My body had been sounding an alarm that something was seriously off, and my symptoms were growing increasingly strange. What began as a small rash had grown into an unsettling set of problems: numbness in my toes, tingling in my hands and feet, sharp and quick bursts of nerve pain throughout my body — it felt like my nervous system had been turned up to high. While laying down, my heart would pound and I felt like I was breathing through a filter.
I had reached a breaking point. I felt spent, desperate even. Both my body and soul were at a point of exhaustion. How much longer, Lord?, I cried within.
Winding through a maze of cinder block houses on dirt roads which followed no distinguishable order, I kept pace a small distance behind my missionary friends. As we walked through the labyrinth of multicolored homes, free-roaming cattle, burning trash, and playing children, I had a strange realization. I had made several trips to Haiti, but this was the first time I genuinely started to feel at home.
Throughout my thirties I often looked dauntingly at one day turning 40. Thinking of that approaching milestone, I would appraise where I was at in life and (try not to) anxiously think of where I wanted to be by the time that day arrived. Lord, I want so much to happen before then.
All the muscles in my upper body burned with pain as I paced the length of the airport terminal — a sleepless infant in a front carrier, a loaded backpack on my back, and a heavy diaper bag repeatedly slipping from my shoulder…
My heart should have been soaring with excitement over the adventure unfolding before me, but instead I was sinking under the oppressive weight of anxiety and fear.
I was on my way to London, England with my mum and auntie, for a few days of proper touristing before we’d make our way north to the beautiful Lake District.
“Are you happy?” my friend Gerda asked the small, crying boy standing before her who could not find his way out of a drowning fit of tears.
“NO!” came his sobbing reply, “I’m really sad!”
“Do you want to be happy?” Gerda asked with a gentle, patient smile.
“Yes,” he quietly let out with a gasp of air between sobs and a little nod of his head.
Have you ever walked along the Pacific Coast early in the morning when a heavy fog rests like a blanket along the shore, and you can’t see further than a few feet ahead? If you lingered long enough, maybe you have witnessed the heat of the rising sun…
I walked into the small apartment in Haiti that was our temporary home and looked around for a place that I could hide. My whole body felt the build up of anger and grief inside of me…