Love Keeps No Record of Wrongs

This Week's Story

A group of pastors from Missouri asked me to guide them through Haiti for a clean water project. In rural Haiti, water kills more people than anything else, so I couldn't say yes fast enough.

What I didn't expect was the sleeping arrangements. The men slept inside. I got a deflated air mattress on plywood, outside, for five nights. I lay there in the dark listening to Vodou drums in the distance, praying nothing would crawl on me. On night two, something did. I felt it land on my leg, dug down deep, found the last speck of courage hiding behind my spleen, and opened one eye, bracing for a tarantula or worse. Beady red eyes stared back. Sharp talons gripped my thigh.

It was a chicken. A dang chicken. Two nights later, same drill, same chicken. When dinner was served the next evening, I was comforted knowing there wouldn't be a three-peat. Sorry, old friend.

For a long time I told that story with a sting in it. Those pastors who made a woman sleep outside with the chickens. But love keeps no record of wrongs — and here's what I learned that means. It doesn't erase the memory. It changes the narrative. It drains the bitterness out until the story is just a story. Now it's not a grievance; it's one of the funniest things that ever happened to me. I can sleep anywhere. I'm braver than I was. And the water project we started that week is still putting clean water into thousands of homes. That's what made the trip worth remembering.

This Week, Day by Day

My Prayer This Week