{rice, beans & love}

I just spent three weeks in the America. Bless it.

America has all the goods, but it also has this incredible numbing power over me. I get trapped in the aisles of Target, thinking I need all of it but knowing I don’t. I walk the hallways of the mall, now filled with holiday vendors and find myself wanting to buy all of it when I simply came into the mall to help my mom pick out a pair of new glasses and eat Chinese from the food court (it’s my ultimate guilty pleasure while Stateside!)

As a graphic designer myself, I can’t even handle all the pretty packaging and store fronts. It is so pretty, you just want to buy it all. And at Christmas time, it’s all the more enticing. Don’t even get me started on my trip through Bath and Body works.

Literally, the only reason I don’t buy it all (minus the fact I can’t actually afford it all) is that every time I reach to buy something off the shelf that I do not need, I can hear my mother’s voice in my head saying, “and how do you expect to get all of that back in a suitcase?” Valid point, mother. Fine, I won’t buy it.

Two fifty-pound suitcases fill up quick!

But, that’s not the point. My point is I’m back in Haiti, coming off the high of an over-stayed trip in Americaaaa. Side note: I had strange sores all over my hands upon my arrival in the States and my doctor thought it was leishmaniasis, (google it for yourself, it’s a real thing) so after a biopsy and two weeks of waiting for negative test results I unexpectedly got to enjoy over-stimulating Christmas shopping for two whole extra weeks.

So, here I am…back.

Yesterday, a ten-year-old was brought to the orphanage. Her mom leaves her at home, naked in the dirt on a daily basis. She has clubbed feet, doesn’t walk and has never gone to school a day in her life. We’re considering placing her in the orphanage. And, I just keep asking God why he continues to bring children who can’t walk into my life? Like, what’s up, God?

I was handed a list of needs for the Starfish program as we will be graduating ALL of the women in the program next month. We are looking to refocus the purpose of the program and the only way I feel we can do that is to start from scratch. Some of the women in the program have been around for 2+ years. It’s time. But, with that I asked them all to write what’s the biggest need they still have. Ten of them asked for new homes. Ten of them still don’t have safe shelter.

There’s an opportunity coming our way to employ a few women and so I asked the other two Haitian women who help run the Starfish program who we should consider employing. And, how do we even choose? Lumane has 7 children and needs a job. Viginie lives with an abusive boyfriend and a job may be a way out for her. Eglitha just had a newborn and needs a job, too. Then there’s Carmesuze and Rosier, too. Don’t forget Calix, she’s trying to feed her five babies, too.

Oh, let’s not forget that I still have unpaid fees at schools for Starfish kids, too.

So, here’s my Christmas wish: I simply want to meet the needs of my neighbors. The needs of my mamas and the needs of the people who come looking to us for hope. 

We can be the hope this year.

Guys…here’s my point. And, I’m going to be blunt…you’ve already got it all. If you have a job that allows you to pay your bills and a vehicle to transport you, you’re so well-off. If your kids have clothes on their back and a bed, where you have the honor to tuck them into every night, you’ve got more than you’ll ever know. If your kids get to go to school and be in extra-curricular activities and if you have a doctor to bring them to when they’re sick, you’re killing it as a parent. If the rain falls and you don’t have to think twice about getting wet, you’re so fortunate. If you never go to bed hungry or never have to worry about where your food will come from the next day, you’ve hit the jackpot. If you’ve ever said the words, “I don’t know what I want for Christmas…there’s nothing the kids really need this year…”

Guys, you just don’t even know how good you’ve got it.

I always feel this way around the holidays. Giving gifts is fun. I love gifting people, it’s probably why I’m in this line of work to begin with. Today, in fact, I got news that a mama who makes greeting cards for Rosie’s gave birth to a healthy set of twins last week, and it literally felt like Christmas. I filled a whole bag full of new onesies and blankets for the babies. Giving gifts is a blessing, simple as that. I love buying special things for the special people in my life. There’s nothing wrong with gift-giving. But, I just feel like there should be more to it than just giving stuff.

What if we said to our kids, instead of gifts you don’t need anyways, we are going to sponsor kids to go to school? What if we don’t do family gifts and build a family in Haiti a house this year? What if we challenge our workplaces to giving money instead of spending so much money on a holiday party? What if our schools collected money this year instead of doing a pizza party? I don’t know, it doesn’t have to be extravagant, but what if we just started a conversation and it led to something different…

Friends, I write with hope…and with a pit in my stomach, because there’s this urgency when I face the needs…that we can be the light this year. Our givings can snowball into something so much bigger than ourselves. Our intentional giving this holiday season can be so much more…

As you gather with your loved ones for Thanksgiving in two days, take in all that you have. So much more than you’ll ever need. Have hard conversations with your loved ones and dare to do something different this year. Dare to be the difference for a life, a kid, a family in Haiti.

Let’s be the hope. Let us bring heaven to earth.

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and we will be sure it makes a difference in Haiti