The concept of a mission trip is simple: find a blighted part of the world, go to it, fix it. Before (and while) I volunteered my name and a week of freedom from my life towards fixing the devastation in Haiti, that was the extent of my knowledge of what to expect. While sitting in an air conditioned room and surrounded by electricity, technology, reliably clean water, and access to more information than mankind throughout history could fathom, I quietly tapped an email to Matt Barcalow through my personal laptop, requesting that I join his Haiti mission trip. I then casually tossed my finished Chic-Fil-A cookies & cream milkshake into the garbage bin in my room, a modest portion left unconsumed. I anticipated the loss of free time, relaxation, and my long-anticipated window of opportunity to decompress from the daily battery of school, and nothing more. After all, I had been through it before. I had gone to Pittsburgh. I had lost the aforementioned, and returned to life with a new appreciation for my possessions. While I would like to claim that I was fundamentally altered that week, I wasn't. I thought of the less fortunate every time I shot off a text message on my then-expensive cell phone for the following month or two, but then my materialism decided it would be more comfortable to override the section of my mind responsible for those thoughts of guilt and replace them with speculation over the next $50 plastic disc bearing the phrase "Xbox 360" that would be sold. My problem wasn't that I hadn't given enough; it was that I hadn't lost enough.
Humans have an interesting psychological tic called "loss aversion". While we will work hard to gain something new, we will throw our entire heart, mind, and soul into protecting what we already have. It's instinctual, it's universal, and it's heavily reinforced by the American values of self. I lost a bit of time and freedom when I went to Pittsburgh. But the closer I get to March 31, the more I see that I am being prepared to lose more than I ever have in my life. I can't see everything I will encounter, but I can feel myself recalibrating my ideas of possession in anticipation of losing what I would never expect to lose in normal life. I can feel myself get ready for a loss of comfort--not just physical, but social. Mental. Emotional. I can feel my perspective on an entire list of subjects brace itself for a complete demolition and reconstruction. I can feel myself get ready to lose my ability to live my life in proverbial ignorant bliss without consideration that there are those who would give all they had in pursuit of just a few of the things I take for granted. Through a combination of the leaders' description of what to expect in Haiti with my own personal sense of everything that I have held comfortably close in life preparing to slip away, I know that loss will define my trip.
But loss is where the power of God steps prominently forward. While God may work quietly within us in times of prosperity and gain, it is in times of loss that God fundamentally alters us. When our perspective and comfort is destroyed by the jarring destitution of poverty, God provides a sense of solidarity in Him while changing who we are as people. When our heart is broken by powerful visuals of nothingness, God repairs it with a desire to change it. When we, in our loss, witness the comparably unfathomable loss of others, God rebuilds us with a drive to help. God calls us to lose what we have not only for the sake of others, but for the sake of ourselves. And it is in this much-maligned time of loss that God reminds us that ultimately, it is not about us; it is about Him.
It is because of this that I have committed myself to overcome my own selfish sense of loss aversion and instead embrace losing everything that I have. From the modern conveniences of suburban American life to my personal comfort zone, I am preparing myself to lose anything I can find. I eagerly anticipate waking up one hot Haitian morning and realizing that much of what I possess today is gone, because then I will know that God is actively working inside of me to change who I am as a person. Loss is a powerful agent of change. But just as I know that I couldn't force a camel through the eye of a needle if I tried (assuming I could find a camel to try it with), I know that the loss I am preparing to withstand will positively and fundamentally change my life. It is this that I expect from Haiti, it is this that I will spend the next month preparing for, and it is this that defines why I passionately anticipate losing all I have.
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