When You Get Back

When you get back we will go…

When you get back we will have…

When you get back we will start…

When you get back we will talk…

How those words have made my heart jump these last few weeks.  There’s been a nearly frantic desire to “complete” everything, do everything, make every memory, before this trip. I didn’t want to hear “When you get back”; inwardly I retaliated against it, I wanted it all now, glutinous on my loves, my work, my friendships, my blessings. I wanted every experience, every completed moment, and every photograph captured.

This isn’t normal behavior for me when I travel, this is Haiti trip behavior. I recognize it for what it is- well ok, I did after last Thursday’s snow storm threatened to change the plans I had made with my oldest girls and sent me into a mini tailspin- but even the knowing doesn’t help work through the emotions of it all.

What I’ve realized 8 years later, is that living through the Haitian earthquake of 2010 changed me, dramatically, as does every trip that has followed, as will this one. I won’t come home, not the same that is.  This makes good rational sense of course, but living it out isn’t a straight line of understanding but a confusing twist of emotion and experience.

We landed just 2.5 hours before the 7.6 earthquake ripped through Port-au-Prince, and consequently, the lives we’d previously known. As the realization of what was happening and the necessity of getting out of my hotel room dawned on my shaking body, my first thought was “Really? This is how I’ll go?” A flash of faces filled my mind’s eye, and an ache of regret over all I would miss.

I suppose with any significant trauma when you’re forced to stare your mortality in the face, you must re-evaluate your life, your values, your loves, your blessings. This many years later it can still be easy enough to slip back into the monotony of life, not appreciating all that is around me, but there is nothing like a return trip to Haiti to have every moment freeze framed, framed in emotion, and the unspoken “what if’s”.

What if this is my last bedtime tuck in with my littles?

What if this is my last night cozied up on my husband’s chest?

What if this is my last Sunday teaching Jesus to a hundred little eager hearts?

What if this is my last coffee date with a dear friend?

Melancholy you might say, over dramatic even, or for a moment a forced thankfulness, a burst of the heart, a clarity of understanding. Snowstorms and itinerary challenges and changes and I’m forced to leave things undone and unspoken.

No, I won’t say “Goodbye”.

No, I won’t say “See you soon”.

No, I won’t say “When I get back.”

But I will say I love you.