the Light is God.

i miss Sadrak. i miss holding him. i miss hearing him speak. i miss picking him out of a crowd. i miss playing with him and teaching him to use his feet. i miss his hands and i miss his eyes. i miss all of the boys. i miss Tiwil and Kedesh. i miss Charles and Menos and Pecial.
i miss Haiti. i lived there. it seems so surreal, like a dream. it seems like i dreamed of living there but never really did. it seems like i was there long enough to have a picture in my mind but not really know the place. it seems like i was there long enough to hope but not really to help. it seems like i was there just long enough to begin to let go, but not quite long enough to hold on.

i think that i went to Haiti to help, but i don't know that i went with a lot of hope. i think that i was motivated by my own brokenness and by the brokenness, seen and unseen, which i knew to exist in this world. i was motivated by that vision of brokenness and by a desire, of heart or mind or spirit, to help.

perhaps i was tired of thinking that life isn't fair and decided that i should at least try to do something. perhaps i believed that when we ask God why He doesn't do something, He asks us the same question. perhaps i thought that there may be some truth to what is said about finding Jesus in the faces of the poor, the sick and hurting, the marginalized, the abandoned. perhaps i was just trying to do what i have been saying that i have been trying to do for so long: to stop living for myself and start living for others. or perhaps, though i tend to doubt it, i was just listening and following.

i have learned that i am not poor. i have learned that i have been trying to hope in what i can see. i have learned that i more often ask for clarity than faith.

i have learned that sometimes you can't help. i have learned that sometimes God gives you the desires of your heart, and then He takes them away. i have learned that sometimes God takes you to a place, only to turn you around and take you back. i have learned that sometimes God is silent, and that He wants us to be as well.

i have learned that sometimes everything is not illuminated. perhaps, never is everything illuminated. perhaps, mostly everything is dark. but in darkness a light shines on us. and that Light is God.