This is MY story {Haiti Earthquake Revisited}

It's funny how some moments in your life you remember SO clearly.
How you felt.
What you were doing.
What the sounds around you were.
What people said or did.
The way time seemed to slow down.
Two years ago today was a day like that for me.

I had just fallen into that deep sleep when the phone rang, which wasn't really that strange to me, having lived the pastoral life for most of my existence. Groaning, Arno trudged out of bed to answer the incessant ringing of his phone after we missed the call on my phone. I knew something was off if someone had tried my phone first at 1 am. As the campus pastor, Arno's phone was accessible to people 24/7 but my number was not out there like his was. So I stumbled out of bed after him. As I hit the hallway of our tiny South African apartment, I think my heart bottomed out to the floor when I saw his ashen face.

"What is it? Just tell me," I said with that monotone calm that often surrounds my body when steeling myself for impending doom.

"That was Ben. There has just been an earthquake in Haiti,

and your sister cannot reach your parents."

Being an "oldest," my "I'll-solve-the-problem" drive kicked into gear. I pulled out my address book, grabbed my phone & computer and planted myself on the corner of the couch with the built-in ottoman, planning to reach my parents within minutes, to confirm how this whole thing was just "blown out of proportion" and then to go back to sleep to rest for the busy day ahead.

Little did I know that I would sit for hours in that exact spot, with little desire to rest or to eat or to drink or even to go to the bathroom. It's like time stood still for hours upon hours. My sister and I held a vigil over Skype that would last throughout my night {7 hours ahead} and hers. {Have I said, "Thank you!" yet this year for the amazing wonder that is technology?}

My emotions ran the gamut -- trust, fear, sorrow, worry, stress, faith, anxiety, hope, concern, belief. In those agonizing hours, I was so thankful for our upbringing of faith through the fire because my sister and I never spoke one word of negativity to each other nor did we listen to anyone who tried to give us fatalistic false reports.

We called and chatted and facebooked and Skyped and tweeted anyone who knew any shred of news, checking on our multitude of childhood friends and their families, hearing they were safe, or not, and then always, "No, we haven't heard from Mom & Dad yet. Would you ask your parents? Do they know what is happening on Delmas?"

Over and over and over again.
The same conversations.
The same results.

"We haven't heard from your parents"

"Parts of Delmas are impassible"

The presidential palace - picture from Boston.com

"Thank you. Glad you are okay," typed out on the screen seemed not enough.

How do you capture such a magnitude of dread and relief in just a few words?

You cannot....and really no one cared or expected it. We were all surviving in this kind of living statis, needing very little, wanting to just hear one line, "It's all a dream."

Yet, it would not be so. As the hours dragged on, the realization that this nightmare was now my reality became more and more apparent. So I steeled my mind towards dawn, dawn in Haiti. I rationalized, "The earthquake happened at 5 o'clock so Dad couldn't leave Mom and Carole to get to a phone because it would be dangerous in the dark, so as soon as he can in the morning, he will go out and find a way to get in touch with us."

So we waited. Me with this secret belief, "There will be an answer at dawn because it is always 'darkest' before the dawn, right? Right?" My personal thoughts rang hollow in my own ears and yet I held on to my conviction, able to snatch an hour or two of sleep, resting my faith in this dogged determination of mine.

And as the hour struck 6, and then 7, and then 8, my mind rationalized the realities, plotted street routes, worked out reasons why and where and what until finally I found my heart about to burst into the hysterical and my thoughts plagued with the worst conclusion, "What if they are dead? What if I never see them again?"

I heard myself say to my sister, "I have to get off of here. I am not thinking right any more," barely hearing her give me an answer.

Off to my room I went, and I began to weep from the depths of my soul, "You promised me. You promised me, Lord. You promised me that my parents would see their children's children. You promised me. It cannot end like this. I cannot lose them this way. I JUST saw them a few days ago. We had Christmas together. We picked out a tree. We celebrated. We laughed. Oh God, what if I never hear them laugh again? Please God, oh please, God. Please don't take them from me. Please do not let them be gone."

Then, right there, in the quietest and most persistent of ways, He flooded me with His peace, His love, His assurance, His understanding, a reminder that He IS who He says He is. And He tore back the fabric of time for just a moment and I could see them playing and wrestling with their grandchildren. They were strong and agile, not feeble or decrepit. They were most definitely ALIVE!

With peace in my heart now overpowering the relentless anxiety in my chest, I rose up from that place with renewed vigor and purpose.

However, the wait was not yet over.

One last hurdle of faith had to be jumped -- the moment my sister and I had to put our parents on the search & rescue list. It was like being in a Hollywood movie, watching actors play out parts in a drama that had now become my reality. I do not know how adequate words can ever truly thank Yvonne Trimble, Troy & Tara Livesay, The Labadys, and Keith Flanagan for understanding our compelling desperation, stranded miles away unable to forge ahead on our own to see the two we loved more than any other save our husbands, and setting out to give us answers....whatever that might be.

And finally and possibly the greatest moment filled with unspeakable emotion, when those 2 little words, "We're here," popped up on my screen from my mom's Facebook account.

Throughout the nearly-18 hours of waiting, words of love and prayers were feeding through on my mom's page, and while the encouragement was like a healing balm, the words of the enemy would say, "What if she never reads these words? What if this page becomes a memorial to them?" So the moment her chat window popped live, tears fell unabashedly down my face as simultaneously my sister and I typed, "Thank God!"

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The journey from that moment until now has been long and hard not just for my family, but for the hundreds of thousands affected by this horrible disaster, and yet, as I type these words, I stand in awe at the faithfulness of a God who SEES what we cannot see, who understands us better than we do ourselves, who knows the beginning from the end.

This is my story.

This is my song.

Praising my Savior,

all the day long.

This is my story.

This is my song.

Praising my Savior,

all the say long.

~Blessed Assurance