"Tension"

Deb and I have been serving full-time in Haiti for almost a year and a half now.  I think that we are finally starting to settle in.  Over the past year, we have learned a lot, and much of what we have learned is that the less we understand the more we know.  We have learned to put up personal guards where needed to gain some sort of balance and to somewhat control the rollercoaster of emotion this place can have on you on a daily basis.  While we are striving to not just learn how to cope with being here, but to thrive in being here, it comes at the expense of who we are as people to a point.  While we love the opportunity we have been given by God to serve in this capacity, quite frankly we also completely resent it sometimes.  When I think about 2011 and look back at the year in Haiti, we have truly had a love / hate relationship with being here.  There are many things to love here.  There are many things to get excited about.  AWAKENHAITI is making a difference here and back in the states.  Buildings are going up, medicine is being distributed, kids are being educated and fed, jobs are being created, and lives are being touched and changed for Christ.  Trust me there are many blessings here.  These blessings are also compounded with constant frustrations.  Frustrations of isolation, worrying about your kids’ education, having to provide that education for them, not being able to carry out the vision you have for the ministry because there aren’t enough hands here to carry it out, lack of community, feeling like a checkbook at times, driving the streets of Port-au-Prince and still being overwhelmed by the poverty, working all day in the sun in Canaan and then having a guy on the street call you a “Mother F****r” and have the audacity to ask you for $200 in the next breath.   Living this life of extremes has taken its toll on our family this year and the lives that have served here with us.  So what’s the answer to longevity in Haiti?

“Tension”

Embracing it and living in it.  If we were to admit it, most people like to live in control.  We want to control everything around us.  We want to know what it’s going to look like, how it’s going to feel.  What is going to be the outcome of any given situation?  When we don’t have that control, we either don’t start something or if we feel like we are losing the control we once thought we had, we’ll throw in the towel, call it quits, give up and find something different that we can control.  So we live lives of either being in complete control or throwing in the towel.  Then there’s a life lived in “Tension”. Tension is a place of surrender.  Tension is a place, while very uncomfortable at first, can lead to a better understanding of who God is.  It is a place where faith is broadened and developed.  Tension is a place where dependence on Christ is real.  It is NOT a place of complacency and laziness. Tension is a place of living out the call of living for Him and not yourself.  It is living for things that have eternal value for yourselves as well as others.  Tension is a place where, while you do your best to help change a circumstance, ultimately it’s not up to you and your own efforts. 

Tension is living in a way that God is the only answer for the outcome because you have accepted that life cannot be explained any other way.  Living a life of tension and surrender is living a peaceful life.  Not one without trials and dark times, but one that has acknowledged that the God of the Universe is in complete control and surrendering to a purpose far greater than myself.

I want “Tension”

So, maybe “losing ourselves as people” to a point isn’t such a bad thing.  My prayer for our family and myself is that we learn to live in this tension, and learn to live in it well.

Jeff