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.