Give what you've got

Haiti. It’s a country I have come to love. 

And can I just say right now, that was nowhere on my radar? Like it just came out of left field. One day our family can barely locate it on a map, and the next we are there, loving these people and calling them family. 

No doubt that our trips there abound in stories, illustrations and endless spiritual lessons. Experiencing gut wrenching poverty coupled with observing it’s victims live with such joy, humility and grace is just challenging. And convicting. 

A moment forever burned in my memory occurred on my first official Haiti day.  We had spent the morning in the mountainside of Jacmel. Our friend Joseph teaches English at a school up in the mountains and we got to tag along and be a part of the conversations.  

After the session, we are told we will be going to visit a woman in the village. We hike through the countryside, taking footpaths past cemeteries and pigs nosing through the trash, and come to a clearing and a home. The most beautiful Haitian woman leaves her antique sewing machine to greet us and welcome us into her inviting home. Painted with bright reds and greens, her two-room home is meticulous clean. She is beaming with pride and invites us to sit and have coffee. Such love and strength beams from this woman. I learn she is a seamstress. She has a daughter who is as equally graceful. Her home reflects tender care and attention to detail. She seems so proud and blessed to have us in her home. I’m humbled. 

After this delightful visit, we all start the trek back to the car, when I realize I’ve had my fill of the sweet, black Haitian coffee.

I need to pee.

I’m not really sure how to handle this. We are in the woods and I’m a Kansas girl, which means I know how to pee in the woods. But we are with a group of people and a crowd is now following us back to our car. How could I sneak away? 

I tell our host and the young daughter leads me back up the path to their home. She tells her mom I need the restroom and the beautiful Haitian momma ushers me in her home into the back room.  I’m not sure what is happening, but there is some awkward rustling going around and I want to yell out, “Really, I can pee out back-- no problem” when she reaches underneath her bed to retrieve a small basin that contains all her toiletries—tooth brush, hair brush and comb. She dumps these out onto the bed, places the basin in the middle of the floor, motions for me to use it and steps out of the room. I glance around at the spotless simple bedroom shared by this family. I realize this is her washbasin. And she has given it to me to pee in. Humbled is an understatement. I want to shout, “You don’t even know me! And if you did, you’d know I can pee out back like everyone else!” 

But, I realize this is her way of honoring me and honoring Jesus. She is using WHAT she has to be a blessing to whomever she can. She is valuing me, a white American woman she has never met before and will probably never see again, over a possession she uses daily.

People before things.  

I think of the many times I have hesitated to loan out my car, give up the better seat, to take the smallest piece. Or even more so, I think of the times I talk myself out of helping others because I don’t think what I have to offer them is good enough-that I won’t be enough-so I don’t give it. 

I think how complicated I make it sometimes. 

But here in this moment, through her example I sense God saying,

Just give what you’ve got.

Simple. And give it to whoever comes down my path. Stop with the self analysis and the self conscience hang ups and just simply give of yourself to others.

I hurry up and pee and with tear brimmed eyes I thank her and rush down to rejoin my family. 

Though the moment is gone, the memory and lesson from it remains in my heart forever. It's my choice now what to do with it. I'm choosing to give it, to shout it from the rooftops, in the hopes that God will use what I have for His glory.