Healing My Heart in Haiti

In honor and recognition of the 7 years that have passed since my only brother died suddenly from an undetected brain tumor called a colloid cyst,  I am posting a journal entry that I wrote many years ago.  It explains how an adoption trip to Haiti helped me to recognize God's loving care even in death.

On May 17, 2007, my only brother passed from this world into the loving arms of our Heavenly Father.  He was only 29 years old.  Around 5pm, I had just finished sitting by his bedside until he passed and I was standing in a hospital corridor, while my mom proclaimed, “He’s home.  He’s home.  God is good!  He is home.”  It was like my heart was being pulled in two directions:  the spiritual direction of rejoicing with my mother knowing his suffering had ended and the earthly direction of separation, despair and grief.  So I chose to try to stay numb and function to make arrangements and deal with the details until several weeks later when I could painfully sort out the realities and balance these emotions.

A year and a month later, I got to revisit these emotions in a most unlikely place and time.  My husband and I were in Haiti bringing home our children David and Vanessa.  The remainder of our children’s birth families came to the orphanage to meet us and say goodbye to their beloved family members whom we already called our son and daughter.   Their hearts were pulled in two directions:  the side of rejoicing that their beloved ones had permanent and loving family and the side of separation and loss.  I watched as one family member went numb and just functioned.  Others judged her for being so stony, but I understood.  I ached for her as I knew the time ahead would be difficult. 

During that visit, I realized that this part of adoption was yet another beautiful picture of our relationship with the Lord.  Just as we called David and Vanessa our children before we traveled to get them, God calls us His children before He brings us to a perfect home with Him.  Just as I felt the void of my brother’s passing, these family members would feel a void.   Just as I rejoiced that my brother was home with the Father so these family members rejoiced that we loved our children and thanked us for coming to get them.  It was after this meeting in Haiti that I was able to thank God for accepting my brother, whom He already called His son, home to a perfect home.  I was comforted.

Behold, what manner of love

the Father hath bestowed upon us,

that we should be called the sons of God:

therefore the world knoweth us not,

because it knew him not.~~I John 3:1