There is a chapter in Facedown on relationships, specifically our tribes. It is one of the dearest chapters to me as it is one of the great lessons of the season I share in Facedown.
Who you surround yourself with matters. Before my facedown moment, I had some beautiful mentors and friends, but I would not say that I had or understood what it meant to have a tribe or deep friendships.
Sadly, I would not have described myself as a good friend before 2013. It would take all of those events of 2012 and some very special women on a mountain in October 2012 to teach me what it meant to have and to be a friend.
Below is an essay I wrote on August 7, 2019, that is included in the relationship chapter and has been slightly edited to share here.
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I had a disagreement (aka fight) last night with one of my oldest and dearest friends. Relationships are hard for them, for me, and us. Due to distance and circumstances, we say goodbye more often than hello. Our hearts are ridiculously tender, shielded by armor so strong, and it is in this sameness that we “know” and love each other dearly.
I wanted to write something to them this morning.
Something about love and time and friendship.
I had zero words.
I went looking in my phone’s “Notes” section, where I keep (among other things) musings, writing ideas, favorite quotes, etc. I searched by “love,” and the fourth one was a little blurb. I wrote it two years ago, in July 2017, about my latest “Hello/Goodbye” story with Tacura.
Tacura is a little boy in Haiti growing up in an orphanage. His mother passed away, and his father placed him at the orphanage a few short months before my first visit to Haiti in June 2013, just a year and a half after I lay on the floor face down. He took to me (and me him) in such a way that all these years later, I continue to struggle to find words to describe it.
There was simply a knowing between us.
So, our hellos and goodbyes are epic every single time. I could write a book on them. On my second trip, when I got off the bus, Tacura was on me, scurrying up my body like a climbing wall to hug me. I remember thinking beforehand that he surely would not remember me, this boy who had stolen my heart. I could not have been more wrong. Now, on my sixth trip to Haiti, I had grown to expect these epic meetings.
In writing about it, I also acknowledge a lesson on relationships in general. They are hard. They can be seasonal. And maybe, most importantly today, we should all love the way Tacura loves—wholly, completely, without hesitation or judgment of where you have been, and with the heart of Jesus.
All of the above was rolling around in my heart this morning as I tried to reconcile a friendship that continued to challenge me. I hoped they could hear my heart in the words I wrote about Tacura (italicized below) just a few years earlier.
I have written and shared a lot over past visits (and this one) about this kid's epic way of saying hello—oh, the joy. However, what goes up must come down, so you can only imagine the goodbyes. There hasn't been one, yet that didn't make me feel like my heart was being ripped from my chest. Couple that with my deep issues with goodbyes; they are fraught with landmines for us both.
So.....picture this: our team gets to squeeze in a precious third visit (and you can bet your socks I was pushing hard for it as there were conversations that needed to happen with Caleb (a young boy soon aging out of the orphanage), plus we promised the kids (which we did not do unless we KNEW we would be back) so as time slipped away, our entire team was thrilled that a third visit came.
I knew something was off when Caleb and Tacura were not right there as I exited the bus. We quickly realized that some kids were running late returning from church. No problem. Then Caleb pops in, but no Tacura; it seems he is practicing drums at church and will be later. I am still calm. Time ticks by, yet no Tacura. When it was time to go, even Caleb looked at me like this wasn’t good.
Long story short, I told Caleb you have to tell Tacura goodbye for me and make sure he knows I was here. I was a W R E C K, trying to keep it together. A downpour started as we returned to Jumecourt (the complex where we were staying, which was next door but separated by a giant wall and barbwire, meaning it might as well be miles away).
After dinner, I was pacing up and down the upper walkway, trying to see if I could at least see Tacura and wave goodbye. Finally, I see him, or he sees me, but we both start waving wildly at each other, and he starts blowing kisses. It is raining, and he is tiptoeing around the giant puddles waving like a lunatic, and there I am waving back - also like a lunatic - and crying (though, of course, he could not see that).
Suddenly, he motions toward the wall. It seems there is a tiny hole in it, though I had never seen it up close. Suddenly, I was in the rain, headed to the hole with the off chance Tacura, and I were reading each other's minds. I started wading through water because the rain had covered the ground, including the hole, up to six inches deep.
Time passes, and I think I misunderstood, but as I turn, I hear "Ado," which is how Tacura says, "Heather," and I turn back and look for him but can't see through the hole because of all of the water, so I reach my hand through God only knows what is in that hole, and I feel his hand grab mine.
The pouring rain was deafening, yet I could hear him say, “I will pray for you. I love you." I am UNDONE. I don't know how to respond to this scene and his words He will pray for me. Caleb is suddenly there. I remind them to study hard, that I love them, and that I am praying for them. It is a touching and yet devastating scene if ever there was one.
Relationships.
I am so grateful for the relationships that God continues to knit, graft really, between my heart and others via Haiti. These relationships are slaying me but healing me, too, none more or less than Tacura.
Relationships come in all shapes and sizes. They last for different seasons—many or few. They come to teach us, grow us, or change us. Mainly, they matter—two humans connecting because of something greater than us and circumstance.
Someday, when Tacura is older, I hope to tell him the story of how meeting him changed my life. Somehow, though, I believe he will already know.
Relationships are so hard.
I cannot even remember the type of friend I once was, so unremarkable I was at being one.
In that vein, I remain grateful for my oldest friends and dearest mentors who have faithfully poured into our relationships. With such love, all these years before and after failure cracked open my life, but maybe even more as they have stood beside me during these years of growth, healing, and unending change over the past decade. They have always believed in me more than I ever believed in myself. Clearly, they are all more than I deserve.
For context, I had no way of knowing that, as of this writing, our goodbye in 2017 was the last time I would see Tacura. My next and last visit to Haiti was a business consulting trip in 2018, and I could not arrange a visit to see Tacura due to the growing unrest. I have not been able to return to Haiti safely since 2018.
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God, I miss Tacura and that season in so many ways.
I do not know if you have great relationships, hard relationships, or a combination of both (I would imagine the latter). I know that as long as humans are on this earth, there will be relationships, and where there are, there will be difficulties.
I remember bemoaning goodbyes in therapy once. Let’s just say that I spent a lot of time in therapy working through some trauma around goodbyes, and even after all of that work - they are still hard for me. I digress. My therapist told me - at the end of a particularly brutal session, working through a specific goodbye - the following…
“Heather, you have a particularly large heart. You have a tender heart. You have two options, as I see them. Close yourself off from the world behind walls or do the work and learn how to let your heart love as it was designed while also being able to process the pain that will naturally come with loving so big.”
I remember staring at her in disbelief.
Was I really paying for this?!?!
I am nervously laughing even now while remembering.
The truth is—she was right. I had been trying to do exactly that without having done the work it took to do it well. In fact, I had been acting all strong and tough when I was anything but. In doing that, I hurt myself and others. Years later, I cannot type that truth out without cringing. The lasting shame is real, friends.
What is also real is that we all carry baggage into our relationships. None of the pain in any past or current relationship was/is 100% my fault. It took therapy to teach me that too. I kid you not, friends, I was a hot mess before therapy. I digress. Again.
So yes, even all of these years later, I am still learning how to be a good sister, aunt, friend, employee, leader, boss (and yes, leader and boss are two very different things), mentor, business partner, woman, and, maybe most importantly…a good human.
…and that is okay.
If you are not still learning or growing…you are probably dead, so if that does not push you to go easier on yourself, I do not know what will.
Plus, while they can be challenging. Good relationships. The right relationships. Well, that is the GOOD stuff, and no one wants to give up on the opportunity to have those.
Author’s Note: It feels important to state that because the majority of this is from an essay in my book Facedown, there are references that, unless you know my whole story, are going to leave readers here befuddled, possibly. My apologies for that. To help, I have tried to add context where I could. It is also worth noting that while there are mistakes in the voiceover attached, I am leaving it because I struggled to get through parts of it the first time while reading this essay. My apologies for those errors, too. The truth is this post has taken me more than two days to write (and record). It is a challenging subject for me, filled with stories tied to a couple of people - Tacura being one of them - that my heart remains the tenderest (towards) of its fifty-three years of beating. I appreciate your forbearance.