Greg said the drive to our job site would take four hours, give or take. Which is why I didn’t know what to think when, two hours later, we pulled to a stop in Hinche.
“Go ahead and unload. All of it,” Greg said, referring to our duffels and crates of supplies.
I didn’t understand. Why unload when we hadn’t yet arrived at LaJeune? According to the clock, we still had another two hours and miles to go.
We unloaded anyway, trusting our leader. Then, several minutes later, surrounded by our piles of gear, I watched our beautiful air-conditioned van and its driver turn around and head back to Port-au-Prince.
Uh-oh.
Enter a tiny white pickup truck. With hanging bumper, ripped canvas cover, and a see-through floorboard beneath the back seat.
A mistake. It had to be a mistake.
“Where’s our truck? The one taking us to LaJeune?” I asked Greg.
He laughed.
“Load up!” Greg smiled, clearly enjoying himself.
An hour later, we took off. Four of us squeezed inside the double cab of the white pickup with a Creole-speaking driver, bags on our laps, bodies squished together like sardines. The other six members of our group sat in the truck bed, on benches or hanging off the gate, legs dangling off the back bumper.
If only the Department of Transportation could see us now.
It took less than ten minutes for me to understand the vehicle change. A mile ahead, the paved road gave way to dirt. Not a flat, hard-packed dirt road, like we see in rural American towns. But the kind washed out by monsoonal rains a dozen times over.
For two hours, we moved at a slower-than-a-school-zone pace, navigating long stretches of mud and standing water deep enough to cover ankles and shins, and weaving in and out of boulder fields.
Now I understood. A shiny, air-conditioned van wouldn’t have made this trip. Only a beat-up pickup could navigate this kind of road.
Pop!
A loud noise made every one of us jump. The driver stopped, turned off the engine, and climbed out. Through the open windows, I heard a long string of Creole. In spite of four years of French, I couldn’t understand a single word. It didn’t sound good.
A broken axle, Greg told us. Our driver would try to fix it.
Fix it? I know next to nothing about cars, but I was pretty sure a snapped axle wasn’t duct-tapable. Especially in middle-of-no-where Haiti. Definitely not good. We had work to do, and we needed to get to it.
For the second time that day, we unloaded and waited. Finding a small patch of shade underneath a tree, we stood at a distance and watched our driver work. A fine way to spend my fortieth birthday, I thought, sweating like a glass of iced tea in the heat of summer. But without a drop of iced tea to be found. It was a waste of time, trying to fix a broken axle. Impossible. We might as well turn around and go back.
The driver seemed undeterred. Focused, he didn’t look at us or say a word.
I don’t know how long we stood there. Forty minutes, maybe an hour. Then another string of Creole.
“Okay, load up.” Greg announced. “It’s fixed.”
Fixed? Not possible!
Turns out our Creole-speaking driver packed a spare. A spare axle. God bless him.
Before he ever met us, our driver prepared to meet a need. Then, when the opportunity presented itself, he got to work and made it happen. Without complaint about the inconvenience. He simply saw a need and met it, the best way he knew how.
Three years before our Haiti trip, in the middle of 2008, I witnessed the exact opposite. On another mission trip, this time to South Africa, Troy and I worked in a squatters’ camp of sixty thousand of the poorest of South Africa’s poor, a village called Intabazwe.
Ironically, sitting just below this squatters’ camp and within eyesight, sat Harrismith, a small town that looked as if it’d been plucked right out of the heart of Iowa. A main street complete with grocery store, restaurant, park, and paved streets. And, off the thoroughfare, long lines of houses, with front doors and windows and full refrigerators inside.
Intabazwe and Harrismith. Wealth and poverty living as neighbors. Close enough to touch, but rarely doing so. As I spent my days in filth looking down on the fine, the contrast stirred up questions I couldn’t answer. How did the hungry live so close to food-stocked kitchens without resentment destroying their souls? And how did homeowners and restaurant-goers sit at tables, forking steak into their mouths, without the food lodging in their throats? Did they see the starving on the other side of their doors?
The dichotomy convicted me, like a knife slicing at my selfishness until I dared to let myself bleed. I didn’t want to be that person, the woman sitting so comfortable in her air-conditioned home with doors locked, windows closed, and full refrigerator hoarding a stash of food. I didn’t want to live blind to the hungry beyond my front door.
I discovered Isaiah 58:10 while in South Africa, later tattooed it on my ankle and then carried it again with me to Haiti. “If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.”18
Want a life rich with joy? Spend yourself. Desire fullness from head to toe? Find someone to feed. Looking for a life that shines, turns dark into light? Find a need and meet it. No questions asked.
Not all that different from a Haitian driver who spent a half day and a spare axle to get us where we needed to go.
In both Haiti and Africa, I learned a lesson I needed to bring back home, a lesson that would fuel our decision and attitude about three small children. More than twenty years before, on a long walk down an aisle at a youth conference and to the words of “I Surrender All,” I’d made big, grandiose promises to God.
I’ll go anywhere, God! Do anything for you!
I thought that meant assuming a missionary’s life, using vacation time for short-term mission trips, and serving a world outside of my door. Then when our boys turned adult and started their own lives, Troy and I planned to make our promise permanent. We’d sell our home, cars, and furniture, and move where God sent us. Haiti, perhaps. Maybe Africa. That was our plan. To go wherever, whenever.
I now know God heard my promises, both my childlike pronouncements and adultlike offerings. Then, years later, when I thought I knew what he had in mind, he spoke back, interrupted my plotting and planning with a single phone call and three children.
You promised to go anywhere, do anything, Michele. Sell everything and serve me on the mission field.
Yes, true. I’d said that more times than I could count.
I’m bringing the mission field to you. Are you still game?
I’ll never forget that day, the way God turned my food-laden tables and forced me to see the fulfillment of my promise in a way I hadn’t planned or expected.
God wasn’t asking me to go. He was asking me to stay.
To leave Haiti and return to my four-bedroom, air-conditioned house. To open my home and see three hungry children right outside my front door.
I wanted to renegotiate. Send me to Africa! Mars! Anywhere but here!
The truth was a mission trip would be easier. Even then I knew that, after only a week playing house with preschoolers. It’d be easier to pack a suitcase, go on a short-term adventure, and return home a week or two later to wash the dirt out of my clothes, put the suitcase in the closet, and log my memories in a scrapbook. A worthy act of service? Yes, of course. But neatly packaged and not too interrupting. A mission trip would allow me to keep my grandiose promises to manageable portions, something that didn’t stretch and sting to the point of sacrifice.
Instead, God asked me to step out of my shiny, air-conditioned life and climb into something less comfortable. It wasn’t glamorous or wild. It wouldn’t earn me more stamps in my passport or exotic pictures for display. And quite honestly, it didn’t look all that much fun.
But the life of a true Jesus-follower — someone who both says and
means her promise of “anywhere” and “anything” — doesn’t follow smooth, paved roads. And a comfortable, air-conditioned van isn’t going to get her where he wants her to go.
Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.”19
The only way to find the life I always wanted was to let the lesser life go.
To see a need and drop everything to meet it. Without complaint, second-guessing, or contemplation of the cost.
It would cost far more than I ever imagined.
CHAPTER 14
Love in the Land of Limbo
[Daddy] said, “All children must look after their own upbringing.” Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.
— ANNE FRANK, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
Not all who wander are lost.
— J. R. R. TOLKIEN, “All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter”
WE CAME BACK FROM HAITI WITH SLEEVES ROLLED UP, READY TO add three children to our family. Full of peace and confidence that God knew exactly what needed to happen. We simply needed to follow his lead, take one day at a time. Maybe breathe into a paper sack.
Then, again, about the time we thought we had it all figured out, the plot thickened.
The cyst came back.
I noticed a fullness, halfway through our trip to Haiti. I ignored it, tried to wish it away. But within a couple of days of our return stateside, after picking up our littles and diving back into life, it grew too big to ignore.
By now I knew the routine, regardless of how much I resented it. I called my surgeon, and she put yet another procedure on the books. August 16.
I responded to this fabulous news the only way any reasonable adult woman could: I bared my teeth and prepped to throw something. Then I cried, another one of those fist-pounding, sloppy cries. I was tired of other people’s hands in my mouth. Weary of slow and painful recoveries. Sick of mashed-stinking-potatoes. It ticked me off.
My ranting changed nothing. I couldn’t strong-arm my circumstances. My only choice? Move forward. Walk through it. Again, dang it.
But this new development caused bigger problems than more pain and mashed potatoes.
What were we going to do about the littles?
And the Cushatt family rollercoaster continued. It was a question we didn’t immediately have an answer to. After surgery, I wouldn’t be able to talk or eat normally for at least a couple of weeks. I knew from experience that rest and silence were the only path to healing. I could navigate recovery with teenagers, somewhat. But Troy and I knew it would be impossible with three high-needs four-and five-year-olds. How do you explain to little ones that Mommy can’t talk? Worse, there was a good chance I’d need another surgery in six to eight weeks. Perhaps several others. At this point, there was no end in sight.
The kids deserved a stable home, and with my health in flux, we weren’t sure we could give it to them. So we made a tough decision, one far more difficult than we realized. For a full week after we returned from Haiti, the littles stayed with us and we laughed and played and did our best to be an ordinary family. Then, on the afternoon of August 15, hours before my next surgery, we said goodbye. Again. With no small amount of heartbreak, we dropped them off with another relative. Indefinitely.
In three short weeks my heart had wrapped itself around the idea of becoming a mother again. I learned their favorite foods, their unique personalities, how they liked to spend quiet afternoons coloring. We shared Disney movies, bedtime tuck-ins, and Sunday mornings at church. Then, just that fast, they left. Yet another piece of my life robbed by cancer.
In the absence of their chatter, questions bounced like ping-pong balls in my head. Would my cyst go away this time? Would this be the last surgery? If so, would the doctor give me an all-clear? And if I got an all-clear, would we bring the children home for good?
Welcome to the Land of Limbo. As if I hadn’t already set up house and laid out a doormat there.
Once again I found my planned and scheduled self in the middle of a messy unknown. No explanation or reassurances. No dates, calendar of events, or three-step plan. I knew I’d have surgery August 16. Beyond that I didn’t have a clue.
I hated the limbo life. A strong word, but the right one. I heard friends talk about their boring and uneventful lives, and I envied their ordinary. We seemed to be bouncing from one crisis to another, without reprieve. I would’ve done anything for boring and ordinary.
But sometimes messy is the necessary beginning to the makings of extraordinary.
It’d become our summer ritual when our boys were little. Two parents, three boys, one giant pot of spaghetti with extra marinara.
And zero forks.
Once a summer, before boys became men, we ate a spaghetti feast in the back yard without utensils. A slimy, disgusting mess, I tell you. My boys ate it up.
Mannerless eating went against everything my mama and daddy taught me. Three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, I nagged with unceasing reminders about etiquette.
“Close your mouth while you chew.”
“For crying out loud, your shirt is not a napkin.”
“A pork chop is not bite-size. Try cutting it with that little thing on the right. It’s called a knife.”
Animals, I tell you. My boys are animals. Why I bothered to buy plates and silverware and display them on beautiful placemats I have no idea. I should’ve set out troughs. If you watched them eat dinner, you’d think they were raised by wolves. I can reassure you they had a mama and she taught them how to use both fork and napkin. They just didn’t listen.
So once a summer, for a single meal, we allowed them to eat like they wanted to. Without a single manner within two square blocks. No forks or spoons. No napkins, fingers, or hands. Only a plate piled with noodles and red sauce, and a cherubic face primed to dive into the mess.
They loved it. No, really. Loved it. Once, Tyler got a canned pea stuck in his nose, marinara and Parmesan from hairline to chin. He grinned like a child at Christmas, and I couldn’t resist capturing it for digital photographic eternity. I’m saving that baby for a more opportune time, say when he introduces us one day to his fiancee. Whoever she is, God bless her, she deserves to know.
I admit the Summer Spaghetti Palooza became a highlight for the grown-ups as well. I was bit more shy about drowning my moisturized face in a pool of sauce. It’s not easy for me to abandon manners for the mess. All I can see is the cleanup and postnasal drip on the other side. Still, I followed the no-manners rule and ate my noodles hands-free. Troy, unlike me, showed zero reservation. Seconds after his dinner-prayer amen, he entered the noodley pool like an Olympic diver.
Why do we do this? Why do civilized and respectable adults and their man-cubs eat dinner in the back yard like wild animals?
Because it is in the less than idyllic moments that a family is made.
I had to remember this when, weeks after the littles left, another mess settled in our home. This time involving one of our boys.
When new parents bring their bundle of newborn joy home from the hospital, it never occurs to them a day might come when the bundle becomes a handful and you second-guess that trip home from the hospital.
It usually happens sometime between the ages of twelve and twenty. For us, it happened at the ripe old age of sixteen and a half. Three times over. Apparently, at that age, the Cushatt boys’ brains begin to pickle and become totally useless.
Not that I’m bitter.
With our second son, it started as a wrestling between childhood and adulthood. Not quite a man, but no longer a little boy. His struggle wasn’t entirely unexpected or unusual, more a rite of passage and messy move toward maturity than anything else. The same happened with our oldest and years later with our youngest. But with Ryan, o
ne additional factor wielded far too much influence.
Substance use. The specifics aren’t significant, at least not here. It’s enough to say this outside force slowly pulled our boy away from us.
The first hint of a struggle showed up on his report card during his sophomore year. He’d always struggled with school, not because he lacked the ability, but because he lacked the motivation. The low grades weren’t a red flag in and of themselves. But when they moved from low to borderline failing, in almost every class, our concern grew. Then when he almost didn’t make his high school graduation, we knew it was more than a rough phase.
Add to that his change in attitude and change in personality, and we knew something was going on. He wasn’t the same easy-going boy, quick to smile and laugh. Instead, he grew agitated and snapped in anger without provocation. Not to mention the constant disagreement, arguing, and lying. Regardless of the subject — values, faith, relationships, education — we stood in polarity. After a lifetime of planting seeds of faith and integrity, we now saw little evidence of either. He seemed bent on becoming the opposite of what we aimed for.
I thought back on Ryan as a little boy, before I felt him start to slip away. He was my quiet, content boy. A calm creek, meandering through life on the path of least resistance. This made him charming, easy to love, and everyone’s friend.
But, at times, the very qualities we loved about him also made him more follower than leader. Just as a river is the first to flood in a storm, Ryan was easily carried downstream by youthful impulse and the influence of others. Without the securing banks of discipline and determination, he flowed wherever the weather took him. In high school and the year following, the weather took him farther and farther away from us.
Like many parents, we agonized over this. How did we let this happen? Where did we go wrong? How could we bring him back, save him from himself?
I soon discovered that you can’t. Not when he doesn’t want to be saved.
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