My journey

The ground beneath our feet is the base of everything physical. We find shelter on it, we eat food grown in it, we use fuel found deep inside it. We build our lives on it. I see my future on it. I dream from my bed, in my home, built on top of it. So what happens then when the ground beneath our feet suddenly becomes our enemy? What happens when this thing we’ve always trusted, always counted on turns against us?

I had just walked into my apartment and put my bag down when I heard this strange noise, like nothing I had ever heard before and the walls started to vibrate. My first thought was that someone was drilling on the other side of my living room wall but within second the vibrating turned to shaking. The entire house was shaking. I looked at my doorway and my cement walls were waving like jello. I stood, shocked, not having a clue what was happening. Things were falling off the walls and smashing all around me. It was then I heard someone outside yelling, “Get out! Get out! Everyone get out!” I ran for the door and saw my truck rocking back and forth hard like 5 strong men were rocking it. It was then I realized it wasn’t the house that was shaking, it was the ground.

Never in all my life had I felt more terrified. Never had I felt so powerless and helpless. There is nothing I could do to stop the earth from shaking. Nothing

We stood together in the drive way in complete shock. When someone said, “That was an earthquake.” I instantly snapped out of it. I jumped in my truck and flew down the hill to the orphanage.

It was the longest one minute drive of my life. I had no idea what I would find, was the orphanage still standing? Were the kids ok? I looked to the right and saw a huge dust cloud rising over the village of Source Matlas. I didn’t realize then that the dust cloud was from all the houses collapsing.

The kids were scattered all over screaming and crying. I ran inside the orphanage to make sure everyone got out. Many children and staff members were still inside the building in absolute shock, waving their hands in the air and crying. I had to pull our cook out of the building, she was in complete shock.

I rounded the kids and staff up and had them sit in the middle of the soccer field. The moments before our head count was complete felt like an eternity. Were they all there? Were they all ok? I just kept saying these things over and over in my head. When the last of the children and staff members were accounted for I was able to let out a sigh of relief. They were all alive. Praise the Lord!

It was already getting dark by this time and the kids had not eaten. I knew I needed to be proactive and figure something out. I went to the warehouse, thankfully we have a supply of Disaster Relief food that requires no cooking. Getting to the food was the problem. The warehouse looked like someone had picked it up and shaken it. Boxes were everywhere. The entire floor was a mess of boxes. I had to climb over a large pile of boxes and through a window to get to the food. My heart pounding hard, I was afraid another aftershock would hit while I was in the warehouse and I would be crushed by falling boxes.

The children sat in a large circle in the middle of the soccer field and ate their dinner in silence, some still crying. We had a time of prayer and worship, thanking God for protecting us, while I tried to figure out what to do with 60 kids and no place to put them.

Eventually I realized there was no other choice but to have the kids sleep outside. I pulled the mattresses out of the orphanage and we laid them next to each other in the church yard. I spent the next hour or so praying it would not rain and searching the entire mission for blankets and sheets. January is Haiti’s winter season and the temperature drops in the evenings. I knew the kids would need more than just a sheet to cover them.

People started showing up at the gate within about 20 minutes, babies crushed by fallen block, men and women with severe trauma. Trauma of every kind. There was so much blood.

I spent the first 48 hours after the earthquake going between the kids and the clinic.

The Hope House kids were sleeping all huddled together on their mattresses. It broke my heart to see the kids shiver through the night, as they lay on their mattresses in the middle of the churchyard, screaming every time they felt a tremor. It is my job to protect them. It is my job to keep them safe. It is my responsibility to keep things like this from happening to them.

Up at the clinic we couldn’t put everyone inside, it wasn’t safe and there were too many people. Sheets were laid out all over the cement floor of the outdoor waiting area of the clinic.

I tried to do what I could to help. I held the hands of terrified children, talking to them, and trying to keep them calm as their crushed bones were reset with no pain killers.

There were deaths that night. I remember seeing a tiny baby wrapped in a white sheet sitting on a cement bench, all alone. The baby had died. The parents had nothing to go back to, no where to bury their beloved child. They were forced to leave their child alone in the night, hoping someone else could lay him to rest.

At this point we had no idea who was alive and who was dead. The phones were down everywhere in the country and there was no way to find out who was ok. Every time someone showed up to the mission there was this amazing sense of relief like, oh thank God Ruben is alive! Thank God Sadrac is alive! The worst thing about the first 48 hours was that I had no idea if my best friend Patris was alive. He was on a work trip with our nutrition program. The phones were all down and there was no way to know. When he still had not shown up by late afternoon the next day I knew that he was dead. This was the first and to be honest really the only time I cried. I knew that he would have come already, it would not have taken that long to get back. I knew he would come as soon as he could, to see if his family was alive. I sat on a bench in the church and started crying. My best friend was dead. The Hope House kids came and sat with me. I’ve taught them over the years that they shouldn’t cry alone, they need to have someone with them to be with them when they are sad. We cried together. My tears formed a puddle on the cement floor. The kids told me I should not worry, that I should go up the hill and take a nap in my truck since I still had not slept since the earthquake hit the day before. A few minutes after I parked my truck in front of my house, Jean Marc and Mansado ran into the yard, sweating hard from running up the hill, screaming “Patris is here, he’s alive!” Praise the Lord.

The next days and weeks are a blur. I found tents for the kids and we moved in. The kids were quite content in the tents, we kept them sheltered from seeing what was going on in their country as much as possible. We tried to keep it fun for them, like they were at camp. It was hard to be out in the city, seeing those horrible things all day and then coming home and trying to be OK for the kids, so they would not be scared.

The Hope House kids were so amazing after the earthquake. The boys worked in the warehouse everyday, loading vehicles with food for distribution, unloading containers and helping sort items. The girls washed sheets for the clinic, fed all the pre and post op patients daily and we had both girls and boys working as interpreters at the clinic and hospital. It was amazing to see their willingness and eagerness to help.

The two and a half months after the earthquake were go go go all the time non-stop. I was sleeping in the tents with the kids and working like crazy all day on the mission or in the city. It was so surreal to drive through town past the bank, the grocery store, the markets; these places I had been so many times before and see nothing but rubble. The worst part was knowing that people I knew were buried inside. Some buildings I had been in were so destroyed there was not even any blocks left, the building literally was pebbles and powder.

The mind is a powerful thing. I held on as long as I needed to, once I knew things would be ok at the orphanage without me I started to feel the intensity of what I had just lived through. Up until that point I had not even thought about it. I was in emergency mode within minutes after the earthquake, there was no time to worry about me, there were 60 children and 16 staff looking to me for guidance, this was no time to fall apart during the day.

Things started to slow down a bit mid March. The kids were out of the tents. There was still a lot going on but the “emergency” part of it was getting close to being over. In the days after the earthquake the man that worked along side me in the orphanage left, there was too much going on at the time to even think about hiring someone else so I in the midst of all the chaos I found myself running the orphanage solo. We hired a replacement, Frantz, mid March, which was wonderful, he was able to take some of the load off me. When I felt confident that Frantz could handle things at the Hope House the darkness started to creep in.

I knew I needed to deal with what I experienced but I had no idea how to. I literally sat down one afternoon and had this conversation with myself, “Ok Rachel, it’s time to deal with this stuff.” That was the end of the conversation. I had no idea where to even begin. A few weeks went by, it started to get harder and harder to do anything. I was falling deeper and deeper into a very dark place. I tried everything I knew to snap out of it but I just kept falling deeper and deeper into sadness.

Everywhere I looked there was death. To the right of the mission is Maggie’s grave a little farther down the road is where the floods whipped out whole streets and houses. Go to the left a few miles and you find the mass graves where bodies were carried in the back of dump trucks and dumped into a pit. Along the sides of the road were truck loads of rubble from the city; block, desks, papers and sometimes bodies. You cannot go anywhere without being reminded of the horror. It was like I couldn’t get away from the death. I was drowning in it.

I woke up on a Monday morning and couldn’t bring myself to get ready for work. I knew I was not ok. I just couldn’t handle it anymore. My heart started pounding and I could barely breathe. Turns out I was having an anxiety attack. I had never experienced anything like that before. I went down to the office and asked Brad if I could talk to him. He could tell something was wrong and brought me into his office. I simply said, “I am not ok.” and started crying. We talked briefly about what I needed. I couldn’t tell him, I just knew I was not ok. He told me to head back up the hill and he would take care of everything else. Two days later I was flying into Austin, Texas. Knowing I was coming to them broken, and to be honest not knowing what to expect a courageous family was brave enough to opened their home to me and Hill Country Bible Church in Austin, Texas welcomed me with open arms.

I couldn’t tell anyone what was going on with me, why I was leaving Haiti. I left without even telling my family or my pastor I was leaving. I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t handle it. I felt like I was weak. I felt like I should be able to just be ok.

I don’t remember much about the first weeks. It was a very dark time. I had nightmares almost every night and was filled with a sadness that filled every pore of my body. The sadness was so intense that it physically hurt. I was feeling anxious all the time, if something fell or there was a loud bang I would completely panic thinking everything was about to come crashing down on me, I had a hard time staying in buildings and always needed to know where the closest exit was.

Hill Country Bible Church arranged for me to meet with a counselor. At our first appointment I informed him I had about two weeks to get better, but if it could be done in one that would be ideal. Wayne, my counselor smiled and said, “Do you really think it’s healthy to put that kind of pressure on yourself?”

I was soon told I really needed to take some time off, some time to rest and recover, two weeks was not enough time to recover after living four years in such an intense environment with trauma after trauma. He knew I was not only dealing with the earthquake trauma but so many other things.

I was so frustrated with myself, I wanted to fix myself but nothing worked. I did not want to stay in Texas. I did not want to be in Canada. I knew I could not go back to Haiti yet. I was like a lost and crushed little girl who just wanted to be better, now!

Brad and Vanessa encouraged me to take as much time as I needed, the most important thing was for me to get better. I agreed to stay.

Wayne asked me to list the top 5 traumatic experiences I needed to deal with. He was surprised when I gave him my list and the earthquake was not #1. Maggie’s death was.

I found it fitting that the earthquake happened on the anniversary of Maggie’s death. Since the day Maggie died I had been carrying around this debilitating weight on my shoulders. I felt so guilty, I felt her death was my fault. She died while in my care. I failed her, I failed everyone. She was my responsibility. It should not have happened, I should have done more, I should have done something differently and maybe she would still be alive. I couldn’t grieve her death because every time I thought about her I was consumed with this guilt.

I have worked through the guilt in my counseling, it took a long time but I now feel like I can grieve her death in a healthy way. I thank God for the freedom from that guilt.

Eventually the counselor recommended that I meet with a psychologist. I was making progress but he felt there was more than just post trauma going on with me.

I filled out all these forms asking all sorts of things, like; Have I ever felt depressed for periods of time for no reason? Yeah, of course I have! How old were you the first time you remember feeling depressed? I could remember feeling depressed in grade 7 and 8. When I got into her office she read through my answers. She soon explained that it is not normal to feel depressed for no reason. I was shocked. I had no idea that was not normal. I thought everyone went through times of darkness, times of sadness with no apparent cause. I was completely stunned.

I was diagnosed with Major Recurring Depression. The doctor recommended I take antidepressants to help stabilize my serotonin levels and continue with my counseling.

I was not ok with this. I did not want to be labeled as “depressed”, I was terribly embarrassed by this. I did not want people to think I was weak and couldn’t just be ok. I didn’t want to be on medication, I just wanted to feel better. I did not want to be “depressed” the problem was that everything the doctor told me was true.

This was my rock bottom. I had no control anymore. I couldn’t stop the earth from shaking, I couldn’t bring Maggie back and now I couldn’t even control my emotions, I couldn’t make myself feel better. I was drowning and there was nothing I could do to get out. To say I was frustrated would be the understatement of the year.

It was there, in that dark place I started to ask myself some important questions.

Do I really believe that God is good?

I was so afraid of God at this point. I had always thought of God as a loving Father, as my protector and the person I could turn to when things fell apart.

Then the earth shook and so many people died all around me.

Could a God that allowed something like this to happen still be good?

I really had to wrestle through that, as I think we all have to at one time or another in our lives.

In the end I came to this conclusion: God’s plan for us is not a plan of destruction.

Jeremiah 29:11 says For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.

The second question I had to ask myself was, do I trust God, really trust Him?

It is so easy to say that you trust God. The words slip off the tongue so easily, but trusting God with our minds and with our hearts are two totally different things.

I trusted God with my mind. I could talk the talk but when it came down to it did I really trust God with my heart? No.

I could say I trusted him all I wanted, it was the right thing to say, I knew that. But my life was spinning out of control. Nothing I was doing was working. Things were falling apart, I couldn’t do my job anymore, I was pulled away from my home, from my kids, and my work. I was losing control of my life…but then I realized maybe my life was spinning out of control because I wasn’t trusting God, I was trusting myself. I thought I had a plan. I wanted to fix myself. I thought I should be able to go back and be fine. I, I, I….there was no God in any of this. I had to let go and start trusting God.

It was them that I had to ask myself if I could let go and let God be in control.

Once I was able to trust in God it was a lot easier to quit trying to control everything. I recently spent a weekend at the lake with some friends. We went out on the boat and were water skiing and tubing. It was fun for those who were on the boat to watch the poor suckers getting beat up by the waves and hanging on for dear life hoping to not fly off or flip over.

Later on we anchored the boat and everyone cuddled up with a book or took a nap on the boat. Because I get sea sick I wasn’t able to stay on the boat. Instead I tied a little raft to the boat and laid out in the water.

When we try to control our own lives it’s like being on the tube, all we can do is hang on for dear life and hope we don’t get thrown off.

When we let God be in control it’s like the raft tied to the boat. I didn’t even have to worry about the rope or holding on, I just had to lay out and relax.

I finally was able to stop fighting God every step of the way. If I have to be in Texas and get counseling for a few months that’s fine, God has a plan. I already know it’s a plan for my own good and God has it all under control.

Do I want to be back in Haiti? Yes, of course I do, but I know it’s not yet time. There are things I need to work through, there are things I need to learn, and there is work that needs to be done in Texas. I am currently working on a few projects for Mission of Hope. These projects are things that have needed to be done for a long time, but we are all so busy there just isn’t time. Well, in Texas I have nothing BUT time.

I’m not happy with the fact that I suffer from depression, not at all, but to be honest it’s kind of relieving to know that I won’t have to deal with that kind of sadness off and on for the rest of my life. It’s freeing to know that it isn’t normal to feel sad like that.

I look forward to a life with less sadness and more smiles.

I know I am called to Haiti, to serve at the orphanage. My call has not changed. I just had to step away from Haiti it for a brief time to figure a few things out, to get some healing of my own so I can go back a better person. So I can be a better ‘mother’ to those 61 amazing children.