For The Unheard

After around a month of living at the orphanage, I could finally manage to have conversations in Creole. I was sitting in the yard with one of the workers, watching the kids run around the broken pool. I watched as a little girl named Lolli ran crazily from one end to the other. She was a kid that had bounds of energy, and could go without stopping the entire day. She had noticeable scars on her knees that looked like thick patches of mud, and I had often wondered about them. I motioned towards Lolli, and asked my friend what had happened to give her those scars.

    She looked at me grimly and explained that a few years ago, Lolli got into trouble with some of the past workers at the orphanage and as a punishment, she was made to kneel down on her knees, kind of like a time-out, which is pretty common in Haiti.
    Except it became uncommon when Lolli was made to kneel on the cement sidewalk in the hot sun for hours on end. 

    When Lolli was finally allowed to stand, her knees were bleeding so badly that she was taken to the hospital where they had to surgically work on her bones.

    She was only four years old.

    I remember going up to Lolli one evening and I placed my hand on one of her knees, where her skin had been melted off all those years ago. "Sometimes they still hurt," She said. I had nothing I could say.

                                                                                           November 2013

    

    When I came to Haiti in 2013, I thought I was moving to spend the rest of my life in an orphanage where I would care for and love orphaned children. This was my dream, and made perfect sense to me. I loved kids, in fact, I was great with kids. I took the command to care for orphans and widows very seriously, and wanted to spend my life making unwanted and abandoned children feel loved and wanted and important. 

    But after just three months of living in an orphanage, I returned home reeling from my experience. 

    Those three months were some of the hardest months I have ever faced still. And it wasn’t because I suddenly had given up pretty much everything. It wasn’t the constant hunger and sickness I faced. It wasn’t the fact that I was very much alone, that I was constantly enveloped by darkness, that I was covered in human fecies and urine every day, or even that I slept on a rat-infested mattress. 

    All of that was hard. Very hard.

    But that’s not what had me reeling, not what had sent me home.

    In those few months I had begun to uncover a truth, a truth that I continued to unravel for the next three years of my life. Something that would utterly wreck me, that would change all my plans, would cause me to lose friends and supporters, and bring a warfare into my life that I was unprepared for.

    Lindia was my diva, my dancer girl who was full of sass. I first met Lindia while I lived in the orphanage with her in 2013. I grew extremely close to her, this 11 year old who could hold her own. We would throw dance parties for all the kids in the broken pool in the backyard, and she would show me wild routines that she thought I was somehow capable of doing with her. 

    Often when the younger kids were asleep, I would have these deep conversations with Lindia and some of the other older kids. It would be pitch black and we would be huddled together, constantly swatting the mosquitos on each other’s legs. I sometimes asked about their families, about what had happened to their parents, and Lindia would always shrug quiety, looking at the ground, saying that she didn’t know.

    After one of those conversations I decided to ask the director, and when I inquired that day in 2013, I was told that her parents had abandoned her and her brother. 

    In 2014, I decided to inquire again. This time, I was told that her mother was actually dead, and that it was her father who had abandoned them. 

    In 2015, I came to the orphanage after a trip to the U.S. This time I didn’t find Lindia or her brother. They were gone, and I was told that a parent came and took them away. I spent that week crying uncontrollably. Here was this girl I had come to love like my own child, and now I had no idea if she was okay, if she was being taken care of. What kind of care would she receive from a parent that had abandoned her for five years? 

    A week later, Lindia, having memorized my phone number, called me and we arranged to meet up. She probably thought I was crazy for the way I ran towards her when I seen her, and glared at her father the entire way back to his house. When we arrived, there was a woman who looked so much like Lindia I didn’t even have to ask who she was. Her supposingly dead mother was very much alive. We all sat together and she began to tell me the story of how after the earthquake, the director had tricked her into giving up her children, telling her that they would be sent to the United States to study and get a quality education in their program. Only the director severed all contact with Lindia’s parents once they took the children away. Lindia’s mom searched for years, and not only did she miss them and worry about her kids, her community reviled her and said that she sold her children to foreigners in exchange for food. She finally found a source that connected her to the director and after threatening to get the police involved, she found the orphanage. She was appalled at how dirty and skinny and mistreated her kids looked and took them home.

    Many people contact me and ask about the orphanage work that I do, and rightly so, as I have gone rather quiet about what it is exactly that I’m doing here in Haiti.

    But the truth is, I am not doing orphanage work, in fact, I am trying to combat the orphanage system and prevent children from living in them at all.

    I have uncovered two great truths in my experiences. The first is this. Children suffer greatly in orphanages. They go hungry, they stay dirty, and they become so malnourished that they sometimes die. They lie next to their feces and sleep on metal bars frames. I have seen children denied education or begin going to school but never get to finish out the year. I have seen kids get kicked out of orphanages at 18 without even finishing their elementary education. I have experienced directors deny children needed surgeries, watch as children are left by themselves for days on end. I have seen children made to sit in chairs without moving for days and days. I know children who were lied to about their parents being dead, and I also know children who are manipulated to lie about their parents being alive.

    The second great truth is this. There are around 750 orphanages in Haiti, and around 80% of children living in these orphanages have at least one living parent, and almost all have other living family members. The truth is, children living in orphanages aren’t actually orphans. In the three years that I spent working with kids in orphanages, almost all of the children I have met have parents. But I have discovered these parents are often tricked into giving up their children or think that they are giving their child more opportunities by sending them to live in an orphanage, which in most cases, is not a reality.    The sad thing is, I know so many Americans and other foreigners that support the orphanages I served with or ones like them, who are aware of both the suffering these children are facing and also the fact that these children could be reunited with their families.

    It has been really hard for me to talk about the truth about orphanages. In the past, I have tried talking to people who support orphanages financially or help run them, and these conversations have been met with some pretty serious lash backs. After being threatened many times, being accused of lying, and being blown-off because I am young, I had become very discouraged and frankly scared to share about the truths I have learned here.

    I recently attended a meeting where Non-Profit workers, missionaries, and professionals from all over Haiti gathered together to discuss the orphanage crisis and the importance of family preservation. This meeting was important for me to attend for so many reasons, but most importantly, it made me realize that I was not alone in my experiences. So many people, both foreign and Haitian are becoming aware of the great neglect and abuse occurring in orphanages, and are coming together to combat it.

    In Proverbs 31, it says

                                              “Open your mouth for the mute,
                                           for the rights of all who are destitute.
                                           Open your mouth, judge righteously,
                                        defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

    I have been afraid to speak up because of what I have faced in the past, but I cannot remain quiet out of fear. I have seen too much suffering to keep my mouth closed, and have also seen so much goodness in family preservation to not open it.
    Earlier this year, my husband and I decided it was finally time for us to create a Non-Profit. We chose the name Ansanm which means together in Haitian Creole, as our vision is to empower families to stay together, and to prevent children from living in orphanages or other similar situations. We try to be strategic in how we come alongside of families, in targeting the issues that we have learned of why parents feel it is necessary to send their children to live in orphanages.
We are currently working with around 20 families in various parts of Haiti. Some of them have been reconciled with their children like Lindia’s family, some were in the process of searching for an orphanage to take their child, and others were simply vulnerable to being separated based on poverty and other situations.
   

      Every time I visit Lindia and her family, I find myself just staring at her. The change in her quality of life is amazing. She wears clean clothes and has put on healthy weight. She smiles. She has a real life now- where no longer is she confined to an orphanage building, but attends a school regularly, goes to church, participates in a dance class and performs in a group. Lindia does chores and gets to interact with her community. What is most beautiful for me to see is that she is a part of her family, where she respects her mother, where she takes care of her younger siblings and gets annoyed at her brothers. In January, Lindia’s mom will begin taking literacy courses in one of our programs to learn to read, write, and do basic math, and after that, we hope to give her some business training to start her own business.

  
    Lindia’s family has some dysfunction and things to work through. In fact, most every family we work with has a lot going on and have issues they need to deal with and things that they need to change.
    But my family also has a lot of dysfunction and stuff that we are trying to work through, and I am sure that yours does too. Families are messy, and they are hard- but families are what God designed and created for us. They are WORTH preserving and reconciling and restoring. Working with families is hard, honestly it’s pretty trying some days when you are trying to work through a family’s mess.
    But it’s so, so worthwhile and important.

    Lolli and Lindia’s lives used to look the same, day in and day out. But now? They lead completely different lives. Lolli is still in that orphanage. You might wonder why I even shared her story in the first place. I want people to know about her pain, grasp that she is a little girl, and realize that our voice can prevent and stop her suffering. I want people to fight for her and for children like her all over the world.
    Ask questions. Do some digging. Have those conversations. Pray for them. Speak up. Open your mouth- for those who are muted, for those who want to be heard but aren’t. 

* We are currently in need of people to come alongside of us and support what we are doing monthly, as we are hoping to hire some Haitian staff to work with us in January. This will be incredibly helpful and important for our ministry! If you feel interested in supporting our ministry, please reach out to me, I would love to chat with you!
    Please feel free to check out our website to learn more about what we are doing in Haiti!

https://ansanmhaiti.org
courtney@ansanmhaiti.org

Ruthless Belief

        

        

        The hate in his eyes took my breath away. I have never wanted to crawl out of my skin so badly. A few men started yelling in my direction and I averted my eyes and kept walking, willing myself to become invisible. It was an eery, creeping thing that I started to feel with their hot stares, something so strange to be felt. It was a directed, pointed kind of hate.
A few mornings later Jimmy hurries towards me and takes my hands. “I’m going to try and make it to the police station now.”
He smiled reassuringly and I tried to mask the tears burning against my eyes as he whispered he loved me and rode off on that motorcycle. I shut the rickety doors to the house and dissolved into a bewildered and overwhelmed mess.

   Jesus, why did you let this happen?

Rioting. Burning. Shooting. Attacks. I tried not to imagine what Jimmy may come across on the road. I felt the long swallow in my lungs as I thought about the risks he was taking in order to try and protect me.

For days I asked Jesus where he was, and for days I asked when he was going to act for me. But now…now I began to wonder what it meant if he did not.

I was in a world of red earth and falling rain, of spending days walking miles in the treeless mountains, holding newborns and meeting with families suffering from the hurricane. I was back in the Grand Anse region, racing against sunlight, and shivering as the night wind slithered through the cracks in the walls.
We were back to continue with the housing project and our days were full of working out the plans for 34 houses. It was supposed to be a trip filled with progress and hope and preparation. And it was. 

But underneath it all was a fresh, new kind of fear I had yet to feel before.

 










    It was ironic really, having a heavily sought after politician arrested by the US government on the very same day I unknowingly decided to travel to his hometown.
His arrest lead to attacks and violence against Americans and other foreigners in the region. People barricaded the roads, we were stuck, and the information from the outside began to pour in.
“Stay in the house.”
“Don’t go out.”

“You have to find a way out of there.”
After a week of waiting for things to calm down, we started to hear the whispers and questioning of why our house hadn't been burnt down yet, and so we decided to go to the police to help us get out. After a long 12 hours of being passed off to different Haitian riot police and UN soldiers at every checkpoint, we finally made it to a neighboring city. The day after that, we arrived home and I fell upon my bed, wondering why God even let that happen at all.

Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. matthew 10:16

When something hard happens in your life, maybe even something terrible, the thing that everyone always tells you is to just trust God. And this is the understanding that God promises to protect you, that everything will be okay, that He will work everything out, and you don’t need to be afraid.

This was the way I have trusted God. In Romans, He promises to work everything for my good, and I have held on to those words for years and years.

But this year, these last few months even, I have learned something different about what it means to trust God. It was a hard truth to process through, a part in faith that I think we never seem to get to because it is the part in faith that seems like it is too far, too extreme.

I moved to Haiti twice. First, the thought to be permanent, and the second, the actual permanent. The first time I moved to Haiti- I moved to the unknown- where I knew no one at all, where no one spoke my language, and I was caged inside an orphanage with all of its abuse and neglect and suffering.
The second time I moved to Haiti was permanent in my own apartment- with no security, no high walls, no car, and little connections.
In both times, so many called me stupid and naive. Others called me brave. But looking back on those decisions four years later, I realize I was neither.

What I was, was scared. I was so scared to do this thing without so many people supporting me- to move in with strangers, to have to figure out how to survive, to have to take risks, and to feel like a child who doesn’t know how to function in a place so different.

I heard the stories, heard the voices telling me not to do this. Mine was one of them after all.

But this is what God was telling me to do, and so I trusted Him, and I went.

I wasn’t brave, there was something about the way I trusted God that somehow missed the mark of what bravery entailed.

Bravery: the admirable quality of being able to confront frightening things; the quality of having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty.

When I moved to Haiti, I trusted God to protect me, I believed in the cliché that the safest place for me to be is in the center of God’s will.

But back then, I forgot I was a sheep and that there were wolves. That sometimes sheep escape, and sometimes sheep just don’t.

It was as if I trusted God to keep me out of danger, that he would let no harm befall me, that because I trust Him, He would work everything out for my good.

But I think all of these years, I have misread that verse in Romans.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

It never says He will work everything out for my good in this short lifetime of mine. It’s as if now, when I read that verse, I get this feeling that this verse isn’t even talking about me. It’s talking about us, it’s talking about the whole world.

It wasn’t for Peter’s good to be crucified, wasn’t for Stephen’s good to be stoned to death. It wasn’t for Jesus’s good that he was pierced, and beaten, and hung like a butchered animal on the cross.
But it was for our good. Our good.

My trust in God was limited, and I was not brave. I wanted God to work things out always for my good, not for our good. Bravery, true bravery, is when you face and accept all of the possible dangers and frightening things and do it anyways. Bravery is being scared and doing it anyways- not because you believe that God will keep the terrible from happening, but because you know He will always do what is good for the world.

I looked at my watch. 8:50 pm. Jimmy was never late, and if he was, he always called to let me know. Five minutes later my phone rang.

“Hey, I’m coming…I had an accident.”
A police car pulled up to the house shortly after and my heart started to race at seeing the flashing lights.

I started to say his name and lost my words as I saw the blood covering his clothes and the cloth held to his face.

When we got to the hospital, a lump formed in  my throat as he removed the cloth to reveal a deep hole dug in his face. That lump stayed for hours in the hospital, and then after as I washed the blood from his body and stains from his clothes. The lump stayed for days after, as I imagined and dreamed of him suddenly collapsing from an untreated head injury.

This was the fifth near-death experience in a single year for this boy of mine. Three accidents, an unfortunate incident of getting caught in a riot, and another of begin held at gunpoint by a couple of thieves. The fifth was suddenly too much.

For years I said that I would never marry. I had my excuses and I never committed, never allowed myself to love someone in that way.

Getting married used to be my biggest fear, and yet now I had a whole new one to work with.

Here I was, sitting outside the hospital, waiting for the doctor to stitch up this boy’s face, this boy that I never meant to love, to whom I would marry in a few months. And I was terrified, so terrified of losing the life I now valued over my own.

There was something about this moment that brought me back to when I was hiding in a house in the Grand Anse.

There is something about intense fear that brings us into a deeper commitment to Jesus.

In the past year, I have come from a trust in God that used to only think for my good, to a trust in God that chooses to continue finding my hope in Him even when He doesn’t answer in a way that is good for me.

Over the past year I have pleaded with God to save friendships that weren’t saved, asked God to end the suffering in the orphanages where I visit, and to protect families affected by the hurricane. 

It’s a year later and those friendships ended, the suffering in those orphanages continue, and a little baby died from becoming sick from the living conditions after the hurricane.

God brought me safely out of the Grand Anse, and He has kept my fiancé safe and alive this year.

It’s hard to know why God chooses what He chooses, but He remains God and I remain not. If it was up to me, I would choose all that’s best for me, all that’s best for what my eyes can see for this period of time. I would always choose to remain close to my friends, for those orphanages to be shut down, for that little baby to live. But I am not God and cannot see. I cannot see that if by separating from my friends we will actually be able to lead healthier lives and do more for the world, I cannot see that if by those orphanages remaining open they might reveal a deeper, larger problem to prevent them, I cannot see what that baby might have had to live through if that’s what God chose.
I don’t think it’s ever God’s plan for friends not to reconcile, or for children to suffer, or for babies to die. But because of sin, He uses even the ugliest, hardest of things to do good for us. Us, us the world.

 




            I have learned that trusting God is nothing less then ruthless belief. That when it’s dark and the light doesn’t appear, when it hurts and relief doesn’t come, when it fails and the reason isn’t there, love and faith grow even more. 

Jesus begged God to not have to go to the cross, he cried out, asked God pleadingly why He had forsaken him. But Jesus remained obedient. Bloody, broken apart, humiliated, stripped off all that once was his, alone and separated from God. 

That is ruthless belief, a kind of love and trust in God that can seem unbearable. It is a trust that rips you apart and breaks your heart. One that has us crawling on our knees just to get through it.

I was driving somewhere in Pennsylvania last month, thinking about all of these things when this cheesy Christian song came on the radio, literally just echoing the entirety of all that was in my head.

I know you’re able and I know you can

Save through the fire with your mighty hand

But even if you don't 

My hope is you alone

I know the sorrow, and I know the hurt

Would all go away if You’d just say the word

But even if you don't

My hope is You alone.

I have cried these words a lot this year. I have cried these words too.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it is well with my soul.

This, this is ruthless belief. This is surely what it means to trust Jesus. Because my anxiety, my sorrow, my hurt, all that which I have gone through in the past few years, it all seems to come to these moments where my hands are up and my heart feels finished. Where I am crying from all the pain inside, asking God for the strength to sing it is well with me. That somehow when Jesus is walking beside us, even the pain and suffering which befalls us has us falling more deepy in love with the kind of God He is.

The kind of God I follow walks with me. He is the kind of God that longs to romance me and wrap me up in kindness and sweet things. He is the one who promises me to a land flowing with milk and honey. He is the God who wants nothing more then my love, the God who makes His home within me, who’s voice is in my mind, pleading me to choose the light and all that is good. He is the kind of God who died a horrible death. He is the kind of God worth following.

It is He who gives me strength to sing that it is well. It is He who I follow into the flame and sorrow. It is He who works all things for our good. It is He who gives me every reason to trust.

When Jimmy got down on one knee and asked me to marry him, it was one of my greatest fears coming to life.

Marriage. The commitment I never wanted to make. Fear after fear raced in my thoughts as Jimmy waited for my answer.
He asked me soon after we returned from the Grand Anse, in a grassy land in a voodoo influenced area where we work with five families.I couldn’t seem to look at him, instead I looked out at the vast valleys and rolling hills of Saut D’eau. And I felt God beside me, just loving me, his love overpowering me.

And then I said yes. Yes, in a tongue that is foreign from my own, in a place that used to feel so strange and different, to a man that used to be a stranger a few years ago.
The thing about perfect love is that it casts out fear, and I’m not talking about Jimmy’s love. Jimmy was just as scared of marriage as I was.
But God’s love is so perfect that it casts the fear out of our lives so that we can trust Him to do what He asks, to do good for the world and for each other.
Sometimes we are afraid to get married. Sometimes we fear for our life. Sometimes we fear for their life. Sometimes we fear the fire, and sometimes we fear the good and wonderful things.

But God is there, waiting for us to trust Him entirely, so that He can use our lives, whether in beauty or sorrow, to make all things good for the world.

And He will give us the strength that lies in the confines of our hearts to be brave, and to sing it is well, it is well with my soul.