I Am Lagossette /Je Suis Lagossette

There are seconds that define moments and as *Monia crumpled to the ground against the door of my house in her poorly buttoned nightgown, I knew change had come.  Words tumbled, nearly incoherent,

"Mica is my neighbor!  It is her son.  It is Christian against Christian.  Oh Jesus, oh Jesus..."  she sobbed... "I don't know what to do... I don't know what to do."

A short time earlier, Monia's daughter, around 5 months pregnant, had walked to a neighbor's house to use the toilet.  In the early dark, a young man she knew well, approached her with ill intent, and after she managed to refuse his sexual demands he became enraged.  With a sharp machete, he cut off her ear leaving just the lobe and bare cartilage to bear witness to the double assault she had just endured; a reminder for all of time of his thoughtless rage and her fear-filled attack.

Wails rose in Lagossette.  "Om-way... Omway"

In that moment, in an insignificant village in the rural northern countryside of Haiti, everything changed.  The young attacker ran away into the sugarcane seeking the protection from the same darkness with which he tried to cover his crime, while his brothers, desperate with fear for him and anger at him, searched with flashlights and called his powered-off phone.  Much of the village gathered under the streetlight on the cratered road, stunned and saddened, angry and vindictive, texting and calling friends, trying to understand what had just happened among them.  These were their neighbors, their cousins, their family, their friends.


Monia is my friend.  We have walked through both difficult and joy-filled days.  She has a generous, faith-filled heart and is quick to turn the burdens of life over to the Giver of life.  She has prayed over my children, laughed with me until our tears rolled, struggled with life and death within her own womb, taught me how to tend a passionfruit vine, and fed our dog parts of her meager lunch.  She is a steady beam of light and everyone knows her gentleness.  I am so very sad for this great evil to enter her life.  My tears began as I pulled her from the dusty doormat to a chair, and the groans began shaping the words of the terrible truth that had just occurred.  I held her hand and called her my sister.  I prayed over her and wiped her face with my shirt.

Another mother wept, too.  She did not sleep, instead, she cried through the night because of the pain and shame her son brought to the family; cried because she knew in that moment her son chose to leave the quiet village life for years in prison if he was not first killed by revenge-seeking family.  She cried because Monia is her neighbor.  It is her daughter.  It is Christian against Christian... and what is she to do...

A couple of our men (Kirk and Joel) drove Monia, her daughter, and a few others to the hospital.  There was little they could do besides prevent infection.  Though if there is a bright note, a visiting plastic surgeon arrives today.  A small grace in the midst of pain...

What are we to do with this great sadness!  The heaviness covered all of Lagossette in the night as friends and neighbors, unable to close their eyes in sleep stood in the street.  Together.  Bearing the weight.  Together.  Remained a village.  Together.

This morning the sun rose, with it's usual fanfare of brilliance and strength.  It rose proclaiming a new day in defiance of anything the dark had allowed.  It rose because the God of the great, complicated, beautiful, pained world willed it to.  And today I pray that Lagossette will stand together.  I pray that mother will stand with mother, holding the broken pieces, and allowing God to stitch their lives back together.  I pray that neighbor will be with neighbor and Christian with Christian, because that is all that they can do.

Today I stand with Lagossette.  Today I AM Lagossette because evil can rear it's beastly head any time or place or culture.  But more importantly, Christ has given us power to love even over great evil; power to heal, even in the face of deep tragedy and today I am a part of a community where the peace of Christ is needed and the peace of Christ is near.  Please pray for my community today.

*Names have been changed to help protect the privacy of my friends.

Redemption Story - A Knotted Ball of Grace

When he arrived at Children of the Promise, he came with the label "abandoned" because his family of origin had left him for good.  A small, fierce, boy with chocolate skin and eternally brown eyes --left by man; loved by God.  And so another God story of redemption began.  Not the kind of saving we like to think of where a great hero sweeps in and makes everything aright, but an earthy, nuanced one, full of hope and bitterness, joy and loss, all entwined in a knotted ball of grace.  This is *Jean's story... and ours, too.

One of the great joys I get to be a part of in my role as Infant Mental Health Provider at COTP is to help children transition when adoptive parents finally get the go ahead to come pick them up.  That is happening right now, and today our first farewell in over two years is happening!  This is a moment of celebration to be sure, but all week I have been thinking about how adoption is a true reflection of the Biblical narrative and a re-telling of the "already - not yet" paradigm that story tells.  By this, I mean that the entire Bible points to a fullness of God's glory coming, having come, and being not yet completed.  The taste of fullness is on our lips!  This is revealed in the history of man's brokenness with God, Jesus coming for redemption of mankind, and all of creation groaning and waiting for his final return when all will be made new.  It is breathing in the beauty all around us and waiting to be complete. That story is being retold in one life here and now.

Having recognized that families are the best place for raising kids, and moving to a foster-parent style of caregiving at COTP, Jean moved into a family home three years ago.  His foster parents, perfectly imperfect, moved from strangers to caregivers to parents over the course of time.  In the usual style of parenting they changed his diapers, played on the floor, lost their tempers, took his temperature, let him eat too much candy, tucked him in bed with kisses... all the while knowing their job was to love him until it was time to let him go.  This child slept each night under the protection and care of those who understood that in order for this sweet boy to be able to love, he must be loved well.  

This involved risking connection knowing the heartbreak that would come.  This involved laying down their lives for the life of another – a reflection of redemption.  This involved Christ-like love.

Just a few nights ago a Papa leaned in for the last time for a goodnight kiss before bed, unable to hold back the tears pressing in for release.  A Mama mindlessly prepped 7 bowls of rice for lunch before her breath stuck in her throat, realizing it was one bowl too many.  The ache of loss after having loved deeply is oh so real!  They let a child go having offered restoration and renewal, knowing they now enter into a time of a life remembered and mourned.

But that is not the whole story.  Three years ago a family responded to God's call to care for the orphan and began a long process of bringing a child to a forever family.  An imperfect solution in a broken place but a faith-filled response lined with God-light - another small reflection of redemption.  So they came this week, knowing their child is loved and loves others, knowing the transition will involve more pain and loss than joy at the outset, knowing they will make mistakes and knowing it will take time for the emotional reality to match the legal one.   They come having entered a bittersweet love, as well.  They come offering restoration and renewal, knowing there will be a life remembered; a life mourned. 

In foster care a good outcome follows risking connection and permitting relationship to be the healing balm that allows the neural pathways for attachment to even form.  It involves loving well and letting go.

In order to adopt well, initially, one must resolve to parent without what comes more naturally with biological children-- love a stranger in your home and sometimes submit to the smothering need of a child frantic for attachment.  Of course, at the outset, foster parents experience much of this as well, but adoptive parents agree to do this for the long haul.

Jean carries his monkey and backpack everywhere as if those are items that will keep him safe in this transition from one family to another.  They are the only items that tie his two worlds together.  He did not ask to be born to a family unable to care for him.  He did not ask to be brought to strangers for care or turned over to yet others for a lifetime.  He may feel anger and sadness and powerlessness in many areas of his life.  He may not want a good-bye party.

But bit-by-bit, in small doses of trusting relationship, he may feel cherished, held, and secure.  He may come to know, through the example and experience of those reflecting a small piece of a big God, that his life is part of a greater story of redemption that encompasses us all.  And because God has invited Jean, and foster parents, and adoptive parents and vast community before and after them to be a part of this story, a new day will come -- a day that is already dawning in our hearts and lives.  Until then we will choose to walk a nuanced path, tasting all of life with the bitter and sweet entwined.  These are the gray spaces, the blurry edges, the broken Hallelujah we walk until Christ comes again in glorious clarity.  What a great day that will be!

(*Jean is not the child's real name, in order to protect the privacy of the child and his family.  Permission is given by COTP and those involved in this adoption to write about Jean's story.)