School and Stress

  This month, I learned that Preschoolers graduate, and that Kindergarteners have to have an IQ test before entering school.  Eleanor had her pre-K graduation a week ago.  It seems like only five months ago, we were enrolling her in Pre-K, and now she is moving on....oh wait.  It was just five months ago.  At any rate, she is sad to tell her favorite teacher goodbye, but happy to start a new adventure at a new school for Kindergarten.  Apparently, kids are tested before entering a new school (makes sense), so we went for her testing the other day.  She did great, except for a few questions.  The teacher asked her "Spring is warm, Fall is....." and Eleanor didn't know.  I told the teacher, "She hasn't lived through an entire year of seasons here in the States yet.  Maybe you could ask her 'Rainy season is muddy, Dry season is....'  She'll be able to answer that one!"  The teacher just moved on to another question.  The other mistake Eleanor made was not really a mistake at all.  The teacher told her to "Go over to that chair, sit down, and tap your head."  Eleanor went over to the chair, sat on the ground, and tapped her head.  The teacher didn't specify that she needed to sit IN the chair, so that wasn't a mistake in my book!  I think she'll do just fine in school.

  Another thing I learned this month was that my stress level in Haiti was about fifty times what it is here, and I didn't even realize it at the time.  People would come to me on short term trips and say, "Oh, man, you must be so exhausted all the time from all the stress of living here" and I wouldn't know how to respond, because I really didn't realize I was that stressed out.  I was exhausted all the time, but I figured that was just a combination of the heat and parenting toddlers.  But the other day, I was driving down the road here in Alabama, and saw a big bundle in the middle of the street.  My very first thought was, "Oh, no.  They were burning tires last night.  Wonder what the riot was about."  I immediately realized that it couldn't be a bundle of burnt tires, because people haven't burned tires in the streets of Alabama since the '60s.  Then my next thought was, "Oh, no.  It's a dead body.  I hope the kids don't look over there and see it."  Then I quickly realized that couldn't be right, because people don't let bodies rot in the streets here in the States.  As I got closer to the bundle, I saw that it was grass.  I big pile of dead grass that must have fallen off a truck.  Mystery solved.  My stress level plummeted from high alert to zero.  It got me thinking, though.  I lived daily in Haiti under the anxiety of not knowing what major drama the day might hold.  Would there be a food riot?  Would someone get kidnapped?  Would there be a coup d'etat?  Would someone I know get thrown in jail?  Would someone I know die from a tropical disease or preventable illness or accident on the road?  I have things to worry about here in the States, for sure, but they just aren't quite so extreme.  So, lately, I've been thinking about and praying for my friends, both missionaries and Haitians, that live in Haiti and have to deal with the extreme stressors every day, some of which they aren't even consciously aware.  Will you pray with me?  For those in other places, dangerous and chaotic places, where drama and tragedy are the norm?  Specifically, I ask for prayer concerning a new virus that has hit Haiti and is sweeping over it in an epidemic of high fever and pain.  It is a mosquito borne illness called Chickungunya fever, and it causes intense body pain and weakness, fever and rash.  Many of my friends in Haiti have contracted it.  There is no cure or medical treatment, save tylenol and fluids and letting it run its course.
  As always, Jesus has words of encouragement which apply both to our first world problems and to those of the developing world:  "Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things.  Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. // Peace I leave with you.  My peace I give to you;  not as the world gives do I give to you.  Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." (Matt 6:34 and John 14:27)

The House and The Hood

Well, we did it. We bought a house in 'Merica. It's a trilevel in a quiet, multi-ethnic subdivision full of retired military couples, widows, widowers, and a few families with school-aged children. Buying a house turns out to be complicated. Mandatory flood insurance, offers and counter-offers, and meetings with lawyers are big, adult things that we were not always prepared for. In fact, we actually showed up to our closing without the down payment....but that's another story. In the end, we closed on the house at the end of March, and family has helped us make it pretty and fill it with furniture. The kids love all the different rooms to play in, and even found a “slide” in one of the closets (the floor is sloped).

When we first moved in, a lot of people asked me, “Are you SO happy to finally have your own place?” I said yes, because I am happy and feel blessed beyond measure. But I don't think I was quite as exuberant as everyone hoped. For one thing, digging down 30-year-mortgage-roots is a scary prospect for an adventure-loving missionary-at-heart girl like me. I know this is where God wants my family currently, so I'm choosing to be thankful and rest in it. The other thing that kept me from being SO happy was a friend of mine in Haiti, who happened to lose his residence about the time we found ours. He had been sleeping on a porch outside a friend's home, and was asking me (via the internet) to help him find a dry place to sleep. Being so many miles away, and enjoying my nice new bed in my nice new house while he slept outside, made me feel horrible. Thankfully, friends and family came to the rescue and found a way for my Haitian friend to find employment and a room to rent. My sister says that God's grace is miraculously never-ending. That is to say, when we are blessed beyond measure, it doesn't mean that blessings are being withheld from someone else. There are always enough blessings to go around. But sometimes it feels as though we have too much. And lately, looking at our home, I feel that way. I pray that God never lets me become complacent here, but always reminds me of those in the family of Christ who need our help.

The kids seem to be having a great time adjusting to this new American life. They like 'Old McDonald's play land', and trips to the park, and playdates, and children's church programming. They like all the time they get with their extended family here. The one thing they don't like, however, is the lack of 'neighbors'. After we moved in to our new neighborhood, we went walking down our street every afternoon, trying to meet our neighbors. Rarely did we see anyone outside. I decided to bake some cookies and bread and pies and take them to our neighbors. This only partially worked. We met a few wonderful widows on our block, one of whom invited us in. We met the couple next door, who are very pleasant. But some people met our knocks on their door with uncertainty, eyeing us like we were surely trying to sell them something, and scurrying back inside after we exchanged a few words. Several people just flat out refused to open the door to us. Now, this was something incredible to me and the kids. Someone who doesn't want free pie?? Our Haitian neighbors (who would have been outside anyway), would have come knocking on our door for pie. In fact, I'm pretty sure that happened to me once or twice (or a hundred times) in Haiti. We have persisted in our afternoon walks, however, and have begun to meet more people on the block. No hoards of orphans in the garden to play with the kids, but we did find a few younger children that hopefully, in time, can be playmates.

New Language

Coming back to the States has been an adjustment in many ways.  Shopping at the grocery store every two days, instead of every two weeks, for example.  The other day, Ryan went to the store with the kids.  I called him 30 minutes later to add something to the list, and was amazed that he was already at the grocery store, almost done with the shopping.  It used to take him an hour and a half to get to the store in Haiti!  Other things we've had to adjust to are the amount of meat we consume here (ounces and ounces more than we did back home in Haiti), the speed of service at restaurants (no need to bring a boardgame with us anymore to play while we wait on our food), and the amazing existence of child care at church (no more taking turns staying home with the kids while the other adult attends service).

The kids have had to adjust to television.  They used to watch videos in Haiti, but now it's cable tv. They love having so many different types of shows to watch, but they were very frustrated by commercials at first.  They would say, "Turn the show back on!".  Now, they are used to them, and I've even heard them sing along ("cruncha muncha, cruncha muncha, fritos on my sub").  They still don't quite understand that tv is scheduled and any one particular show cannot be loaded up whenever they want to view it, like their videos back home were.  The kids are also adjusting to different food (cheese sticks and strawberries instead of laughing cow cheese and mangoes), but the staples of bread and peanut butter remain the same.

Living in the South now, I've had to adjust to a few different expressions.  People down here like to "put it up" instead of put it away. They also like to "feel of it" instead of just feeling it.  There are countless other words that I'm learning to use -or refusing to use- like saying "tee tee" in reference to anything bathroom related (Tee Tee is my name, OK?).  One thing I wasn't expecting, though, is a change in lingo in the Stateside Christian community as a whole.  When I left the States in 2001, people loved other people.  Now, people prefer to 'love on' others.  "Oh," they say, "Did you go down to Haiti to love on those poor, sick folks?"  Nope, just tried to love them.  Loving on them sounds scary!  What if my love was too heavy and crushed them?  Back in 2001, people talked about things.  Now, people speak to things.  "This is going to speak to the area of my life that most needs improvement," they'll say.  "Huh?" I'll reply.  This new lingo doesn't just involve clever use of different prepositions, either. There are hip nouns and adjectives now, like "intentionality", "missional", and "capacity building". When a missionary was asked what they did back in 2001, he might say something like, "I'm a medical missionary in Haiti."  Now, he may respond with, "I am involved with missional living and capacity building with intentionality, and I strive to speak to the felt needs of the underprivileged with a focus on sustainability and impactful initiatives."  Eh?  I'm sure he's doing great things, but I have no clue what they are!

House Hunting

 We are currently living with Ryan's parents and they have been gracious to allow us to invade their personal space.  With seven people living in 1400 square feet, it's surprising how everyone seems to fit and find "their own hole", as my niece Eloise liked to say.  It really isn't that crowded at all, when I compare it with the way my Haitian friends live.  Often, an extended family group of ten or more occupies a two room home.  Just recently, I talked with a young man named Makenson who is trying to attend tech school in Port au Prince but having trouble finding housing.  He asked a classmate last week if he could live with him in his family home.  The friend asked his mother, who replied that they have many people in their house, but he could stay until the end of January.  This is very common in Haiti... you don't have to have an empty bedroom or even an empty bed to open your home up to friends in need.  Once, when I was working in Seguin, I had to take Nancy, a patient who had just delivered twins, to the hospital because she had post partem heart failure.  The hospital gave her a bed, but would not allow her newborn twins to stay with her.  So, she asked around and found a friend of a friend (a stranger to her) who lived in a one room house near the hospital.  She asked the woman if she and her twin babies could stay with her for a few days and walk back and forth to the hospital to receive her treatments.  The woman agreed and hung up a sheet in her house to divide the one room into two, giving this stranger half of her small house for more than a week until she was discharged from the hospital.
  We are thankful for our place here with our gracious family.  However, as grown adults in our thirties with careers and children of our own, we feel buying a house is an appropriate next step.  So, the house hunting has begun.  Seeing as we have never done this before, I've been watching a lot of television programs on finding a new house.  In most of the programs, the prospective home buyers have a list of 'must-haves' for their new purchase.  The most popular must-haves for these North American couples are: lots of closet space, an open floor plan, a spacious yard, an eat-in kitchen with open sight lines into the main living area, an en-suite bathroom off the master bedroom, and at least one bedroom per child. Certainly some of the things on this 'must-have' list are appealing to me as well.  But I just can't get the images of my Haitian friends and the way they live out of my head when I hear these lists of 'musts'.  Here are some examples:

                                         
                                                             OPEN FLOOR PLAN

                                              LAUNDRY ROOM ON THE MAIN FLOOR
                                                         

                       EAT-IN KITCHEN WITH CLEAR SIGHT LINES TO THE MAIN LIVING AREA

 
                                                    LOTS OF NATURAL LIGHTING


  These are just a few examples.  Other pictures that run through my mind are of outhouses full of cockroaches, walls made of cornstalks, and homes no bigger than walk-in closets.  I don't think I should have ripped tents, outdoor cooking areas, and outhouses on my must-haves list, and I don't think it's wrong for us to be looking for a comfortable and attractive place to live, but I do think that whatever we choose should come with a mortgage that allows us to live below our means, leaving us with money to spare for those in our lives who may have needs.  And I hope that wherever we live and whatever the square footage or number of bedrooms, that we are able to follow the example of our Haitian friends and the advice of Scripture in Hebrews 13:2, and remember to extend hospitality when the opportunity arises.
  We are going house hunting tomorrow to see what we might find.  I pray the Lord can guide us to just the right place.  I'll keep you posted.

A Christmas Present

  I have found American-style Christmas celebrations overwhelming since spending so many years in Haiti, where Christmas means eating with family and going to church.  No ribbons or bows or lines for Santa or evergreens in the living room.  (No living rooms, for that matter).  This Christmas in Alabama was no different.  The celebration was limited to 'gifts for the children, only'.  Still, the room ended up full of wrapping paper, toys galore, and children running from one toy to the other, sometimes stopping to fight with each other, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing and having fun, and generally feeling a bit over-stimulated.  The time with family was priceless, and I am so glad that we are blessed with family that loves us and chooses to express it so generously.  However, sometimes the greatest gifts aren't the ones under the tree.
  This year, I think Ryan's grandmother's favorite gift was when our four year old climbed up into her lap to watch cartoons with her (after hours of refusing her kisses and hugs).
  My favorite gift this year was a phone call from Madame Eugene, my housekeeper in Haiti.  Her salary took a huge hit when we left Haiti and she no longer had a household for which to clean, yet she spent her money to put minutes on her cell phone and call me on Christmas morning to wish me a Merry Christmas and tell me she missed me.  I miss her too!  Along with all my giving, loving, amazing Haitian friends.  Relationships are always priority one for them, and I want to learn a lesson from them and give relationships special attention in this New Year.