The Ordinary Ones

There’s been this feeling in the air recently – 2020 is almost over. The sun has not yet come up over the horizon, but the morning is here. We can see everything a little more clearly. We are waiting anxiously with baited breath. And despite the inevitable challenges that will come in 2021, it seems that we all feel a little bit of relief to see the end of this year that held so much difficulty in it.  But even as I want to rush ahead to the beginning of something new, to a year with a different number, the Lord has been reminding me of all the good He is doing here, now, today. Don’t get me wrong. The pandemic caused an international move for me. Multiple quarantines. Multiple moves and rearranged plans. The disappointment of unfulfilled hopes and dreams. Trying to navigate boundaries around travel and social distancing and exposure in two houses of multiple roommates. A couple weeks ago, I got an email about a canceled retreat I had planned to attend. More disappointment. And that on

Here we are, in the midst of a pandemic. Personally, my life has been uprooted and turned upside down by COVID-19. Just a few months ago, in March, I was living in Haiti again, expecting to be there for at least a few years. Now, here I am back in America, uncertain when I will be able to go back to Haiti, just waiting. For me, it's easy to feel discouraged, disappointed, and confused in the midst of all of this upheaval. Life has felt like a train wreck. In April, I paid way too much money for a flight into America after Haiti's airport had shut down, traveling with a way too thick mask that I had made myself from a foldable mask tutorial (stop giving bad advice internet!). I spent two weeks quarantining after traveling, worried that every time my throat tickled, I could have the virus, or that the anxiety I felt in my chest from "What's happening in my life?!" was a sign that I was about to be seriously ill. I tried to make the best of things. I learned to m

I don’t even know how to put to words what I am feeling right now. “What the heck just happened?” I imagine that’s what the apostles were feeling on this Holy Saturday many years ago. “I thought this would end differently.” “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.” Being a foreign missionary in the time of the Coronavirus is a confusing, heart-wrenching, emotion-filled time. And yet there is beauty, hope. We have the gift of watching the Lord move, of hearing His voice in new ways, and of moving with Him when He asks us to move. I can’t say that my heart isn’t broken. It very much is broken. On March 19th, after celebrating the feast of St. Joseph with our local parish in L’Asile, Haiti, we received news that the Coronavirus had finally reached Haiti with two new confirmed cases. The borders were suddenly closed. No flights in or out. The procession from the crowded feast of St. Joseph The next day our community jumped into action. We made hand sanitizer and bleach water.

I remember sitting caffeinated, late at night, in the library with a friend in college, talking about foreign mission. One day, we could live in Africa, we said over our lattes and laptops. It seemed a glorious thing to me, this missionary life in a foreign country. At the time, I wanted to travel. I did have a true and real desire to love and live among the poor, but the rest of it was a dream, built on nothing – I had barely left the country then. In fact, I don’t think I had ever met a real live missionary. I had heard about mission trips, but never been on a foreign one. My imaginary life was just that, imaginary. A little more than a few years later, I was moving to Haiti to start a mission there with a few other people from an organization that I loved. I don’t think I could have admitted it then, but it definitely felt glorious. I had read a few books about missionaries, met some missionaries, been on mission trips, been inspired by the passion, zeal, and sacrifice of others