The Place Between My Own Two Feet

When I left Haiti a few years ago, I didn’t leave because I thought it was time to start a career, further my education, and settle down and be rooted.  In fact, in my last year of living in Haiti, I was more and more convicted that there is a real call in the Catholic Church to foreign mission, and that it is a call, and a burning desire, that the Lord has placed on my heart personally. Leaving Haiti was a step forward. I didn’t exactly see how the Lord would fulfill the desires He was placing in me, but I knew I had to take the next step. After I moved to Kansas, I remember going to mass and listening to the Gospel. When I heard Jesus say to His disciples, “Follow me,” or “Go, and make disciples of all nations,” there was a burning and aching within me. All of scripture is FULL of the call to mission – I couldn’t stop hearing it, even when I wanted to. During the past two years I have spent in Nashville, I have loved teaching. I have loved learning and furthering my own educa...

This winding, wandering road. It’s a beautifully crooked one that I thought I began to walk down one day in a moment of lostness, or because of the fickleness of my own heart. Now I wonder if it is a road that I have been on all along and just never noticed or had the eyes to see. The Lord who made this fickle heart, He is not a God who is angry at my wandering, feet, my feet that are muddy from the distracted playing under trees and in fields on the side of the road.  Instead, He rejoices as He walks with me down my wandering way.  He stops to play with me in a field of dandelions. His feet are muddy too. He lays down by the deserted highway to watch the stars come out on a cloudless night, so I don’t have to wonder alone at their majesty. He is not standing at the end of the road waiting to chastise me when I reach Him. He has been with me all along and He has expected my meandering. He is not surprised by it because He made my little restless heart and rejoices in my ...

For the past few years, I have been trying desperately to find the Lord in ordinary moments and ordinary places. After moving back to America from Haiti a couple years ago, I became convicted that I was missing something if I couldn’t find Jesus in these small and regular moments, and set out on a journey to find Him there. To be very real with you, I feel like I have largely failed. I have felt a very constant ache and thirst for the Lord. I feel like I am constantly missing Him. I feel like I need to do and to be more. But those could really be just feelings. At the same time, I know that He is here in the midst of my life. I can find Him in my heart when I pray. I can find him in my desperate prayers for patience while I am teaching. I can find Him when I am speaking with a student who is difficult but needs some love. I can find Him in worship or in the rosary while I am stuck in traffic. I can find Him in the community of teachers at my school and my grad school who are amazi...

There is a very important cardboard box in the back of my closet that I pull out from time to time to help me remember. Almost a year ago I came home from an interview with a wonderful mission organization that I deeply admired. The interview went well and I was in the interview process with another organization that I also had a missionary-crush on. Living a deeply missionary life has been my dream for a while now, and it still is a something that I hold very dear and ache for each day. But that day I came home from this interview with a need to map out a vision, large so that I could see it, touch it. There is a verse in the book of Habbakuk that has moved me since college. “Then the Lord answered me and said: Write down the vision; Make it plain upon tablets, so that the one who reads it may run. For the vision is a witness for the appointed time, a testimony to the end; it will not disappoint. If it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.” Ha...

His sign said, “Hungry, anything helps.” He was standing at the corner of a street. I was in my car, driving from grad school to my elementary school where I was supposed to teach in a few minutes. Of course, I looked away at first, trying to justify myself because I was in a hurry and didn’t have much to share. Giving a man some granola just seemed like an insult. A few weeks before, I had passed someone and tried to give them half a cup of coffee and an apple, which they refused rather bitterly. Admittedly, half a cup of coffee is not the best gift, and an apple will not do much if you are hungry. But it was all that I had at the time, and the rejection left me a bit sour and hesitant to possibly be rejected again. “I never know what to do in these situations,” I thought to myself, frustrated as I oscillated between my instincts to help and my fear and questioning. But when the traffic was too heavy and the light turned red again, leaving me at the same corner for a couple mi...

This month marks a year since I left Haiti. It has been a year of aching, restlessness, discernment, confusion, and re-discovering truths about the Lord and His love for me in the midst of all the chaos. He has never left me. God is here. He is Father. He is good. In the past year, I have moved three times (four if you count a move from a dormitory to an apartment in the same town). These moves began when I moved from Haiti to Florida to spend time with my parents, then from Florida to Kansas to work at a boarding school, then from Kansas to Nashville, Tennessee where I have been for about a month and a half (with a quick flight to Uganda in the middle of the move, leaving all my personal belongings both in my car and at a friend’s house). This past year has felt crazier and more difficult than the three years I spent in Haiti. I have slept in many places, bought a car, paid my taxes, switched jobs and locations, and most recently started grad school. I have met new people, upon ne...

At the risk of sounding like I have it all together (because I don’t), here are some things I have learned in the past almost seven months of being out of missions. 1. Everyone needs some humble pie... even me. I have learned that I was never holier or better than anyone else just because I had the title of missionary. Since being in America, one of the most encouraging things has been meeting other Christians who are living with missionary hearts in the midst of the world. God very quickly showed me people who have deeper and more committed prayer lives than I do, and who have been living lives of evangelization much longer than I have. So alas, I must confess, I am not the bomb diggity that I thought I was .. unfortunately. 2. I will never stop being on a wild adventure with a loving Savior. Despite leaving a life of frequent transition, lots of community, multi-cultural living, and radical amounts of prayer . . . I am not done being a Christian. Jesus has never left me,...

Mariah (one of our summer volunteers) & Niva It is hard for me when we talk about the poor. I wouldn't want to be characterized and defined by my financial status, because there is more to me than how much money I do or don't make. So why do we do that to some people in the world? To be honest, I sometimes wonder if “the poor” or “people in 3 rd world countries” or any of those phrases should be used at all. Saying “the poor” is actually very impersonal. So I want to break that open today, and shatter it a little bit. Let me introduce you to some people I love. When I try not to waste food at a restaurant, it is not the poor that I am thinking about. I am thinking about Niva. Niva is a sixteen-year-old girl who lived a couple miles down the road from me in Haiti. Niva is very shy and sometimes covers her mouth and hides her face when she talks to me, which means I can’t hear what she says. I have to ask her to repeat herself often. When she repeats herse...

I often wonder if St. Therese was insecure. I don’t mean that as an insult to her. I mean it as a vulnerable window into my own soul. I connect with St. Therese because I love when she talks about her littleness. And I think, “Gosh, I thought I was the only one who feels this way almost every day.” Now I am beginning to wonder if it’s not all of us, or most of us at least. Or maybe it is the youngest child syndrome. In any case, the way St. Therese turned her littleness into a reason to have confidence in God rather than herself helps me to give meaning too to my own feelings of smallness. If I think, “I can’t do it,” well then, I know that I am right. But God in His infinite goodness, power, and might CAN do it, and will do it in me. Therese’s weakness becomes her strength, and I hope this will prove true in my life also. Today, I was reading about how St. Therese became the patroness of missionaries in 1927. I found myself in a moment of panic as I realized that I am not techn...

I just want to take a moment to say thank you to every person who has donated a dollar or said a prayer (or many dollars or many prayers), or who has given me their love and support to help me be on mission for these past six years. I am so thankful to the Lord for this time that I have been blessed enough to spend as a missionary for Him. What a gift! Thank you for your yes to being on mission with me. The three years that I spent in Haiti were some of the hardest and best times of my life. I had to wrestle with a new language and culture, with suffering, with poverty, with my own human weakness, but ultimately learned to trust more in the goodness of God the Father and His deep, unending love for me. While I am convinced that my time in mission will never really be over, I know that God is calling me forward to something different and new. I left Haiti on August 21 st and am confident that this is exactly what the Lord is asking of me at this point in my life. I cannot c...

When my Dad came to Haiti, I remember him commenting after mass one day that for a people who don’t have much, Haitians sing a lot of songs that say, “Thank you, God.” This has stuck with me especially in returning to America. While there are many temptations to say “Well, that didn’t go the way I expected or wanted,” or “What do I do now that I am not a missionary?” I am trying to remember just to be thankful for the past six years that I was blessed enough to spend serving the Lord with every moment of my time. What a gift. And when I doubt or struggle or questions what the Lord’s plans are for me next, I am trying to remember to find my inner Haitian and remember to thank God for His many blessings in my life. While I sometimes feel directionless and confused about where God could be leading me, I have to look back and remember all the ways that He has led me already, and the joy that has come from following Him. I must thank Him for getting to have relatio...

“You just came back from … wherever … you deserve a candy.” “Do you have a job yet?” “Don’t put that food in front of her. She’ll think about starving people and then she’ll have to eat it.”  The things that people think are appropriate to say to a girl who just got back from three years of foreign mission are rather astounding sometimes. Mostly, I enjoy talking about Haiti. I enjoy when people ask me about it because it’s the only thing that I really know how to talk about right now. It’s the most recent passion on my heart. Haiti is what makes me lean in during a conversation. Talking about Haiti may be the only way to get me to say anything significant that I have been thinking. I may even talk about my feelings about it if you are special enough – if I think you can handle it. Mostly, the people who ask enough questions are the ones who are willing and ready to hear it. Other people ask and after a few sentences seemed to be overwhelmed and I feel like I shouldn’t go...

A few weeks ago, we planned to go on a home visit. We went to see Mari-Carmel who lives about a mile away. She was supposed to have twins soon and we heard that one of the babies was turned the wrong way, so she would have to have a c-section but didn't have the money. As I am typing this right now, she is in labor at the hospital. Thankfully, the baby has turned back around. When we got to Mari-Carmel's house, she wasn't home. So we went across the street to one of our teens house's named Lourdy. She also wasn't home. By this time, I was really beginning to ask the Lord what He had in store for us. His plans that day were obviously very different than our own. We started to walk down the street again to visit a woman that Amy, one of the other missionaries, had met before. On the way, we met Pierre, a woman who has three kids that she often can't feed. She has come to us before to get some rice and beans for them. Amanda, Paul, and I are going to be the god...

The Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage came out a few days ago, and I have to confess, I am angry, hurt, and ashamed. But I’m not angry, hurt, and ashamed by the government, same-sex couples who are choosing to get married, the gay pride parades, or the LGBT community. I am angry at the many Christians who have chosen to point fingers and “stand up for what they believe in” while cowardly hiding behind their computer or smartphone screens. I’m angry at the way my fellow Christians are ostracizing people because of their choices, and I want it to stop. I am also ashamed at what I myself have failed to do. Every time I read an article that a Christian has posted, I think about a couple of good friends I have who I once went to Church with, and who have now chosen to live a gay lifestyle. I think about a couple of Catholic friends I have who, despite the same-sex attraction that they feel, are choosing to live celibate lifestyles, seeking grace in the Lord. There are very, very f...

Going back to America consumes my thoughts lately. What will I do? How/when will I find a paycheck? Will I still work in ministry? Will I still be able to serve the poor and preach the Gospel with my life? Or worse, will I forget all that I have seen here? Will it seem less serious when I am not looking at the faces of my hungry brothers and sisters, and serving with them, praying and worshipping with them, helping them find solutions for their school problems and food to feed their children? Will it seem less serious when I don’t see their sandals with holes in them, or when I don’t see Remerson wearing girl’s clothes all around town, or when I’m not listening to Wendi tell me how he wants to go to school? I’m nervous that it will be easy to get sucked back into life, into consumerism, and all that America has to offer. Will I really “GO” again, to make disciples of all nations? Or is this it? Sometimes I don’t even know what I want. I don’t know if I want the things...