As the heavens are higher

Sometimes...God's ways are not my ways. Ok, fine; MOST of the time His ways are not my ways (and, being that He's God and I'm not, it's very good that He goes with His plans rather than my own). Still, there are times when I'm so hoping for something and have it all worked out in my mind how I think it should happen, only to discover that God has a different plan. This is often--at least initially--quite disappointing. Even though I know in my heart that "for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28), discovering that things aren't going to happen the way I'd hoped is not a fun or easy thing. And particularly since I'm a "dreamer", I've gone through this little process more times than I'd like to admit.

Thankfully, God has shown me time and time again that even though I might suffer a little disappointment for awhile--or even a fair amount of pain in the more difficult circumstances--He is ALWAYS in control and ALWAYS has something better in store than I could ever imagine. He never makes mistakes; He doesn't turn His head for a second and--oops, that shouldn't have happened! No, He is intimately involved in the details of my life; He knows my hopes and my dreams...and He KNOWS what is best. So though I may be sad or hurt for a time, I can be (and am) confident that I can trust Him. "Though weeping may last through the night, joy comes with the morning" (Psalm 30:5). I don't always know right away why He allows certain things to happen--or not happen, as the case may be--and for some things, I won't know His reasons until I get to heaven. Regardless, though, "I know whom I have believed" (I Timothy 1:12); my God is faithful to fulfill each and every one of His promises, which certainly includes this one: "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11). He already knows my future; I don't need to despair even when things don't go as I'd like. God's got it; it's really ok!

Originally, this post was primarily going to be about Christina and some news I got this evening (which I will get to in a minute). As I started writing, though, and as I started thinking more about it (rather than just responding emotionally, as I was initially), a past disappointment--really, the most painful event of my life--came to the forefront of my mind: my mom's death nearly 21 months ago. I don't really have the energy to say a whole lot about that right now (primarily because I'm tired and have to get up for work in another 6 hours), but the main thing is that even though losing my mom was absolutely the most horribly painful and frightening and confusing and just plain awful circumstance I've had to go through (and am still going through), from the first moment I even began to realize that she might die, God gave me the grace to know that He IS IN CONTROL and that HE HAS A PLAN. I don't know why He allowed my mom to die when she did; I hate that it happened. Yet, I know that He has a reason and is bringing good even out of the pain. No, I don't understand...but again, "I know whom I have believed." It all comes down to the fact that He is God, and I am not (and thank goodness for that).

In light of all that, the news I got today now seems relatively minor. And really, it's good news; it just means that some things won't happen as I'd hoped. I took Christina's CT scans to the doctor in Houston this afternoon, and this evening I got an email from him saying that he had already looked at her images and determined that she does not, in fact, have hydrocephalus. Her head is enlarged due to a "developmental anomaly" and she will not require surgery. This is good news--very good news. This means, I think, that her condition is not life-threatening as we had previously been told. So why, you ask, am I blogging about disappointment? Well, it's selfish, primarily--I really, really wanted Christina to come here. Don't get me wrong; I am definitely thrilled that she doesn't have hydrocephalus and should hopefully do well without special medical care (though she still is in need of physical and occupational therapy to help with her developmental delays), but I was so looking forward to having her here and being able to love on her and give her special attention that she just can't get in a crowded orphanage. And I have to admit, crazy and as far-fetched an idea as this is, I was hoping that somehow God would provide a way through this for me to adopt her someday--despite the long list of reasons why this is impossible (told you I'm a dreamer). So yeah, my plans have been thwarted...but...that just means that God has bigger and better plans for both me and for Christina. Maybe our lives will intersect significantly at some point, or maybe they won't. I have no way of knowing. Either way, though, I can trust God with my future and with hers. He is in control, and He will continue working "all things...together for good", for, from eternity past to eternity future, "He has made everything beautiful in it's time" (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9)

Prayer Request

I got a text this morning from a friend in Chicago who just found out that her 21-year-old niece, Jennifer, is in an ICU in Dallas, and they're having trouble stabilizing her. I don't know any other details right now, but I (and my friend) would definitely appreciate prayers for Jennifer and for her whole family as they go through this scary time. Please pray that God would give them His peace even in the midst of their fear and that their trust would be in Him.

Psalm 145:18-19

The Lord is near to all who call on Him,
to all who call on Him in truth.
He fulfills the desire of those who fear Him;
He also hears their cry and saves them.

Ti Nina

Earlier this year, I met Christina and fell utterly in love with this sweet little girl. Christina, like my youngest sister, has hydrocephalus; also like my sister, Christina was born in Haiti, a place where quality medical care is extremely hard to come by and where those with disabilities are looked at as cursed (if they're even looked at at all). Because Christina's family did not want a "cursed" child and the accompanying social stigma, they abandoned her at the Haitian Social Services office; shortly thereafter, Christina was taken to Notre Maison, the orphanage for children with special needs that is run by a dear family friend, Gertrude Bien-Aime. This is where I met Christina in February.

I was only at Notre Maison for 5 days, but it didn't take me long to learn Christina's story and decide that I wanted to help her. Left untreated, Christina would slowly die as the fluid gradually increased pressure on her brain. I decided, then, that I would do my best to find help for Christina in the States, hoping and praying that God would work out all of the details (particularly since I really had/have no clue how to go about this).

I returned to Haiti in March and was able to spend nearly 3 weeks with the kids at Notre Maison; though I sort of tried not to play favorites, it was pretty clear that Christina (Ti Nina) got quite a lot of my attention. (And look at her; how could she not?) :)

It was very hard for me to say goodbye to Ti Nina at the end of my trip; however, I came back to the States determined to do my best to find a neurosurgeon and a hospital to provide medical care for Christina. I sent letters to about 10 neurosurgeons within a 3-hour drive of where I live, hoping to find someone nearby to donate care. Tonight, I finally received a response; a doctor in Houston is willing to help as long as his hospital is also able to donate their services. Please pray for Christina and for everyone involved in making decisions on her behalf. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)

Edit: When the neurosurgeon in Houston looked at Christina's CT scans, he realized that Christina does not, in fact, have hydrocephalus as she was diagnosed in Haiti:

The fluid filled spaces of the brain are enlarged mainly due to a developmental anomaly called corpus callosal agenesis. This is benign from an intracranial pressure point of view, but can lead to delayed neurologic development.

So, good news for Christina; her condition is not life-threatening.  Since she does not need surgery, I am not able to bring her to the States at this time.  We'll see what the future holds... 

Bucket List for 2010

I realized recently that though I have lots of hopes and dreams and plans etc floating around in my brain, if I don't start writing them down and becoming intentional about achieving them, I probably won't end up getting around to a lot of them. So, for that reason, I decided to create a bucket list, per Caroline's example, of things that I hope to accomplish (or, as in the case of the things I want to learn, begin working on) by the end of 2010. Here is the list I've come up with; it'll be fun to see how many I can check off over the next 6 1/2 months!

1. Start keeping a prayer journal again

2. Have the Anne of Green Gables party part 2

3. Go on a picnic

4. Go back to Haiti

5. Have a Jane Austen movie night

6. Braid Jeweliet’s hair on a fairly regularly basis

7. Go camping at [at least] one Texas state park

8. Go to the True Woman 2010 conference in Fort Worth

9. Learn about and put into practice what it means to be a godly/biblical woman

10. Go back to Florida [for a visit]

11. Finish watching the last episode of season 5 of LOST

12. Have the LOST season finale party

13. Babysit/hang out with little kids more

14. Visit Anna in Humble

15. Learn how to play an instrument of some sort

16. Learn more French

17. Make a gingerbread house

18. Have a summer Bible study with Caitlin and Caroline

19. Learn sign language

20. Study child development

21. Visit a state where I’ve never been before

22. Re-learn how to drive manual

23. Memorize a poem

24. See Mary Poppins on Broadway

25. Go to Rachel and Bobby’s wedding

26. Go on a hike, preferably in the mountains

27. Visit the North Carolina farm

28. Celebrate National Smores day on August 10^th

29. Buy a tent

30. Bake a cheesecake with Jeweliet

31. Visit the Blue Bell Creamery

32. Bake homemade bread

33. Successfully have a plant of some sort (i.e. keep it alive for more than 1 week)

34. Get a College Station library card

35. Update my blog more regularly

36. [Find a boy to help me] put up my hammock swing

37. Watch Aladdin

38. Go stargazing

39. Watch The Twilight Zone, per Will’s recommendation

40. Visit Joelle at the YMCA of the Rockies this summer

41. Figure out how to register the van in TX and then do it

42. Get a TX driver’s license

43. Hang out in Austin with Caitlin and Joe and other such fantastic people

44. Watch The Sound of Music

45. Acquire a book of Martha Snell Nicholson’s poems

46. Acquire more children’s books

47. Memorize more of the Bible

48. Take a walk in a park

49. Write more

50. Volunteer for something

51. Go to a playground and play on the swings

52. Have a tea party

53. Learn how to sew and/or knit

54. Watch an episode of The Office, per Lee’s recommendation

55. Read The Mysterious Benedict Society books, per Teeko’s recommendation

56. Go ice skating more often

57. Go on a boat ride of some sort

58. Go to Plato’s Closet

59. Write a short story based on a childhood memory

60. Make toffee almond crunch candy

61. Go running in the rain.

62. Name the van. For reals.

63. Paint with watercolors

64. Go to a concert

65. Go on a bike ride

66. Watch Lina sing at Carnegie Hall

67. Celebrate National Ice Cream day on July 18^th

68. Watch the sunset with a friend

69. Visit the lovely Ms. Jenny Jenkins at some point in whatever city/state/country she happens to be

70. Find a neurosurgeon for Christina and get a medical visa for her

71. Go to a zoo

72. Go to a museum

73. Climb a tree

74. Get a hymnbook

75. Hang out with Kevin and Danielle

Congratulations!

Just want to congratulate my brother Kevin and future sister-in-law Danielle on their engagement! So happy for you two!

Haiti Trip Report: Part 4

Tuesday, February 23

- We got up early to get to the airport around 5:30. Our Haitian cab driver came and picked us up, and when we got to the airport, he gave me several little cards with $20 credits and his name and phone number. So, if I’m ever back in Santo Domingo, I’m calling him to come drive me around! I wish we’d gotten Dmitri’s number, too, but oh well.

- We got to San Juan, Puerto Rico at 8am and went through customs and immigration. We still had about 4 hours until our flight to Fort Lauderdale, so we went outside to see if there was anything nearby to do. Kery asked a guy standing on the sidewalk if he had any suggestions, and he said that we could take the bus to the beach (about a 5-minute drive) for seventy-five cents each. So we did . . . When we got off the bus, we walked down to the beach and walked by the water for a few minutes. It was very pretty.

- We went to a little diner for breakfast/lunch. I was feeling rather terrible by this point (I got a cold just about the time we arrived back in the DR), and so I downed two glasses of cranberry juice in the hopes that it’d help my throat. After we ate, we stopped by Walgreens so that I could get some souvenirs from Puerto Rico—cough drops and Kleenex J Then we got back on the bus and went back to the airport. We had a momentary little panic when we first got on the bus because the bus clock said that it was 1:10pm. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 1pm. Fortunately, we quickly discovered that the bus clock was wrong; it was really only 10:30am.

- We got back to Fort Lauderdale around 3:30pm. Kery went off to his flight to Ohio; I hung out down near baggage claim for an hour or two while waiting to find out when my flight would be and where I’d be staying that night. I ended up making a reservation at a Best Western near the airport and then took the shuttle to the hotel. The shuttle driver was very nice, and we ended up having a really good conversation about Haiti and how God is faithful even (especially!) in hard times. That was really neat.

- We got to the hotel, and I went in to check in. However, they couldn’t find my reservation; turns out that I was at the wrong Best Western. Apparently this happens all the time; there are two Best Westerns near the airport, and guests from the one hotel always end up at the other, and vice-versa. So I had to wait for the driver to come back and take me to the other hotel. I was so ready by then to be done with traveling for the day and just be in my room, but it wasn’t a big deal. It actually ended up being really cool because the driver and I got to continue our conversation about how God is working in our lives. So that was encouraging.

- The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. A guy that my dad works with used his frequent flyer miles to get me a flight back to Texas on Wednesday morning, which was wonderful. Paul picked me in Houston, and we got back to College Station late that afternoon. And let me just say, after over 48-hours of traveling, it was so good to be home!

- Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to all of you who have been praying for me and encouraging me! Please don’t stop; I’m heading back to Haiti and to Notre Maison March 10^th! J I really appreciate all of your prayers and support; I am completely serious when I say that this trip was only possible because of your willingness to participate from a distance! I’m so thankful and in awe of the way God has brought so many people into the working-out of all the details of this trip!

o Kery, thank you for taking time off work and on such short notice to come with me on this crazy little adventure. Thanks for being willing to help “wherever needed” and for all you did to figure out where we needed to be and how to get there; I couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks for putting up with me—and for refraining from telling me I’m crazy the many times I said things that never really ended up making sense!

o Marci, you’re amazing, and I’m so thankful God put us both on that team in August! Thanks for suggesting that I contact Kery about this trip, and thank you for all of your prayers and encouragement and support. You are such a blessing to me!

o Lonnie, thanks for helping with all of the travel arrangements and for your encouragement!

o Kelsay, thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to drive to FLL to give us the money for Gertrude and the phone! That was incredibly helpful; thank you!

o Liz, thanks for driving me to Austin at 3:30am J You’re fantastic.

o Leslie I., thank you for your prayers and your support!

o Leslie C., Anna, Jennifer, Cindy, Caitlin, Caroline, Paul, Christy, and the many others of you who have been praying, again, THANK YOU!!!

o All of my coworkers, thanks for covering shifts for me and for helping make it possible for me to go; y’all are wonderful!

Haiti Trip Report: Part 3

Sunday, February 21

- We were supposed to fly out of Port au Prince at noon. I spent time with the kids in the morning, and then around 10am, Germaine came to take us to the airport. When we got there, we waited in the line for 20 minutes or so before we made it to the front. We showed out passports to the lady checking the passenger lists, and she couldn’t find us. I showed her a copy of our reservation (which was with Spirit), and she said that she just had the lists for American Airlines. She pointed us to another guy, who was with AirFrance, and he said that Spirit had cancelled their flights. We tried to still get inside the airport to figure out what to do, but they wouldn’t let us in since we weren’t on any of the passenger lists. The AirFrance guy just told us to “go home” and then take a bus to the Dominican Republic to fly out from there. I was a bit amused by the “go home” part—yeah, that’s what we’re trying to do!

- We called Gertrude and let her know what was going on, and she sent Germaine to come get us. At first, finding out that our flight had been cancelled was kind of like a punch in the gut because I’d already said good-bye to the kids and had it in my mind that we were going back to the States. But I knew that God had a reason for changing our plans and that He’d work out a way for us to get home. I actually was kind of curious/excited then about what else God had for us on this little adventure.

- We went back to Gertrude’s and I spent some time online figuring out how to get back home. Gertrude told us about Capital Coach Line, which is the bus that she takes when she goes to Santo Domingo. So I looked it up, and it turned out that it was a little cheaper than the Caribe Tours bus that we’d taken to Port au Prince. We decided to go with that, getting us to Santo Domingo Monday afternoon, and I also got us a flight from the DR to Fort Lauderdale via Puerto Rico for Tuesday.

- I spent the rest of the afternoon playing with the kids, which was fantastic. I’m so thankful for that extra time with them. I sat on a mat near the tent in the yard for a long time with Gabi, Carly, and Christina. Carly was having such a fun time picking up rocks and giving them to me—she’d yell “whoa!” every time she put them in my hands. It was neat seeing her playing like that. I also spent some time teaching several of the boys some English phrases. We worked on “What is your name?” and “How old are you?”. They had a lot of fun with that. Later they tried their English out on Kery, which was really funny, because after they used up their two questions, they would come ask me how to say a word (hair, star, airplane, MINUSTAH, etc) and then go tell Kery that one word. They were cute.

Monday, February 22

- It took me a long time to fall asleep Sunday night—a lot on my mind, I guess—and I woke up several times throughout the night. Sometime around 3:30am, I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep. Around 4:30, my bed started shaking. It probably only lasted about 10 seconds or so, and I kind of wondered if I was just dreaming or if it really was another aftershock. When I got up a few hours later and went downstairs, several of the Haitians were talking about it. Apparently it was a 4.7 aftershock. They kept saying, “Li te fó, fó, fó” (it was strong, strong, strong). A little while later, one of the nannies who had left for the night came back and said that near where she was in Carrefour, another house had fallen.

- I didn’t really have time with the kids before we had to leave to go to the bus, but I did bring Christina upstairs and held her while I ate breakfast. Then I said good-bye to Gertrude and the kids again, and we left. We got to the place where you buy the bus tickets around 7:30 or so; there are currently US troops staying at the bus terminal, so we had to buy our tickets through the fence and then go across the street and a little way down the road to get to the bus. When we got to the bus, we found out that though the bus was scheduled to leave at 10am (according to the website), it was actually going to be leaving in just a few minutes. We just made it!

- At the border, they told us to get off the bus and take our luggage to be inspected, but since Kery and I both just had backpacks, they just waved us away. Which was very good, considering my backpack is absolutely stuffed full and it’s not easy to make it all fit back in again! We were at the border for about an hour or so. My US cell phone started getting service again, so I was able to see several texts that had been sent to my phone over the past few days.

- I got to see more of the Dominican on this bus ride since I wasn’t exhausted like I’d been when we came. It’s a pretty country, especially the mountains J. It reminded me a lot of Ecuador as far as roads and houses and towns go. It’s much cleaner than Haiti.

- We got to the bus station in Santo Domingo around 4pm. We didn’t really have a plan, besides hopefully finding a not-too-expensive hotel. We actually ended up getting a Haitian taxi driver, who was very helpful. He took us to the Hotel Mango in Boca Chica, which is a little town over by the airport. And then the guy that helped us at the hotel was Haitian, too, so that was fantastic. I was much more comfortable with that—being able to speak Creole—than having to try to figure out Spanish! Our taxi driver even gave us a $10 discount on our ride and then arranged to come pick us up in the morning to go to the airport.

- After we checked into the hotel, we went in search of pizza. We ended up with a little Dominican man named Enrique who spoke a little English and decided to be our tour guide. Reminded me of a certain experience in Jacmel several years ago… So he had dinner with us, and since we were in a touristy area, we went into a few of the shops. Then we went down to the beach for a few minutes. The stars were beautiful.