Wow…another week.
So altogether we taped 2 TV shows, taught 2 days at the Preacher’s Training School, preached a total of 8 times, and shared in 18 baptisms.
And all those things are great and wonderful, but the overwhelming, dominant experience of the week – at least for me personally – was just the immersion in the lives of the people. Some old friends, with whom our emotional bonds have deepened; some new friends, with whom those bonds have just begun. So many, whose names we don’t even know, who have touched us with their smiles, graced us with their generosity, inspired us with their worship, and humbled us with the lives of courageous joy that they lead, day in and day out, in the midst of incomprehensibly difficult circumstances.
Johnny, Jeff, and I are on the plane back to Atlanta right now. It strikes me that this feeling of leaving…pulling away…trying to “reenter the atmosphere”…and feeling like part (most?) of me is still “back there” – this has not gotten any easier for me over time. It may have even gotten harder. I feel myself longing and anxious to be with my family, and yet feeling like my mind, my brain, my psyche doesn’t “fit” here anymore – America does not feel like home to me, nor does it feel like where I belong.
I am immeasurably thankful that all the people I love most have been to Haiti with me, they’ve shared this experience. They get it. And they’re always eager to hear the stories and see the pictures from the trips. That helps tremendously with the transition process.
I will predictably spend the next several nights in deep and vivid “Haiti Dreams.” It’s usually the sound of singing that comes to me most strongly in my dreams, but sometimes it’s other things – holding a child, feeling a small hand pressing into my hand. Quite often I wake up talking in Creole, speaking to someone in my dreams.
And then usually after a week or so, that goes away.
But not the feeling of urgency – the feeling of needing to get back.
That never goes away.
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Sunday Morning Postscript:
Addendum to the entry above, about the dreams.
When I wake up this morning my wife says, “You were so pitiful during the night – all night long you were going back and forth between talking in Creole in your sleep, and moaning.”
I explain to her that what she thought was “moaning” was probably me trying to sing in my sleep – predictably, the night was filled with vivid, intense dreams of the singing in Hinche and St. Michel. I woke up this morning with one of the tunes stuck in my head. I don’t know the words to it, but the sound of the melody line has been echoing in my brain all day.
Ah, yes. Haiti Dreams.
