the “joy” saga continues (sorry if you’re bored)

Hilarious.

Yeah.  IT was hilarious.  In a super sarcastic not hilarious way.

The last 7 days have been such a test of my recent JOY SHOUT OUT that the temptation has been to completely “scrap it” altogether. Yesterday at lunch we watched as the little teenage prisoner got into the police car with her 20 hour old baby to go back to the jail cell that she had come from the day before.  With WITH her 20 hour old baby.  In a jail cell.

A mother of 9, 2 of whom are not hers, needs help.  Her body is ravaged with cancer.  Maybe in her early 30′s.  She wanted her tubes tied so the doctors gave her the surgery.  The pregnancy test she took before the surgery showed a negative result.  Turns out that she was a week or two pregnant at the time of the surgery.   Needs me to pay for her to go to Port au Prince to see the cancer doctor and get treatment.  She needed thousands of dollars.  I love her.  I don’t have that kind of money.

Janeil and I watched a feeble broken woman in church on Sunday dig through her clothing until she found a coin to put in the offering plate.  The plate had made its way to the row behind her before she was able to pull it out.  When the people stood to sing, she danced around in circles and through her arms up in the air in praise.  Precious in the eyes of the Lord.  No doubt about it.  She saw me this afternoon walking across the campus to my house.  She ran.  I felt the urge to weep as I watched her sweet body do what it shouldn’t be able to do.  Yelling along the way MAJEE MAJEE MAJEE. (the name she calls me – it is short for Madam Janeil)  I brought her into my house and sat her down.  Hoping that she wouldn’t ask me for the same thing that she asks me for everyday.  ”Un ti cote.”  She said.  One little place for my daughter to live.  She travels house to house and sleeps on rocks.  The reality of life in Haiti and knowing when helping hurts.  I cannot buy a  house for her daughter who does not have the capacity to care for herself.  I tell her everyday.  She knows I will say no.  She still asks.  It is painful in ways that are indescribable.

I have a friend whom I love with all of my heart.  She has been a soul connection during times that I wasn’t sure if I would breathe my next breath.  (not literally, of course)   She has given me life and love and true friendship.  She told me the other day that the Lord is moving her on to the next thing in her life and will be leaving Haiti.  I cried until the tears wouldn’t come out anymore.  Have you ever done that?  You are still crying but its now dry and the snot is even gone?  No matter how much cold water you splash on your face you still wake up with swollen eyes the next morning.  That was me.

So my answer to myself is that joy is nowhere around me.  Not in any day.  Not in any person.

Here comes the ahhhhhHA! moment that you all have already gotten to.  I’m slow.  I totally know it.

The joy is inside.  Deep deep deep inside.  It does not get blown and tossed by the wind of circumstance.  It doesn’t change moment to moment like my feelings.  It is a state of being.  Its connected to my soul.

It gives me confidence.  and peace.

WHEW!

so much learning to do in such a short life time.

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