I sat up in bed, kicking off the covers in frustration as another violent coughing fit shook me. It was well past midnight, and I had been tossing and turning for over two hours, unable to sleep because of the extreme congestion in my head and chest. Eric was lying awake as well, staring at the ceiling, unable to get any rest because of all my coughing.
One busy afternoon I was running a quick errand to a local grocery store when I zipped around a corner and nearly ran headlong into a dear friend of mine. Warm smiles and hugs were exchanged and our conversation felt genuine and friendly, but the whole scenario turned me into a bundle of emotions.
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.
Eric and I spent the first ten years of our marriage speaking in churches and Christian gatherings around the country, as well as overseas. As a young Christian stepping into the excitement of full-time ministry, I had romanticized ideals about what traveling from church to church would be like. It didn’t take long before those ideals were shattered. While we did meet many truly committed and victorious Christians, we also encountered an uncomfortable amount of counterfeit leaders and hypocritical believers.
I vividly remember a particularly exhausting season when Eric and I had recently welcomed our fourth child. We were trying to maintain our sanity with four children under the age of five, two of them still in diapers.
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.