At the Gates of Uncertainty

For reasons I’m still not completely certain of God would have me land in Haiti, my first international trip, just two hours before the massive 7.4 earthquake January 12, 2010. To say it was life altering doesn’t even begin to touch on my personal experience but here is a bit of reflection, eight years later.

His office is warm, a little too warm. The paint is grey, the furniture grey, why was everything grey? He sits hunched over in the chair across from me, I sit in the sloppy love seat with the flat cushion twisting my fingers in anxiousness and avoiding eye contact with him, staring out his office window into the dark night of twinkling downtown Fredericton.

“Tell me about the gate Heidi, you’ve mentioned it several times now.”
” I couldn’t go through it. I wanted to, but everytime I would go there, and I went dozens of times during those days, I would stop at the gate.”
“But they told you to come inside the gated property, because of the mobs moving up the hill, because it would be safer?”
“Yes, but my whole life had built up to a moment like this. I knew how I wanted the story to write. I knew who I wanted to be.”
“And who was that?”
“That even if I died doing it, I went down serving others, putting others before myself, following Jesus.”

He waits, it is a quiet, comfortable wait, and as he does I feel myself give in to the weight of it, fall back to January 2010 when the warm Haitian sunshine beat down on my cheeks, leaving them crimson beneath a layer of dust. Maybe it is the sagging couch, or maybe it is the warmth in the office, or maybe it is just the need to set it free these many months later.

I stood at the gates, cold, iron, “pretty”, I would have said just a day before. The gates and archway greeted the guests with flowers and green foliage, the hand carved furniture and art lining the entryway into the outer courtyards of the hotel. But now they served as a barrier to another world. They were closed shut. I had gone to the hotel gates 4 times that morning, determined to go out and do something. Though the injuries were far beyond anything I had ever witnessed before, maybe I  should have photographed something. If I couldn’t help medically, maybe I could chronicled things with photo’s to bring home as a witness of what was happening, to incite people to help. But I stopped at the gates, every time, the gates littered with dead bodies, bodies of some of the children I sat with the night before, bodies of mom’s and dad’s who had literally wore off the ends of their fingers digging out their children, sisters and brothers I’d cried with the night before, and it was unbearable.

I stared at the makeshift tents, mere bed sheets tied to trees everywhere. The wailing had stopped, people laid around, some bandaged, many bloodied and swollen. I looked twice to see if that particular body was alive or dead. I stopped, my heart my throat. I couldn’t go out there and shove a camera lens in the face of a mother holding her dying baby girl. I couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t do it. The struggle within me was strong. The sun was shining this day.  Some medical supplies had come. Some order was present, even though the ground still trembled and shook sending us intuitively running for wide open spaces. Annie was in the hotel entryway washing away blood. The EMT had fallen over some rubble and broken his ankle. He laid on a hotel poolside lounger making plans for something. He certainly appeared to have an action plan.

I wanted a plan. I longed to be a heroine, to step in and do something, really help, but I was immobilized. This wasn’t how it was to go. Surely this wasn’t why I was here.

“So what did you do?”  He asks gently.
“We waited.” I whisper, a lone tear escaping down my cheek.

We waited. Willard makes us laugh, “We are not doing nothing!” he told us, a smile on his face, “We are waiting! Waiting with purpose, for instruction, direction, a plan!” He made a joke that touched on how helpless we were all feeling. I could see the weight of responsibility for us resting on his shoulders as he attempted to get any connection with World Vision headquarters. He was most certainly our leader, keeping spirits high, making us laugh. We joked that he was our “Fearless leader- duct tape held high!” This humor, only funny in a situation like this, speaks to our heartbreak and truth.

We waited and we worried for our loved ones. We waited and dreamed they would come tell us how to help. We waited and we helped one another. We waited and wondered for our lives.

“Heidi, it wasn’t safe to go out into those streets alone in the days that followed the earthquake.  You had a responsibility to yourself, to your family, to the organization even.”
“Maybe.” The tears roll freely now.
“What stopped you, from going through those gates?” He presses me.
“I don’t know. I suppose because they told me not to. I suppose, I think I was afraid.”
“Yes and fear is very human isn’t it? Is it ok for you to be human too, like everyone else?” His question pierces my hurting heart.
“What did you learn, when you waited?”

I pause and think hard, wipe the tears from my wet cheeks and breathe deep trying to steady myself.

“He was there. He was all over it. God was in the waiting. The moment the earthquake hit I was shocked to think that was it, that I was going to die that way, but after that I was so sure of his presence with me. He was nearly tangible actually, I felt like I was on the cusp of seeing Him, if I just reached out my hand a little farther, He was so close. As I crawled out of the hotel wreckage, as I dozed in fitful sleep, as I made sandwiches and handed out drinks, as I sat with the other hotel guests, played with their little ones, I felt so protected, I’ve never known His presence like that. He was in the waiting.  Yes, at the gate of uncertainty, He was in the waiting.