Port-au-Prince

Last night was kind of a rough night with an unexpected shift at work, trying to figure out which Middle Tennessee town I would be sleeping in, and willing my eyes to stay open while I drove there. Yet for some reason, when I lay my head on my pillow, sleep would not come.

It absolutely would not.

Thoughts bombarded my mind. My own voice kept shouting a million different thoughts into my mind's ear. My voice multiplied and a thousand random thoughts screamed for my attention when all I wanted was to sleep for the six precious hours I had.

Still, sleep would not come.

I think it took me about an hour to finally fall asleep and get my mind to shut up. The next few hours were spent trying to sleep, but between random dreams and waking up, I'm not sure how successful my attempts were.

Towards the end of my "slumber," three words, really one phrase, kept running through my mind. P____-___-P______. I was really confused because though I knew the words (I forgot once I woke up) I could not figure out what they meant. I work in a video store, so I thought maybe it was a video title that I had seen among the few hundred titles I had handled that night.

The name kept running through my head. Literally spelling itself out, waking me up a few times. Still, I was confused, not knowing what it was, not being able to grasp the meaning of the phrase.

This morning, awake, despite my body's struggle to get out of bed, I drove to school and sat down to finish an assignment on the earthquake in Haiti. The school computers are set to use a search engine other than what I used yesterday afternoon to start my assignment. After typing in "causes of the earthquake in Haiti," the first subject that greeted my eyes was "Port-au-Prince."

Port-au-Prince.

That was it. That was the phrase that kept waking me up sometime early this morning. I was completely positive. That was it without question. Port-au-Prince. How could I have forgotten the words?

But now they had meaning.

I have no idea why this was waking me up. I would love to believe it was the Holy Spirit trying to communicate to me. Maybe telling me to wake up and pray. But my prayer life has been rather shoddy of late, so even if I knew what it was, maybe I would have been skeptical in my drowsy slumber. Yet this morning, I see those words on the computer screen, and while I could believe I just thought of them because of my assignment, that wouldn't justify the words waking me up more than once in attempts to discover their meaning.

Port-au-Prince.

A region wrecked with pain and destruction.
A broken people, far from God, yet drawing on their pain
and looking for some sort of redemption.

I would love to go to Haiti right now. However, I see school as a definite obstacle to that wish. That and a lack of funds, or a selfish desire to salvage the small savings I have for life here in the privileged US.

I don't know. I'm not saying that being awakened mulitiple times by the name of a suffering town means I am supposed to go to that place. But I wonder what it does mean.

Maybe I will get some follow-up, some peace of mind, some answer to my unwritten question, but if not, then hopefully I will be more cognizant of the pain of those in Haiti and will be more in tune to praying for the people of Port-au-Prince daily.

The privileged white girl goes to school while the black children oceans away are suffering immensely, with little hope to lighten their load.

Something seems so wrong about that.