Home Again....For Now

After an amazing week together, you girls are now back home.  Back in your beds at Lifeline, back in your normal routine, back in life for school.  You are back home, at least the home that you know for now.
As I sit here processing all that I have learned about you, all that I have seen of you, and all that I have processed about your life it is hard to know where to go now.  Without a timeline for your flight to Virginia, I am faced to wait.  The waiting is hard because I know you now.  I know how you will respond to things I do and say.  I know how you will giggle when you are happy, and how you will shut down when you are mad, and how you will crash when you are tired and how you will play when you are ready.  I'll be able to imagine you in our house, in our family, in our life.  And when I think about what that will look like, I love it.
This week you learned much more English, you learned how much we love you, you learned that having a Nana is really great.  But sadly, you learned that it is not time for you to come home yet, and that you will have to stay at Lifeline a little while longer.
This week I learned much more Creole (yes I did understand all those things you were saying to your friends about me!), I learned how you live, and I learned how you cope with how you live.  I learned that you are wonderful sisters to each other, that you are beautifully made by God, and that you long for me as much as I long for you.   I learned how to better pray for you and for me while I wait for you.  I learned that God has good things in store for all of us in His timing.
Naomi Sunshine and Joanna Sleyka, I love you and I thank you for a great week together.  I'll be praying and preparing for you, and I will see you soon!
Mwen renmen ou!!

My sisters are in Haiti

Last week I was driving several children into DC to attend a Kennedy Center school performance.  Among the children were my two boys.  As young children often do, the conversations was a period of questions and answers about families.  None of it was of much interest until I heard Silas describing his family to a friend.  "That's my brother James,"  he points to James.  And I have two big sisters who are at the Hinces house today.  And I have two sisters who are in Haiti."  It made me nearly stop on the highway.  I was so touched by the way everything is black and white in his world.  Of course he has sisters in Haiti.  The way he stated it so frankly, though, was striking to me.  It made it sound as if they are just away on vacation.  They are often not real in my mind, but for him, they are real and accounted for, just not yet present in our car or at our dinner table.