Yesterday I ran into a sponsor I haven’t seen in quite some time, and of course her first question was, “How is everyone in Haiti?”
I paused, trying to come up with an answer, because honestly, I just didn’t know what to say. After a moment, I responded, “They’re making it.”
What else could I truly say?
We didn’t have the time, and I didn’t have the emotional energy to go into the current violence that is throughout Port-au-Prince. We didn’t have the time, and I didn’t have the emotional energy to talk about the toll COVID is taking on the country . . . a country without a healthcare system to deal with the crisis. We didn’t have the time, and I didn’t have the emotional energy to go into all of the uncertainties Haitians are living with day-by-day.
And yet my answer was truthful because, yes, as always “They’re making it.”
For those of us who love Haiti, it’s hard to talk about Haiti these days.
How do you explain what’s taken place since July 6, 2018, the continuous downward spiral, the days that are “better” . . . knowing that they are just a short reprieve before another really bad day comes? How do you explain attacks on police stations, attacks on the homes of private citizens, kidnappings, growing poverty, desperation, death, fear, insecurity . . . .? None of it makes any sense to our American way of thinking. It is so *foreign.* And yet it is so close to home for those who have invested our time, our resources, our very hearts in the Haitian people.
Steven Garber asks the poignant question: “Knowing what you know, what will you do?”
Some days that’s a fairly easy question to answer. Some days, there is no answer at all.
Today is one of those days.
“For in this hope we were saved; but hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he can already see? But if we hope for what we do not yet see, we wait for it patiently.
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words”
