The next 90 minutes of waiting may be the longest of my life.
But, lest you think something horrible has happened, let me say up front that the reverse is true: Something miraculous is afoot!!
Yesterday, I decided that enough was enough. I was going to take some of the money that my Sunday School girls raised to send Markenley, the child I met last year in Haiti, to school and I was going to find him.
If you’ve read my blog for awhile, you know well the obstacles that surely block my way to achieving this impossible goal. When we spent our day together, nearly exactly a year ago, he was only 10 years old, living on the streets in post-earthquake chaos. Somehow, he touched my heart and then my life. During the 12 months that have crawled past, there has not been a day when I didn’t wonder where he was or how he was living – or if he was still alive.
Haiti, after all, is broken. The streets, the government, the economy, the population – all splintered by years of corruption, misfortune and infirmity.
To find a child who was in a slum so long ago amongst the ever-writhing sea of shifting masses is surely a silly dream.
Silly is a word we use in America.
I doubt if they have a parallel in Haiti. Nothing is silly there. Everything is achingly serious. Hunger. Cholera. Upheaval. It is an island of the vulnerable and damned.
But I haven’t been able to get that kid outta my head.
Somewhere, if he is alive, he looks for food each day. He tries to survive. He does his best to remain safe. And dry. At night, I imagine, he sleeps. Do the roosters wake him, too? Does he have any hopes of education or dreams that extend beyond daily survival?
For awhile now, I have longed to know the answers.
My dream – my fantasy, perhaps – has become to help him.
He smiled when we were together, after awhile, and I want to see that smile crease his face, again. I’d love to see the worry leave his brow. Can you imagine getting to witness his slender frame filling out as frequent food finally nourishes his body? To see his intellect shine as education strengthens his knowing?
So, yesterday, I went down to Western Union and I transferred some money to two young men in Haiti who promised to help. To me, it seemed a little. To them, it is a lot.
That’s a long shot, isn’t it?
Trusting someone you’ve never met in a foreign country – a fourth-world one, at that – and expecting good results also seems silly. Foolish. Frivolous.
Faith is crazy that way, sometimes.
But they came highly recommended by someone I admire and, besides, I could feel God nudging me: “Now!”
I knew the search would begin today and I felt energized.
That was before I got the first text from Jay Louis last night, asking me already, “Guess who did a good job today?”
My heart started racing.
“Tell meeeeeee!” I insisted.
What he shared next can only be called miraculous.
Miraculous.
In this crazy, same ol’, same ol’ world, where we’ve grown to believe that only what we see is possible and only the probable makes sense, something ever so special is about to occur!
