Leslie Rolling

This Isn’t the Consolation Prize

This morning I walked into my kitchen and exhaled a bit. I put the coffee on, then curled up in the armchair in the corner where I could see out the windows and I sat there in the early morning light just being quiet.

The kitchen isn’t the same one as the one I would go into every day when I last wrote, and the armchair still doesn’t feel like mine. We left Haiti back in November, knowing we hadn’t planned or expected that, and that we wouldn’t be going back, so a lot of things still feel really unfamiliar right now. Because of increased insecurity and concerns that we might not be safe in our general area for much longer, and some issues with our staff that we realized we no longer had the capacity to lean into, we knew it was time to make the decision we hadn’t planned on making until retirement. I’m grateful that we had the time to pack up the things we wanted to take with us and have some closure, but it hasn’t made the transition easier or less painful.

When we left I think we all thought that if we could just get here, to the US, things would be easier and we could take a breath. We could settle in and pick up the pieces and life would be easier. Almost five months later it doesn’t feel easier. It feels really hard. What makes it extra hard is that this wasn’t the plan.

One thing that has become very apparent to us in the past few months, is that North Americans don’t grieve well. Like most other things, we like to put grief on a to-do list as a task to be done and checked off. We like for it to have time frames. We talk about the stages of grief so we know what to expect and prepare for, then try to make sure we’re moving through the stages so we can be done grieving. When someone struggles with grief for a long time, longer than we think should be necessary, we get frustrated and wonder what’s taking them so long. We use phrases like, “It’s time to move on…”

But here’s the thing – grief doesn’t care what we think or how we want things to work. Grief is going to settle in and it’s going to take it’s sweet time. It’s going to broadside you when you least expect it in moments that often feel ridiculous. I broke down crying one day because of a carrot peeler. Why? Because I spent several seconds rooting around for my carrot peeler in the drawer, only to realize that the one I was looking for was the one I had left in Haiti, and that my new one was still so unfamiliar that I didn’t know what it looked like. At the core of it I was hit with how much we had left behind, all the little things that make a home, that we accumulate over the years, and I had to acknowledge that I didn’t feel at home in my new house. That the US wasn’t home.

There have been so many of those moments for us. There have been so many hard conversations. So many tears. So many days of wondering if it’ll get easier. So many conversations where we talk about how this wasn’t what we had planned, it wasn’t what we expected, and how much we left behind.

Chris has a new job that he started this week, and I’m so excited for him. But, it’s been a hard process. When we got here he was sure he wouldn’t be able to find something that had as much importance for him as Clean Water for Haiti. It’s SO hard to go from committing your life to something where you know you’re daily helping to save the lives of others, to a place where everyone seems to have access to whatever they need when they need it. He would repeatedly say, “I’m not going to find something that will matter as much as that.” This week he started as the Executive Director for an organization that focuses on creating relationships with the homeless community in Portland. We all need shelter, water, food, and safety to exist, but we need relationship to thrive.

This morning, in that early morning light, we were once again talking about how hard things feel right now and I told Chris that I had realized that it’s very easy, when we compare our life now to life in Haiti, for us to think that this is the consolation prize. That this will never be as important, or as meaningful, or fill in the blank, as our life in Haiti. We feel that in many ways we didn’t get to have much choice in the now and present reality we’re living in. But, that doesn’t mean it isn’t the next right thing for our family.

One of the ways that God has always cared for my heart over the years, through all of the really hard things, is that I eventually get to a place where in the midst of all the hard things where he can peel back the surface layers and show me where the hope is. In the early morning hours today I scrolled through Facebook and read a friend’s post where she talked about “good trouble”, and how good trouble people are the ones that look for what they can uproot and disturb in the process of loving people like Jesus does. A while back as I was sharing with a Haiti friend who knows us well, lamenting how hard things were, she said, “I know it’s so hard right now, but you guys were made for this. You KNOW how to do this. God made you for hard things.” You see, I know that deep down, Chris and I are “good trouble” kind of people. I actually think that most of us are, but the majority of us don’t give ourselves the opportunity to learn that. We think we’re not capable, or maybe we’re just a bit afraid. Chris and I have had the privilege of being worn away, of seeing that we’re more capable than we ever thought, and that we LIKE that. That it feels good and right to be in that space and living that life of disrupting and doing the hard things.

This morning as we talked I told him that one of the big reasons we knew it was time to go is that we saw that relationally, we had reached a wall with our staff. Our family was very lonely because most of our friends and social network had left. We were so isolated. Chris especially struggled with the isolation and lack of relationships. But here he was stepping into a new job where the primary focus was relationship. God hadn’t given us the consolation prize, he’s taken us out of something where we had built this amazing thing to the point where it COULD be handed off to local leadership, I could still do the things I’m good at to keep the funding going, but then allowing Chris to step into the next thing for him where he can do what his heart most desires – to be in relationship with people that are often forgotten and most in need of love.

I couldn’t help but wonder this morning how often we feel like we’re living with the consolation prize, and because of that we miss the things that God really wants us to see? Do we focus so much on the fact that things feel hard, and miss the fact that grieving means we emotionally invested in life? That it hurts because we dared to love or care? Do we know that no one has ever promised that life would be easy? Do we see that the hard things are what shape us and grow us and allow us to see what we’re really capable of? How deep we can dig, how tenacious we can be? That there can actually be hope in the midst of the storm?

Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t make things less hard right now. I cried again this morning, and will probably do it again tomorrow because tears are my way of processing. But I do know it’s worth it. It’s worth it to sit in the grief and to feel and hurt. Because on the other side of that is hope and joy and gratitude. At least for me it is. I’ve realized I don’t want to be a person who doesn’t allow myself to go through the hard things, because I love coming out on the other side, looking back, and getting to fully see what was happening. I know it may take a really long time to see the full picture, but if Haiti taught me anything, it was that it was all worth it, and the other side is pretty amazing.

April 7, 2023 8 Comments

The Ministry of Clean Floors

It’s Saturday morning and I’m curled up on my bed with a cup of coffee, and the only pressing thing I have to do today is laundry. It’s been five months since my last post. A lot of things can happen in five months. For us, one of those was that our housekeeper needed to take some time off for health reasons. We thought it would be a short term thing and she would be able to return to work, so we just tried to fill in the gaps the best we could. I know part of it too, was us being in denial about having to consider finding someone new. Marthe is older and had been telling us for a while that it was getting harder for her to do everything, but we love her so much that we didn’t want to accept that. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, and she let us know she truly couldn’t come back to work, but would help us find someone to replace her. We interviewed Mirlande last week, and this week both ladies were working together so Marthe could show her the ropes. Yesterday was her first full day on her own, and she did a fabulous job.

This is a big deal in so many ways. I’ve always struggled with the concept of having a housekeeper, because that’s not how I was raised, nor was it common for either Chris or I and most of the people we know. But, the reality is that living in Haiti is not living in Canada. In Canada our houses are closed up most of the time, so cleaning is much lighter. Here, everything is open to the elements. We also have people coming in and out of the office all day long, tracking sand and dirt from the work yard, which then moves its way into the main part of the house as we go about our days. I know some of you are probably thinking that cleaning is hard there, but we sweep and mop every other day, and when we sweep just the main floor of the house it leads to two full dustpans of dirt. From two days! We have little lizards and bugs too, and we just accept this is part of life here. All of it combined means a lot more cleaning every week. You can’t just leave it. So, we’ve been trying to balance all of the regular things along with staying on top of the house work, and it’s been a lot.

When Chris and I were first married I really wanted to do most of it, so we had someone in a few days per week to help with laundry (hand washing at the time) and going to the market. Then along came Olivia and Yonese helped with more housekeeping as my days filled up a bit more. Then I got pregnant with Alex and I remember Chris telling me that whether I was okay with it or not, Yonese was going to come 5 days a week and I would be letting her help more with the house and the baby, because my time was valuable and there were things that I could do for the mission that others couldn’t. It was about where my time was best spent, and scrubbing toilets wasn’t it. Yonese became such a vital part of the mission and our home, so when she told us she was going to visit her daughter in the US for several months we panicked a bit, but she assured us she wasn’t going to leave us hanging. She brought us Marthe, and within a few short weeks Marthe had seamlessly stepped into her role. They’re cousins, so there is relationship there, which has been a sweet gift to us.

Those two ladies have been such a huge part of our home for the past 16 years. Not only have they helped keep the house clean and functioning, enabling Chris and I to do other things, they did the majority of our market shopping every week. They prepared our guest facilities when we have visitors and would cook special meals when we asked. When we held training classes they would do all of the cooking for the students for the week. They also became like stand in grandmas/aunties for our kids. Not having them here leaves a hole, and it’s hard to open up to having someone new come into that. It feels vulnerable. So, we had put off accepting that we had to go down that road. But, it was time. I was feeling stressed all the time from having to juggle work, homeschool, all the market shopping, and housekeeping. I could do it for the short term, but looking at the long term we just knew it wasn’t sustainable.

Friends, when I walked out of the office yesterday afternoon into the main part of the house and saw how clean it was, I exhaled. It was the first time in five months that I was going into a weekend not dreading all of the cleaning I was going to have to do. The floors were done, the bathrooms were clean, the couch covers had been changed (I helped with that, but it was done!), the dishes were done and counters clear for dinner prep. So many things. It was such a gift.

As Mirlande settled in this week I feel like our apprehension started to melt away and joy started coming back. She’s kind and sweet. She smiles a lot. She arrived early and got right to work without waiting for anyone to tell her what to do. She asked questions, but also took a lot of initiative in small ways that mean a lot. The kids like her and I could see them relax and bubble up again. They’ve missed having someone here, not to do the work, but to just be part of our lives. I’m looking forward to getting to know her better and weaving her into the fabric of life here for us and the mission. A bunch of our staff already know her, which makes us happy too, because it’ll make her transition into the team that much easier.

The past few years have been really hard. So much has changed here, and it’s led to a lot of grief. If I think about this season in life grief is one of the main things I see. I was writing an update to our supporters last week and was talking about that a bit. We often associate grief with death, and don’t want to let it be part of what makes other seasons of life hard, but it is. When we lose a loved one, we expect grief, and we know it’s a process that one goes through. When difficult circumstances happen, we often tell ourselves we just have to keep going, to keep plugging away, and we don’t want to acknowledge that whatever happened might be causing us to grieve, along with having to deal with the actual situation at hand. Things can even be good, like exciting changes with jobs or life, but we still grieve the old, even sweet things in life. We don’t talk about that enough as a society, so when it comes on it’s hard to accept it and sit with it.

I’ve been trying to sit with it, acknowledge it, and feel it. Cry if needed. And ask what can’t ben changed, and what I might be able to do something about. And prayer. Asking God to let me feel all of it, but to also keep my heart soft and bring hope. I feel it brewing, and that brings comfort.

So what does grief have to do with a new housekeeper? It’s acknowledging that life is full of seasons and change. Nothing ever stays the same. We can settle into routines and what not, but eventually things shift. We can hold on tight and not want to let go, doing a lot of kicking and screaming and probably living in denial while we do, or we can slowly take a breath, and exhale, and take the next step even if it’s a hard one.

I don’t want to accept that life is changing, it’s moving on, and people get older and can’t do the things they once did. That it means saying goodbye to dearly loved employees who have been so much a part of our life here. Doing that means accepting that we’re also getting older, my kids are getting older, and that life is a bit fragile. But in the end, I don’t have a choice. So I can grieve it and feel it, and then ask what I can do to make the best of the situation. For me that means accepting that it’s a reality, and that I can’t sustainably do all the things myself and still be happy and the person I know God has called me to be. I can’t be the wife I’m meant to be, the mom I’m meant to be, or use my gifts and abilities for the mission and my family the way I’m meant to if I’m feeling pulled in too many directions at once.

None of us were ever meant to do all the things. We need to be able to recognize our limitations and ask for help. I’m also being reminded of the fact that here, that asking for help can lead to beautiful things. It brings another sense of community to our family and the mission, and allows us to participate in Haitian culture more. But it also brings employment and some stability to another family, and right now that’s a really important thing because nothing in Haiti feels stable.

One of the things that I love about living this life is that God is constantly teaching me that while he may have called us here to lead in many ways, much of that leadership is really about learning. It’s learning about ourselves and when we need help, when we need community, when we need to be part of the body that he created. And it’s such a gift.

So yes, there is ministry in clean floors, and it’s okay to know that I need someone else to help care for me this way. :)

September 3, 2022 No Comments

Well, Hello There!

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve ventured into this space, as per what seems usual from the past few years. I’ve been thinking about all the whys of that, and I know I’ve mentioned the extended absences before, and how strange that is after so many years of coming here to share, record, process… all the things. Why is it that something I enjoyed so much went by the wayside?

While I was trying to actually get to the point of being able to write this post in WordPress I was reminded of one of the biggest reasons – our internet. Or rather the lack thereof. Yeesh. Friends, I seriously wish you could know how many minutes of my day get sucked up with just waiting for things to load. So many minutes. When we still lived in Pierre Payen we had a great 3G signal that we could hotspot to, and everything worked. Then we moved to Camp Marie, into what is essentially a bowl. When we first moved in we didn’t even have 3G. We were still on Edge. I’m not joking. The year was 2015. Eventually we realized that if we propped our phones up in a certain window, on top of about 5 rolls of toilet paper (hey, you work with what you’ve got), we could get 3G.

Eventually Chris did some more research (I’m sure this was after watching me cry because I was so frustrated with not being able to get work done) and set up this incredibly convoluted system of internet for the mission. It involves a dish, attached to the top of an old cell phone tower, on top of a mountain between our community and the ocean. That feeds the signal to our modem, which is connected to a repeater, also attached to the same tower. The repeater sends the signal down the valley to the other receiver on our house roof, which then sends it to us via wifi. Fun, right? So much. (That was sarcasm)

Don’t get me wrong, we are eternally grateful that we have some kind of internet. For a while the system worked so much better than what we had and we were super excited. Over the past few years though, things have degraded, and in the past few months, things have just plain sucked. We barely get wifi, and while our 3G signal has drastically improved in the past few years, in the last while it’s been less than stellar, so we try bouncing back and forth between the two, hoping that something will work. It’s meant that trying to do anything substantial online feels like running a marathon, so most times we pick the most important things, and everything else gets moved down the pile. I realized that it just became so much easier to do a quick post on Facebook, than it did to log onto the blog, write a post, edit, and publish. That could literally take a couple days.

But, in the last year I’ve realized that I have deeply missed writing. I miss processing things through words. I miss sharing our life with people. I miss recording things that my kids can come back and read later in life. The past few years have been hard in so many ways (I’m planning on unpacking some of this in later posts) and rather than processing in a way that makes sense to me, I’ve been storing it up and letting it dribble out here and there. (Don’t worry, I’ve spoken to a professional when I felt like I really needed to).

The other night Chris and I opened a bottle of wine, and sat on the upstairs deck, as we do sometimes. We were talking about life things and how different things are right now from what we’ve known here over the years. We’ve been through so many hard things, but the hard things from the past few years have felt very different because with them has come loss and loneliness in a way we haven’t experienced before. And grief. So much grief. Grief for Haiti and her struggles, and how those things have affected life for everyone here. How those issues have changed so much about life for everyone. The loss of freedom and security. Don’t get me wrong, Haiti has always had security issues, but they are so much deeper now than they ever have been the entire time either of us has been here. Those issues have led to much of our missionary/expat community leaving the country. It has meant so many days at home because we either couldn’t go anywhere, there hasn’t been gas to go places, or the places and people we would have gone to see are no longer open or here. It’s just a strange, hard season.

As we talked about all of this it led to making a list of deliberate things we could be doing to stay healthy, and get back to a better place of enjoying life in this season. It’s so easy to get behind some device, be it a phone, computer or video game system, and zone out while the world is passing us by. None of us feels good, and we’re losing sight of the things that feed our souls.

For me, writing is one of those things, and Chris encouraged me to get back to it, even if it was only so I could process through the things that had been brewing for the past few years. So here I am.

I know there are other reasons I stopped writing as much that go beyond the internet connection. Some of it was that the blog world was changing, and it felt like there was this pressure to do more, all the time, or no one would read. More content, more pictures, more often. Between my personal blog and writing all the things for Clean Water for Haiti, I think I burned out. When that got paired with internet struggles something had to give, and this was it. Sad fact – I haven’t even been doing much writing for CWH either, and miss that too. I’m thankful that people who know and love us/me spoke up and told me how much they missed this over the years. It means a lot to me to know that people connect with it. In fact, as we sat with our Board of Directors in January at our annual retreat, I was touched by how many of them connected with CWH way, way back because they found my blog first. As they got to know our family, they grew to love CWH and eventually wanted to get involved in other ways.

Like I mentioned earlier, we’ve been through a lot of hard things over the years. During some of those times, there was a lot going on that not only affected the mission, but also our family, in very real and very hard ways. But, for the sake of doing what was right, I couldn’t share them. I still know that was the right thing and am grateful that I/we made that decision because we can now see the fruit of it in ourselves and the mission, but it was SO hard to come to this space and feel like I couldn’t share as openly as I wanted to about life. It felt false in some ways. It got harder and harder to try and share about life while many days we felt like we were being crushed. Some of those situations involved security things, some involved other people, and some we couldn’t share simply because we love Haiti and the Haitian people, and always want to be sensitive about how we talk about things here. Our perspective isn’t the only one, or the right one, and we don’t want anyone accusing us of being a voice of authority. I want to be able to share my experiences respectfully, and with love, so that it lifts the country up. It can be very hard to do that when we have to deal with corruption and the systemic issues here, because people can misconstrue those experiences. It just makes me second guess everything, so it often feels easier to not share.

Back in 2019 we started homeschooling the kids. Or rather, I started homeschooling the kids. They had been attending a local English speaking school, but the system and curriculum the school used wasn’t working for our kids anymore, and after several months of frustration for all of us, many tears from most of us (the homework!), meetings with teachers, and all the things, we made a very quick decision (literally in about 30 minutes) that it was time to bring them home. Going from being able to work full time 5 days a week and having about 7 hours each day to do other things, and going to not having those 7 hours, created a big life shift for me. I went down to part-time with CWH, and started figuring out how to educate my kids.

We’re now three years in, and I think we’ve figured some things out. It has meant that my time has been spread out though, so it was harder to pick and choose what to do and when, and it’s taken us a while to figure out what schedule works best for our entire family, but mostly me. What that means now, is that I do CWH work in the morning, school with the kids from mid-morning until mid-afternoon, then have a couple hours before we eat supper. Those are some of the lesser amazing internet hours of the day… See! It’s complicated! 

Anyway… Those are all reasons why this whole blogging thing got harder and fell off the to-do list. But I miss it, so I want to give it another go. And fun thing! The morning after Chris and I had our chat about life, he asked if I would be willing to let him post too. Like me, he has a lot of thoughts, and he has the ability to put those into words in ways people find interesting. People have asked why he doesn’t do it more often, but the thought of starting his own blog made his head spin because he hates having to figure computer related things out. Ask him how to set up a battery bank and solar system, or anything vehicle related, and he’s fine. Computers? No. Just no. So, he asked if I’d be willing to share my space and I said yes! He didn’t even have to bat his eyelashes at me**. He wants to be able to share about life from his perspective, talk about our family, some of his Haiti thoughts… really whatever strikes his fancy. And he gave me the right to veto if needed, LOL. I’ve set him up with his own profile, so you’ll be able to see which posts are from him and which are mine. I hope you enjoy his thoughts. He has a lot of good ones. In fact, I’d probably get more done in a day if we didn’t share and office because we spend so much time talking.

So that’s where we’re at. I think I’m back. Chris is here. Hopefully you’ll be hearing more about life with the Rollings again. Haiti is never boring, so it’s not like we don’t have content… 

The magical hour has arrived where I go educate my children, so I’m signing off and will see you soon!

~Leslie

**When Alex was about 2 I had a moment where I needed to discipline him about something. I can’t even remember what. What I DO remember is crouching down so I could be eye level with him, and telling him what needed to be said. He just looked at me and said, “It’s okay Mom. I just look at you, and I go like this with my eyes.” He then proceeded to bat his eyelashes at me, and I proceeded to bite the insides of my cheeks so I wouldn’t burst out laughing while also thinking many things about his father who he clearly learned this from.

March 25, 2022 6 Comments

I’m Leslie. I started my blog back in 2005 when I was fresh off the plane in Haiti. I lived in Haiti for over 17 years as a missionary, wife, and eventually mom. My husband and I ran Clean Water for Haiti together, day in and day out. We carved out a life we loved doing something important to us. Sadly, in the fall of 2022 we had to make the difficult decision to leave Haiti because of the insecurity. We’re now settling into life in the US. I’m thankful that I get to continue my work with CWH as the Executive Director for Canada and the US.

This Isn’t the Consolation Prize

The Ministry of Clean Floors

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This Isn’t the Consolation Prize

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The Ministry of Clean Floors

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Well, Hello There!

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See What You’ve Missed

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