package.
Variations:
•  Cook cornmeal in chicken bouillon broth instead of water.
•  Mix in whole pinto beans to the cooked cornmeal.
•  Prepare a thin sauce with mashed beans and pour it over the cornmeal. Top with oil.

Beans and Rice
Rice: prepare white rice as directed.
Beans: use canned beans or dry beans that you soak and cook until soft.
Variations:
•  Make the beans and rice separately
•  Mix the beans in the rice and add a broth of mashed beans and/or tomato sauce to turn it a different color.

Spaghetti
Boil water. Add noodles and cook until soft. Drain. Top with a small amount of ketchup.

See photos and meal ideas in my previous two posts: Haitian Food and More Haitian Food.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

If you decide to participate in this Haiti fast, please let me know so that I can join you in prayer!

A dress called Isaac

I got this dress for my birthday, and I loved it. It had been such a long time since I had bought anything for myself, much less something brand new, from a store that wasn't a secondhand store or a yard sale. My mom and I went out together on a birthday shopping spree, and I picked out this dress, and it was special. It fit me, it flattered me, and I thought it would look perfect in Haiti. I got down here and it was the first thing I wanted to wear. I washed it and wore it again on the first opportunity. I washed it again.

Then Sheena's birthday came, and God said, "I want you to give that dress to her."

I had heard her mention casually that she didn't have many clothes. (Not in the context of hinting around for her birthday, but just in the course of conversation. We were talking about whether or not it was safe to hang clothes on the line to dry, and she had mentioned that most of her things had gotten stolen off the line, leaving her with very few of her shirts).

But THIS dress! Oh, God, surely you can't mean this dress!

He did, and I surrendered it.

My roommates and I were talking about what we could give to Sheena for her birthday, and I said, "Do you know what I think would really bless her? Some clothes. We can't go out and go shopping at the mall, but we could all give her like one thing, and they would probably all fit her, because we're all about the same size."

So that's what we did. We prepared a gift bag and I unobtrusively put my dress in the bottom of the bag and covered it with tissue paper so that no one else would see it (not that they knew what special significance the dress had to me anyway, but just because I didn't want to make a big deal of what was going on between me and God). We delivered the gift bag to Sheena on the morning of her birthday and sang Happy Birthday to her and brought her a couple of balloons.

There. The dress was gone.

Sheena told me later that she almost cried when she opened the gift bag, and she wore one of the shirts that day, and another one the next day, and different items from our gift quite often. But for a couple of weeks, I never saw her wear my dress.

"Lord," I was tempted to say. "She doesn't even like my dress."

"Quiet," He replied. "I know what I'm doing. Trust me."

Then came the day that Sheena came to my room with a gift. It was for me!

On top was a note.

Inside the present was my dress. Ah! I couldn't believe my eyes. I thanked Sheena, and thanked God, and wore it the next day.

The note got shuffled into some of my other papers, and time went by.

Then it came time for my roommates to leave. Angela went through her clothes as she packed and left many items for me that she said she didn't need and wasn't planning to take home with her. It was a dazzling array of really, really nice things! They were practically brand new, with cute styles and cute prints, and even two orange things, and all my size. And there was a lot!

I looked at them and went to Angela.

"Angela, thank you!" I said. "These aren't just any ordinary clothes, I think these are the nicest clothes I've ever had!"

She gave the glory to Jesus and said that they had been provided for her by someone else and that she had gotten them specifically for this trip and thought it was best to leave them here when she left.

Then Bethany packed and left me a whole stack of beautiful and stylish things, too. And Kate donated her cute jean skirt, and Leann (I think) left a pair of shoes and Angela left another.

After they left, the card from Sheena surfaced again, and God connected the dots of all these circumstances.

It was like resurrection from the dead. It was like planting one seed and reaping many seeds. My dress came back to me, but not the same as it left. It came back with something attached to it--God's multiplied blessings.

If I had clung to the dress and refused to give it up, I would still have it in my closet, just as I do now. But I wouldn't have the same pleasure in wearing it. My pleasure would be spoiled by the memory of having stubbornly resisted God's request to take it away. Now, my old pleasure in wearing it is not only intact, it is multiplied by all the sweet memories of what God did.

With my own resources, I have never dreamed of going to a store and buying brand-name clothes in several different styles and several colors or prints in each style. But God went shopping for me and picked out better clothes than my own taste or pocketbook would have done.

It is as if God said, "When you give me one thing, I am able to give back to you far more than you gave up. I am not limited by your resources or human supply. You gave up one dress, and your sacrifice bore fruit. You gave it up, not expecting to get it back or to get anything else in return. But you have received from my hand what only I could give. I multiply the seed sown. I am the source of bounty. I am your provision."

Oh, sweet life of dependence on His generosity!

All this for giving up one dress!?

And of course, after the girls left, Sheena and I split the clothes from Angela and Bethany. (Why would I keep them all to myself? I'm all for more sowing!)

A School Schedule!

I have been stumped, and winging it every day, because I couldn't figure out how to schedule everything in school, accounting for all the different subjects, grade levels, and abilities represented.

But thanks to the recent solitude and extra focus that God has granted me, I finally got somewhere!

I pulled out a whiteboard and some colored markers and got scribbling!

It's amazing how just having a tangible thing in your hand like a marker frees the brain to think. All the areas where I was stuck when I was staring at my computer screen just seemed to magically come to life.

One of the main challenges to putting together a schedule was this:

How do I work with one group and not with another? What are the other groups doing while I'm not working with them?

I identified four different grade levels that I have in the school. If I staggered them so that each one worked with me, then I would have to find three separate independent activities that each class could do while they were waiting for me. The only independent activity I could think of was writing. So I was stuck.

Part of the answer came to me the other day: "I have to train them to study!" But still, the question was, "Study what?" What can I prepare for them to keep them profitably occupied, that's simple enough to prevent all of them from constantly interrupting me, and yet educational enough for them to be advancing in their understanding while they do it?

So the day I sat there with the markers, somehow it all came together.

I would split them up into only two groups, not four. While the groups are working independently, I can give them different levels of work. While they are receiving instruction, they can either split their time with me or all receive the same instruction. Then I can schedule writing as one independent activity, and...aha!...a math worksheet for the other independent activity.

There. It's in Excel. Doesn't it look official?

I don't know if this schedule will work, but at least I finally HAVE ONE. If it doesn't work, I can always tweak the parts that don't work. But now I can actually use that as a base, and I can take off and fly.

This is a schedule, not a lesson plan. Now it's on to planning out those classes over the course of the school year that I'm here. Ahhh... the interesting part begins!

Hooray!

In which God gives me a most incredible gift

Three days after I surrendered my alone time to the Lord, I had a room all to myself. It was not of my doing, I didn't have to manipulate it, but here I am!

That was November 18, and on November 21, I was in my room, all by my very happy alone self.

I still haven't gotten over the luxury of it.

This is how it worked out:

The day we took the trip to Port-au-Prince that I mentioned earlier, my roommates were headed to the airport. Their time here was complete and they were heading home. Once they left, I moved in with Gerda to help her with the kids while Annie was home for a week. Annie got home on the 21st, and I moved back out and down to my old quarters, now empty.

I don't have any kids. I'm the single person again.

This frees me up tremendously. I feel like dancing. I feel lighter than air. I feel so liberated to pour into others now. I can finally devote the time I need to elements of class prep that just had me stumped. I can offer to take kids for a while to let one of the other ladies have a break. I can have all the school-age children at Club Indigo over to my room for school time. I can make the projects that have been weighing down on me, like the gift packets for the nannies at the creche. Ah...I finally feel like I am bursting free to thrive and act and actually accomplish the roles that God has given me, instead of just barely keeping my head above water and operating in survival mode. I feel like I am released to do the work I am called to do and have the possibility of doing it well.

I am incredibly thankful.

This side of the room has become like our little community center. It's a school room, movie theater, dining room for group pot-lucks, music lesson studio, you name it!

Important note: I don't want any of this to sound like I disliked my roommates or chafed under the crowded conditions. We had such a fabulous group of girls together, and we had a thriving, happy, unified relationship. For having 5 women in such small quarters, we had practically no bickering, gossip, or raging emotions, and that is amazing evidence of God's grace being supplied to us. I love the fact that the girls and I shared this room. It's part of what makes living here a happy thing. All the memories of what we did and said here still float through my mind as I walk through the room. "Remember when so-and-so's bed was there?" I will think to myself. "Remember when we had the table there, and we cut up all the vegetables for stir fry together and told stories?" "Remember when there was a huge spill there?" etc. etc. etc.

No, my relationship with my roommates was purely positive. But their time came to an end, as I knew it would, and their departure made it feel like my own time in Haiti was starting over from the beginning. I know, however, that my laments over their absence cannot bring them back. Just as God gave grace for the season we were together, he is giving grace for this new season. I rejoice in it and I am thankful for it.