When Stacey and I departed for Haiti, it was easy to see the lure with which it drew us in. We vocalized our intentions to people, felt restless stirrings in our hearts and deliberately planned to set apart time for it to happen, so it would indeed happen. I can pinpoint the time in which I grew impatient to leave, right around the time of our arrival back from our mission in Cancun with Millwoods Christian School. It killed me to be back, some days I exhausted myself wondering if I would ever be able to live until God put us back in the international mission field.
Flash forward about 9 months or so and I feel a similar pull the other way, generating pangs of impatience and conflicting emotions. I am excited to see friends and family, after all its been a long time, the most substantial time we’ve ever spent away from home. There is a steely hold that firms its grip around time’s throat when the hours are ticking away though. I felt it last February and I feel it now. A multitude of events await us, beckoning for our attention. How are we to faithfully live out the rest of the here and now that Haiti has to offer, while Canada clamors for our attention?
Though nobly I might seek to justify my impatience in February as deep heart murmurings and a supreme groaning in my Spirit, I never needed to dwell on those longings in the anxious way that I did. I knew as a result of prayer and commitment that these desires would come to fruition once more. Still, I became uptight and agitated, trying to balance my plans with God’s unbudging side of the scale. I had a classroom full of eager students, thrilled to be joined with their captain once more, though I acted more as if the ship was sinking than as if I’d just discovered dry land. A time for rejoicing and much good witness gave way to forlornness and anxiety.
To be frank, “leaving” always kind of freaks me out. I desire a Christmas at home with family, but it is hard to leave this island which most times definitely feels like our home. I want to see my friends and enjoy our goofy Canadian activities, but I want to make it clear to these people that we will miss them dearly and that are not abandoning them! No one can deny that going back is hard and maybe after first couple trips, the real culture shock is experienced inversely, when you return to the glut of North America.
So here’s my problem and I am sure that others can relate. Whether I live in Haiti or Canada, Australia or Asia, there is man’s time and there is God’s time. One of them spells death, the other is yearning for salvation to happen. One of them confines us, the other implores us to let it be. Unless I daily discipline myself to be patient and enjoy absolutely everything, whether big or small, dull or interesting, long or short, English or Creole, I will miss out, maybe even find myself adding up the ill-used hours at the end of life, filled with regret that I couldn’t enjoy the present. Or, I find it, realizing that life goes on, no matter how we box it up, into a place with no beginning and no end, just the here and now, just where God asks us to be.
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