Pooch-to-preschooler introductions made, the children walked through our foyer wide-eyed. Cathedral ceilings, wrought-iron railings, bookshelves, leather couch, travertine-tiled bathrooms. Although familiar and ordinary to us, it appeared mansionlike to three children who’d never really had a home. From what we could tell, they hadn’t lived in the same place — or slept in the same bed — for much longer than a few months at a time since birth.
Watching them tour our home changed how I saw it. Three years before, we’d bought this fixer-upper as an investment. A general contractor, Troy turned the outdated, neglected home into something model-quality. Twice the size of our prior house, it had more bedrooms, baths, and square footage than we needed. And with Troy’s professional touch, it now had granite countertops, maple floors, stone fireplaces, and countless other custom additions.
Most days, I felt guilty about living in such a home. We planned to flip it, move into something smaller and farther out of town, once Troy finished the updates and our youngest, Jacob, graduated from high school. It felt too nice, too vast for an ordinary family like ours.
But then a phone call that came with three children. As I led these little ones to their bedrooms, as I watched their faces light up with gratefulness, I no longer saw a too-big house.
Instead, I saw providence.
You saw it coming, didn’t you? You knew.
The fact that he did, that the God who loved these children more than I could imagine had been working behind the scenes all along, braced me for all the upheaval and unknowns yet to come.
For the first half hour, they explored every room. The bathroom with the tall stone sink. The living room with the glossy-black baby grand piano. The bedroom with the giant sleigh bed where the grown-ups slept. When they’d seen every inch of the inside, they moved to the back yard. And there discovered the trampoline that had entertained our boys for years.
They spent most of the next five days right there, warmed by the summer sun while jumping up and down. I don’t remember much else about those first hours and days. It’s a blur. Perhaps a result of time passed. Or, more likely, too much for a brain and heart to take in at once. Instead of details, I remember images, overpowering sights, smells, and sounds that evidenced a life turned on end.
Baby blankets in the laundry basket.
Tiny shoes scattered by the front door.
Coloring books on the kitchen table.
Three children wide awake and ready to play at 5:00 a.m.
No doubt about it, the Cushatt family wasn’t the same. All it took was a short drive to make my home almost unrecognizable. We still had the sights and sounds of our teenage boys. The mood swings, slamming doors, and sound of the refrigerator opening and closing, opening and closing. But layered over the top of the familiar now lay the unfamiliar. New and unknown experiences around which I hadn’t yet wrapped my head.
So while they jumped on our trampoline, wrestled with our boys, and explored every corner of our home, I watched. Tried to uncover clues about what our life was going to look like from that day forward.
Maybe it was wishful thinking on my part, my impossible tendency to hope when evidence tells me not to. Or maybe it was simply the calm before the storm. But every smile and laugh convinced me that maybe we’d been mistaken. Maybe the trauma that marked their short history hadn’t left any scars. They appeared ordinary children, playful and happy. Perhaps they hadn’t been affected by their past?
Now, months and years later, I see the clues I missed — or didn’t want to see — those first few days.
The hollowness of their eyes, and the dark circles underneath. Even when laughing, the emotion didn’t seem to make it to their eyes.
Their dull, thin, patchy hair. Evidence of malnutrition.
The way they shoveled second and third helpings of dinner and swallowed without chewing.
The absence of tears when many should’ve been shed. Children who said goodbye to their mother hours before should cry, shouldn’t they?
I didn’t want to see these things. Didn’t want to grapple with the massive brokenness that came along with their two-by-one suitcase. Call it arrogance or ignorance, but I believed I could wash and wipe away all the wrong that had been done. I wanted to believe any loss replaceable, every wound healable.
So I dumped blankets and the contents of the suitcase into my washing machine.
I bought tearless shampoo and yummy-smelling soap to scrub their skin clean of the smell and grime.
I made double boxes of macaroni and cheese and dished it up in heaping portions.
And I served up cookies and popsicles on the back porch, where we licked fingers and laughed and pretended everything was fine.
“How about we walk to the park? After dinner?”
It’d been a particularly long day. Four solid days of adjusting to an unrecognizable life, and I was exhausted. Preschoolers are cute and precious and cheek-pinching adorable when they belong to someone else. They’re life-suckers when you have one foot in middle age and you live with three of them.
Cheers erupted from the little people sitting at the kitchen counter. For ten glorious seconds, I was the best mom in the world. Which, after raising teenagers, was the longest I’d held that title in more than five years. As I finished cleaning up the mountain of dinner dishes, I could barely muster the energy for a smile. The littles, on the other hand, started bouncing up and down around our house like a pondful of frogs.
I’m not sure how I managed to get them to sit still long enough to pack six feet into six tiny little tennis shoes and tie them in beautiful double-knots. After I finished, sweat dripped in dark places.
Note to self: Teach Shoe-Tying 101. ASAP.
It took us twenty minutes to get to the park with three pairs of itty-bitty legs. When we crested the hill to see the wooden outline of swings and jungle gyms and slides, they took off running. Wheeeeeee! times three.
Jack settled into a sand shovel and tried to figure out how to dig. Princess went right for the swings. Peanut started climbing as high as her little legs could go.
I’d forgotten how much children love parks. How much I loved them. As it turned out, I’d forgotten quite a bit about parenting small children.
That happens. Over time, as children grow and fully inhabit the next phase of childhood, we forget the yesterdays. Except for a scrapbook filled with photos or a journal packed with notes, the vast majority of our experiences evaporate like morning mist when faced with the sun.
As I watched them swing and slide and chase each other around the playground, I wondered if it was wise to go back. If it was even possible.
Could we do this thing? I’m not talking on paper or in conversation. But really do this thing. In real life. For years and years.
It’s one thing to say, “Yes, let’s do it,” over a five-minute phone call. It’s an entirely different thing to wake up at 5:00 a.m. day after day, without end or reprieve.
Could we do it? Could I? Honestly, I didn’t know. In many ways, those first several days passed like scenes pulled from a movie. Loss and rescue, grief and joy. With a heart aching to deliver a childhood to children who’d nearly lost it, I dove into my role with passion and purpose.
Here I come to save the day!
I’m a sucker for a good story. Still, even with all the picturesque movielike drama, reality was anything but easy. In fact, it was difficult and draining enough to give both Troy and me pause. We’d done a week. I had no doubt we could tackle a month, maybe two or three.
But to raise three more small children? To start over and carry it through for as long as needed? That’s a lot to ask of anyone.
The idealistic side of me wanted to be a hero. The realistic side of me wanted to take a nap. And, sitting in the park watching three littles buzz around without any sign of slowing, the realistic voice seemed to be louder at the moment than the other. I’m far less noble than I’d like to be.
I watched the sun set over the Roc
ky Mountains; tension burned in my heart. I raked a hand through my hair as I watched seemingly ordinary children playing in the neighborhood park. Only I knew, deep down, ordinary was a mirage.
Breathe, Michele. Don’t tackle a lifetime of unknowns in a few minutes at the park. Instead, play. Laugh. Tomorrow will come soon enough.
With that, I rose from my railroad-tie bench and headed for the swings.
“How about a push?”
“Me! Me! Push meeeee!” Princess squealed her delight, grabbing for any scrap of attention I could offer. She didn’t yet know how to pump legs, go higher. I would have to help her fly.
“Wheeeeee!”
Her sister joined us. “Higher! Higher!”
Soon the sun finished its descent over the mountains, painting us a miraculous display.
“Look at that!” I pointed to the west. I didn’t want them to miss the oranges and pinks and purples coloring the sky. A sunset like that demanded appreciation, acknowledgment. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Princess and Peanut jumped off the swings as Jack finished his final slide and raced to join us. We left the park behind and walked down the path that turned toward home, a quiet hush settling over all of us.
Princess slipped her hand in mine.
“How does the sky do that?” she asked.
I looked at her face, alight with the sunset’s fire, turning her cheeks a deeper shade of pink.
“What do you mean? Turn pink and purple and orange?”
She nodded, waiting for me to give her the secrets of the universe.
“God does it. He paints the sky because he loves nothing more than giving us beautiful gifts.” It was beautiful, and definitely a gift. One of the summer’s best.
“Who’s God?”
What? Her question shook me. I didn’t expect it, had no idea how she’d lived five years — 1,825 days — without hearing about the one who loved her most of all.
But what to say? How did I explain the God I’ve always known to a little girl who’d never heard of him before?
I squeezed her hand. “He’s the one who made you, sweet girl. The one who gave you arms and legs and your beautiful blue eyes.” I smiled, winked. Maybe it was the lingering light of the descending sun, but she seemed to blush at the reference.
“God is the one who paints the sky. To let us know he sees us — you, your brother and sister. And me. It’s his way of letting us know how much he loves us.”
It wasn’t much, but it was a beginning. A single conversation to let them know that beyond the chaos of their circumstances, beyond the losses and grief and unknowns, there was a God who was big enough to paint masterpieces in the sky. To figure out the future and make sure they felt at home, wherever they were.
And for the moment, it was enough for me too.
CHAPTER 13
Counting the Cost
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others.
— M. L. KING JR., Strength to Love
Ministry that costs nothing accomplishes nothing.
— J. H. JOWETT, The Preacher, His Life and Work
I WENT ON MY FIRST MISSION TRIP JUST DAYS AFTER MY SIXTEENTH birthday. But my transformation began a year earlier.
At a Christ in Youth Conference in Adrian, Michigan, against my better judgment, I walked down an aisle during an altar call. I wasn’t an altar-call junkie, one of those girls who rededicated every time a tear made an appearance. I typically avoided anything that made me stand out, appear different or (God forbid) a spectacle.
Until my legs practically sprinted to the front to the tune of “I Surrender All.”
I can’t tell you what the speaker had said moments before, the theme of the week, or what thoughts were spinning in my crazy head. But something happened that night. It wasn’t a radical transformation or an instantaneous awakening. But a spark of something real and true came to hot life within. I wanted my living to be about more than boy trouble, girl drama, and fingernail polish. In a moment, I felt a warm awareness of a big, wide world outside of myself, a world filled with faces and stories unknown to me but seen and treasured by the God of us all. I knew some lived in gross poverty, needing food and water. Others were desperate for words of peace or hope. And I could be the one to give such words to them.
I couldn’t stay in my seat, even if I’d wanted to.
So there, in front of several hundred students and adults, I allowed myself to be pulled to the front by a burning and unidentifiable ache. With friends and strangers as witnesses, I committed to a life of serving Jesus. I’d known him my whole life, been baptized as a Christian when I was seven. But now I wanted to make my whole life about him, to “do his work.” Of course, I didn’t have a clue what that meant. But like any self-respecting teenage girl, I hoped it involved something glamorous and wild. Maybe Africa.
The next August, right after my sixteenth birthday, I flew to the Dominican Republic for my first mission trip. Not exactly Africa, but a big step from my ho-hum midwestern hometown. Over the course of seventeen days, we built a church foundation, taught VBS, played with children, and told those searching about Jesus. All the while, we ate a ridiculous amount of plantains — raw, boiled, baked, fried, mashed. And, in spite of the plantains, my heart spark for missions burned ever brighter.
This was my purpose, my life’s work.
I’ll go anywhere, do anything. I’m yours, God!
Those were my words. And I meant every one of them, as much as a hormonally hijacked girl can.
I carried my promise with me into adulthood, through college, nursing school, and all those complicated years of marriage and mothering. As it turned out, Troy’s heart carried a similar ache, felt the same calling. Which is why a year before the littles came, we planned to travel to Haiti the last week of July.
Mission work had become a part of our family experience, something we did along with our boys. Even before cancer, we’d committed to this Haiti trip along with our youngest son, to repair and rebuild a dilapidated building in northern Haiti, convert it into a medical clinic the village desperately needed. I’d been the team lead and organizer, Troy the construction expertise. Several teenagers and adults were set to go with us.
Then, in a strange twist of timing, the phone rang and three littles moved into our home a week before our departure. We felt torn. Two gaping needs, worlds apart. Eight people (not to mention an entire Haitian village) counted on our leadership and trusted us to follow through. But the littles needed us too. They needed the stability of a mom and dad who loved them. What were we to do?
To our relief, a relative stepped up and offered to help the week we were gone, someone the littles knew and with whom they felt safe. And so we said goodbye almost as quickly as we said hello. And I repacked the two-by-one suitcase a week after we brought the littles home.
It wasn’t easy, getting on that plane. In less than a week, my heart had already grown like a vine around theirs. At the same time, six days with three preschoolers felt like a month. Maybe longer. Sweet and unparalleled? Absolutely. But I-could-sleep-for-the-rest-of-my-life exhausting as well.
I confess, in many ways our escape to Haiti came at a good time. An escape to Hawaii would’ve been better, but Haiti worked. Troy shared my reservations, although his concerns circled around my ongoing health issues more than anything else. It’d been less than three weeks since the last surgery. Dropping three special-needs children into the middle of my healing hadn’t worked out so well. The added talking and activity brought on more pain and swelling. Again I couldn’t communicate or eat without difficulty.
Not to mention the whole cyst ridiculousness. It was still too early to know whether the last procedure had been successful. The cyst could still come back. If it did, I’d need another surgery, maybe another, until it resolved. No on
e knew when the whole frustrating mess would be wrapped up and put away for good. If ever.
Sobered by our parenting-preschoolers reality check, needing to slow down and think, Troy and I decided to take advantage of our Haiti trip to pray, process, and make some kind of permanent decision — for me, our family, and for these three littles who longed for a place to call home. We needed to see beyond the fluff and fantasy to face the rock-hard truth: this was a fourteen-year commitment.
Not a weekend romp or a weeklong vacation with someone else’s kids. This was choosing to parent three children to adulthood. A radical, earth-shattering, no-turning-back decision. We needed to be sure. And absolutely ready.
Only later would we see the irony of taking a mission trip when the most pressing mission waited for us back at home.
Haiti.
It’s difficult to describe Haiti to someone who has never been. The rotting garbage. The open-air markets with vendors selling raw chicken and goat heads sweltering in the sun for hours. The constant stench of sewage mingled with burnt trash, sticking to our clothes, skin, and suitcases. The shoeless children and blank-eyed mothers walking as zombies through the day’s tasks.
The smells surprised me most, overpowering the moment the airplane doors swung open. As we traveled by open-air bus through Port-au-Prince’s city streets, it only got worse. It took a full day to adjust to the smells, although I never did get used to it. It was all I could do not to cover my nose with a T-shirt from home that still carried the faint scent of detergent and fabric softener.
Two days after arriving in Port-au-Prince, on the day of my fortieth birthday, our host, Greg, of Christian World Outreach, rented an air-conditioned van to transport us and all our gear to LaJeune, the job site. Even by American standards, the van was nice. By Haitian standards, it was an unheard of luxury. Considering the ninety-degree heat, I thought it an appropriate birthday gift.
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