The Place Between My Own Two Feet

Interruptions are a part of my daily life here in Haiti. It is nearly impossible to sit down for a morning to plan ministry, have a meeting, meet with a teen for discipleship, eat lunch, lay in a hammock, or whatever I am doing on any given day, without being interrupted by someone who walks into the gates of our mission base and needs something. It may be a parent who wants to send their child to school, or someone who needs food, or medical help. Sometimes it is just someone who wants to talk or say hello. While I know that this is a beautiful and necessary part of our mission, recently it has been very difficult for me. I often want to be able to finish whatever it is that I am working on. Sometimes I just want to be able to show the person in front of me that they are important, but someone else is hovering yards away, waiting to talk. Sometimes I just want to finish my lunch, or be free for a moment. I have been realizing over the past month or so that sometimes these moments ...

This summer, in our mission in Haiti, we helped nine young adults grow in their faith, be committed to daily prayer, and live out their missionary calling for four weeks. It was part of my job this summer to lead this part of our mission, although I think many of those responsibilities came by accident. When I began dreaming and planning, I had no idea what I would be getting myself into, and didn’t realize that I would be the one primarily responsible for carrying out that plan. Let me tell you all the reasons why I am unqualified for this. I cannot speak Haitian Creole 100% fluently. I have never led summer missionaries before, even in English. I am shy. I cannot think of hundreds of things to say in English, much less in another language. I am scared of people. I cannot sing. (It’s a cultural thing in Haiti that many people lead prayer by starting with a song.) I am lacking in confidence, and afraid of failure. And yet God used me. I’m not sure how or why. I am humbled ...

“I don’t want to work for the Lord. I want to belong to Him.” Several months ago, someone who came to visit our mission base in Haiti said this, and it has stuck with me ever since. After a ton of prayer, I feel like God is reminding me who He really created me to be. I think this struck me because recently, if I am honest, I have been tiring myself out trying to work for the Lord. The word “leadership” has come up a lot in the past few years of my life. For some reason I felt like this was what people were telling me I needed to be. I thought that I had to lead something in order to have value. If I wasn’t given something to lead, it must be because I was doing something wrong, and maybe no one had the guts to tell me exactly what that “something” was. I lived in constant fear of disappointing others. I thought that if I wasn’t leading, then I must be failing. As someone who does not have a leadership title, I then spent the better part of two or three years feeling like I was fai...