There are a billion things I should be doing right now instead of sitting here under an electric blanket eating a Three Musketeers for dinner and writing about nothing. I need to pack. I need to draft about fifty emails, plan out a budget for the semester, and brainstorm ideas to plump up my currently empty Africa fundraising account. I also need to get to sleep at a decent time so I can stay awake on the ride back to Nashville tomorrow.
A cozy warm nest of blankets and a candybar sounds like much more fun though.
I had a good week. I spent Tuesday with my mom, Wednesday with my jr. high Sunday school teacher/high school boss/very dear friend, and Thursday with an assortment of people that I had not seen in entirely too long. I thought I would share the highlights with you.
During one of my ventures, I was riding the escalator in Barnes & Noble. I was there to pick up a book to replace one I had borrowed from a friend. The borrowed book met a rather unfortunate ending, and I felt pretty terrible about it. In front of me on the escalator was a little sandy-haired boy, probably about eight years old. He was holding the hand of a little girl who was maybe six. Her dark curly hair was pulled back in pigtails, and she was tapping her little black patent shoe impatiently. "Do you believe in magic, Chloe?" the boy asked. Chloe raised one eyebrow and smirked. "No," she scoffed. "I've never seen it." The boy just smiled. "Of course not. If you had seen it, you wouldn't have to believe in it, because you would know..."
I wanted to tell him that I do. I believe in magic-- in the Aslan kind, anyway... the kind of magic that melts away Christmas-less winters and wakes up hearts that were turned to stone. When we grow up, we give it different names, like Grace, Forgiveness, and Redemption. But when we're little-- when our hearts are still innocent and adventurous enough to believe in something bigger than itself without doubt or inhibition-- we call it magic.
My two-year-old niece and two-year-old cousin both stayed then night one evening. We spent a couple hours chasing each other through the house, growling and pouncing and screaming like banshees. As Ryleigh was falling asleep, I went to check on her. She smiled that beautiful dimpled grin and brushed her golden curls off her face. Then she closed her little blue eyes, sighed deeply, and said, "Goodnight, mommy. I love you so much."
Yes, I know she was half asleep and delirious. It doesn't matter. My heart grew three sizes anyway.
On Thursday I went north to Olney to meet a girl I had worked with at camp a couple of summers ago. She's going to spend a few weeks in Kenya next summer, and it was great to catch up with her and hear what's going on in her life. Then I kept on going north to have a late lunch with a couple of friends that I haven't seen since high school. I really enjoyed meeting the rest of their family. The food was absolutely amazing. We sat at the table for hours exchanging stories, and this family definitely has some stories to tell. They also listened-- really listened-- to my past experiences and my dreams for the future. I really appreciated and needed that more than they could possibly have known. Evening came far too soon, and I bid them a fond farewell as I slipped in my car to make the long drive home. I left their house thoroughly refreshed and encouraged. They are truly wonderful people, and I hope it's not another three years before I see them again. It was a good day; it had been a long time since I had found a good excuse to ramble on about Kazembe for hours.
I've found myself missing Kazembe more than usual this week. I always miss it, but these past few days the faces of last summer have visited my thoughts and dreams a bit more frequently. New Year's day will be my halfway point between the time I came back to the States last August and when I can go back to my kids in May. While the rest of the world counts down to the dawning of a new year, I'll be counting down to my own milestone. I should have a plane ticket within the next week or two.
Tomorrow morning I'll head back to Nashville. As much as I've enjoyed my time in Illinois, I'm absolutely pining to get home. I miss my friends, and I'm ready to get back into the rhythm of work, school, and coffee-shop-hopping. I have a sneaking suspicion that it is going to be a really, really great new year. Because I believe in Magic.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Friday, December 23, 2011
Gladys
I don't want to write this post.
You see, I started to write it weeks ago. I had written about Johnny and Elias, and a dear friend that sits next to me in one of my classes suggested that I write about Gladys next. But Amy had just told me that Gladys was not doing well, and I didn't want to write about her under those circumstances. I didn't want to feel like I was frantically clinging to the only memories I would ever have of her. I decided I would wait until she got better.
She didn't get better. She passed away early Friday morning.
And so tonight, I will tell you about Gladys. The order of events is probably way off, but the heart doesn't always tell stories in order. I've written some of this before. I'm going to write it again.
It was just a normal morning. I had cooked breakfast already and came into the living room. Timmy said good morning and casually mentioned that he thought there might be a new baby, but he wasn't sure. I bee-lined it to the nursery, running barefoot over the dry grass, dust flying with every step. I skidded into the room and nearly bowled Nathan over. Honestly, I didn't know the babies well enough at this point to recognize a new face, so I just counted them. There were the right number of heads. I went to good-naturedly berate Timmy for his mistake, only to eat my words a few minutes later when one of the nannies confirmed that there was indeed a new baby. She said she was five months old, but she seemed a few months older than that. I don't remember which nanny it was. It didn't matter. All I could see was this beautiful, cranky, fat little baby, sullenly curled up in a bouncer, whimpering quietly, and glaring at me with all the mistrust that one little being could muster. I got lost in those eyes. It was like she knew how heavy the world was, like she knew so much more than any child should ever have to know. She was wearing a pink and yellow dress. The body and sleeves were a silky material, and the skirt was sort of lacey. It was faded and torn, but it was clean.
I reached toward her. I could feel the heat before my hands even touched her. She was raging with fever. My heart jumped into my throat, and I breathed a silent prayer. Sweet Lord, not another one. Not another sick baby that I didn't know how to save. I scooped her up and held her against me. She smelled like rancid sweat and dirt. I didn't care.
Her steady whimper turned into a full-out cry almost as soon as I got her in the main house. Something about it made her anxious, but she calmed down if I took her outside. I fixed her a bottle, and she refused to take it. I tried every nipple I could find. It was like she didn't know how to suck, or just didn't want to. She finally struggled herself to sleep, and I laid her feverish body down in defeat. By now I had stripped her to try and cool her off.
Her family was coming to sign the papers. I asked Tom if I could sit in on the process, and he said that was fine. Her mother had died from something really random-- "stomach pains," I think. Her father was someone from the Congo who had basically just been passing through. They had fed her nothing but a few spoonfuls of "porridge" a day since her mother died. Her unwillingness to take a bottle made more sense now. There was so much more to the process, but eventually, the papers were signed, and the orphanage was her home.
At some point the medical officer came. He gave her a malaria test, and it came back positive immediately. He said to start her on Coartem, an antimalarial. Her family had brought her medical records, but they didn't appear to actually be real. For starters, the recorded weights for the last few months could not possibly have been right. All of the entries were written in the same handwriting and the same pen, as if someone had hastily scrawled it down before turning the corner and handing it to us. It was like this little girl had no past at all.
I was desperate to get her to eat. She would sleep fitfully for a few minutes, then wake up terrified and wail until I picked her up and cradled her against me. She instantly calmed a bit if I took her outside. I spent so much time walking in slow circles in the shade of the big tree outside the house, singing softly to her of "dancing bears, painted wings," my own tears falling to mingle with hers, because I just couldn't make her believe that she was safe. And still, the fever raged, despite dose after systematic dose of baby tylenol. I worried the medicine would be too much for her system to handle-- malaria is is vicious on the liver and spleen. I would lay a cold cloth on her sweaty forehead, and it would literally be hot to the touch seconds later. I sat with her on the stone wall of the courtyard that evening and bounced her from knee to knee, promising over and over again that it was all going to be okay. I'm not sure which one of us I was trying to convince. Majory, one of the nannies, came and sat with us. She cooed to Gladys and stroked her bald little head. "My child died of malaria," she said. I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing. Then she hugged her and gave her back to me. I think it was the only time I saw Majory really hug one of the kids.
I made a cereal/milk mixture that was thick enough to make spooning it a little easier, and I cradled her in my lap. Her head lolled back over my arm, and her mouth hung slack. Her eyes stared up at me. They weren't accusatory anymore. They were just desperate, and tired. I brought half a spoonful of milk to her mouth and dripped it into her cheek. She swallowed. And then she took another spoonful. And then another. And after an hour of painstakingly dripping it into her mouth, she had taken it all down. It wasn't much-- less than 75ml, I think-- but it was something, and for the first time, I let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, we might be able to fight through this together.
The cat adopted her. At first, I put her in the cradle to sleep, but she was really too big for it, and she slept so lightly that if she moved at all and touched the cold metal bars, she would wake up screaming. Chai did her best to help. That first night, I curled up on the couch with the cradle next to me so I could reach out and check on her if I needed to. Chai slept pretty much on my face, with her tail draped lazily over my shoulder. If Gladys moved at all, Chai would hop into the cradle. I woke up more than once to find her snuggled up next to her, and each time I wondered if angels came in feline form.
The fever came in waves, like it does with malaria. I struggled to keep the Coartem down her. She spit up an awful lot for a child who was barely taking down calories at all, and she was pretty much guaranteed to spit up if I gave her the medicine.
One morning one of the nannies and I took several of the babies, including Gladys and Jessie, down to the clinic. There was a group of women sitting a few feet away. The nanny translated for me. They had commented on each of the children in turn. Referring to Gladys, they said, "She is very dark. But also beautiful."
And she was. She was easily the blackest kid at the orphanage, to the point that she looks almost comical in the pictures I have of her next to the other babies. She had a heavy brow and a flat nose with big round nostrils. Her full pink lips were dreadfully difficult to coax into one of her rare grins, but when she did smile, you knew she meant it. She would blow spit bubbles sometimes to amuse herself. She wasn't "pretty" maybe in the way that the world defines it, but I thought she was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, even if she could produce more snot than any child I have ever laid eyes on.
With only two doses of Coartem left, her fever was still going strong. The medical officer gave me a baggie of Quinine to give her. He cut the pills into quarters and left me dosing instructions (which, many weeks later, I discovered were actually way wrong). The quinine was so bitter that she wouldn't swallow it at all. I swear this kid could throw up just on impulse. I tried it for a day and a half, but it just wasn't working. We switched to injection. I don't remember how much they were giving her per injection, but I remember it was an awfully large amount. A baby can only handle about 0.5mL a shot. I think she was getting about 4 times that. Her hip would swell as the fluid was injected, and she would cry in pain if I accidentally put any pressure on the area. After a day and a half of going to the clinic three times a day and waiting around for someone to show up and give her the shot, they finally sent the medicine home with me to give her. Three times a day, I walked down to the nursery to give it to her. I hated doing it. I know how nasty that medicine is, and I could see the physical pain it put her in. It can cause terrible hallucinations as well as permanent deafness and muscle damage, among other things.
Then one morning, the fever broke, and it didn't come back. That was also the first morning that she smiled at me without some major prompting. I just walked in the room, and she smiled.
Eventually, she got to the point that she was trying to gum the spoon to death every time I dropped some formula in her mouth. I tried a bottle again, but she didn't seem to know how to suck. I found a nipple that was split at the end so that the milk came out in a fairly steady stream. She took it. I had to be careful not to give it to her for more than a few seconds because she couldn't quite swallow fast enough to keep up if I did, but it helped her get the hang of a bottle. Then we moved to a normal nipple, and finally she was drinking like any healthy baby would.
She moved to the nursery about halfway through this process because Jessie had come and was demanding pretty much every spare moment I had to give. I just couldn't handle both of them at once. I managed it for two nights, but but they were both eating every two hours, so by the time I fed one and got her to sleep and fed the other it was pretty much time to make a bottle for the first one again. Timmy, Jazz, and Troy were great to take them of a morning so that I could go grab a few hours of solid sleep, but I figured the night nannies were there for a reason, and they could handle Gladys through the night. I had her a lot through the day though, at least until Jessie got worse. She was very, very clingy. She had finally come to trust me, but it was that kind of fragile trust that comes at first, where every time I left the room or put her down she seemed to think I wasn't coming back to pick her up again. Timmy often commented that she was a rather ugly baby (I think partly to annoy me...), but I think he kind of liked her. Once I came into the living room to find him dancing with her to some terrible rock music. She loved it.
She spent a lot of time in the dining room and kitchen with me. One morning Essie scooped her up and comforted her. Sometimes I would put her in the little chair that hooks onto the counter and let her play while I bustled around doing whatever. One time someone gave her a piece of bread to play with, and she thoroughly enjoyed slobbering it into a mushy mess and rubbing it into the counter.
When I would walk into the nursery, whatever nanny was there would jump at the chance to hand her over to me. Gladys was never an easy baby, even after the malaria was gone. They would say, "Your baby is crying for you. Your baby wants you. Your baby, she cries too much." She was kind of stubborn. She wouldn't stretch both arms up for me, but she would hold one hand out when she saw me, as if to say, "Yeah, you can pick me up if you want..."
I loved to go in the nursery first thing in the morning as all the kids were getting dressed. I was helping one of the toddlers into a pair of jeans and distractedly asked a couple of the kids to go rock Gladys in her bouncer, because she was crying and my hands were full. I looked up five seconds later to see Moriah rocking the bouncer with every ounce of her toddler strength. Glady's startled face, which was flying systematically up and down, made me laugh out loud. Thankfully, she was strapped in, or else Moriah would have bounced her headfirst onto the stone floor. I jumped up and grabbed her, and she gave me this scowl that clearly said, "Yeah, thanks..." before dropping her head solidly on my shoulder and sighing theatrically.
Even though she was probably about the same age as Ana and Ephraim, she wasn't nearly as developmentally advanced as they were. She spent most of her playtime sitting on the mat, leaned up against whoever was closest to her, watching the world around her with those giant eyes. She was a very low stimulus kid. Antics that would make the other babies around her age laugh didn't phase her at all. She wasn't particularly happy or unhappy; she was just sort of uninterested, or shy, like she was reserving judgment for now.
The morning Jessie died, Amy reminded me, "You still have Gladys." I needed to fill my empty arms with something, so I went and got her from the nursery and sat with her on that same spot on the wall where Majory had met us five weeks before. I fed her the morning bottle and talked to the kinders, who had all gathered around me, as one by one the Texas group emerged from their rooms to be met by the news that we had lost Jessie. I carried her around a lot that day, and in the days that followed. The Quinine had left it's mark-- she cried in pain if I absentmindedly patted her on the bottom-- but her hearing appeared to be intact. Amy took her at one point and was playing with her on the couch, and she made her giggle. I played with her fat, round little toes and daydreamed about how strange it would be to come back the next summer and find her walking and talking.
The morning we left, I didn't hug her goodbye. She was asleep, and I didn't want to wake her up. She sleeps so lightly, you see, and I hated to disturb her.
And that's how I'll always remember her. She was asleep on her stomach, both arms wrapped up around her head. Her mouth was partly open. Her head was facing away from me to the right. She was wearing a tie-dye shirt and matching shorts that a friend of mine's aunt had sent as a donation. Her long eyelashes curved down to meet those black, round cheeks, and she was peaceful. I whispered to her that it wouldn't be long. Just a few months.
Weeks passed, and school did its best to eat me alive. One morning Timmy chatted me on facebook to let me know that he had walked into the nursery to find Gladys struggling onto all-fours, trying to crawl. I was so proud of her.
Timmy took some pictures of the kids and posted them on facebook for those of us who were stuck stateside. Gladys' face had thinned out so much. Of all the kids, it seemed like she had changed the most since I had left. She was starting to look a bit more like a little girl and a bit less like a baby.
Time went on. Amy told me one morning that Gladys was not doing well. My chest tightened.
I knew that Amy had taken her to the hospital. My head expected the worst. My heart wouldn't believe it, not even when the phone call came, and so I stared at the screen that said "Unknown ID" and willed it not to be. Before I could make myself answer it, the call went to voicemail. The message confirmed what my heart knew. Gladys was gone.
It's hard to process it, really. I'm not there. I didn't see her get sick, and I wasn't with her when she finally gave up. Part of me thinks it won't be completely real until I get back to that crib where I left her and see that she's not in it. It's been an interesting thing to try and handle during the holidays. Someone commented rather coldly that life didn't stop mattering just because one baby had died. They're right. Quite to the contrary, in fact. The things in life that do matter become much clearer, and suddenly what's under the tree and whether that carol has been overplayed this year and all of the consumerist tradition that has grown up to be a holiday really doesn't matter at all. It's all in perspective, I suppose.
These are the fleeting memories I have of her. They're not much, but they are precious to me, as she is. I've caught my self humming a lullaby for the past couple of days. It's one I wanted to share with her when I saw her again. Maybe she's listening now.
"Goodnight my angel, time to close your eyes
And save these questions for another day
I think I know what you've been asking me
I think you know what I've been trying to say
I promised I would never leave you
Then you should always know
Wherever you may go, no matter where you are
I never will be far away."
You see, I started to write it weeks ago. I had written about Johnny and Elias, and a dear friend that sits next to me in one of my classes suggested that I write about Gladys next. But Amy had just told me that Gladys was not doing well, and I didn't want to write about her under those circumstances. I didn't want to feel like I was frantically clinging to the only memories I would ever have of her. I decided I would wait until she got better.
She didn't get better. She passed away early Friday morning.
And so tonight, I will tell you about Gladys. The order of events is probably way off, but the heart doesn't always tell stories in order. I've written some of this before. I'm going to write it again.
It was just a normal morning. I had cooked breakfast already and came into the living room. Timmy said good morning and casually mentioned that he thought there might be a new baby, but he wasn't sure. I bee-lined it to the nursery, running barefoot over the dry grass, dust flying with every step. I skidded into the room and nearly bowled Nathan over. Honestly, I didn't know the babies well enough at this point to recognize a new face, so I just counted them. There were the right number of heads. I went to good-naturedly berate Timmy for his mistake, only to eat my words a few minutes later when one of the nannies confirmed that there was indeed a new baby. She said she was five months old, but she seemed a few months older than that. I don't remember which nanny it was. It didn't matter. All I could see was this beautiful, cranky, fat little baby, sullenly curled up in a bouncer, whimpering quietly, and glaring at me with all the mistrust that one little being could muster. I got lost in those eyes. It was like she knew how heavy the world was, like she knew so much more than any child should ever have to know. She was wearing a pink and yellow dress. The body and sleeves were a silky material, and the skirt was sort of lacey. It was faded and torn, but it was clean.
I reached toward her. I could feel the heat before my hands even touched her. She was raging with fever. My heart jumped into my throat, and I breathed a silent prayer. Sweet Lord, not another one. Not another sick baby that I didn't know how to save. I scooped her up and held her against me. She smelled like rancid sweat and dirt. I didn't care.
Her steady whimper turned into a full-out cry almost as soon as I got her in the main house. Something about it made her anxious, but she calmed down if I took her outside. I fixed her a bottle, and she refused to take it. I tried every nipple I could find. It was like she didn't know how to suck, or just didn't want to. She finally struggled herself to sleep, and I laid her feverish body down in defeat. By now I had stripped her to try and cool her off.
Her family was coming to sign the papers. I asked Tom if I could sit in on the process, and he said that was fine. Her mother had died from something really random-- "stomach pains," I think. Her father was someone from the Congo who had basically just been passing through. They had fed her nothing but a few spoonfuls of "porridge" a day since her mother died. Her unwillingness to take a bottle made more sense now. There was so much more to the process, but eventually, the papers were signed, and the orphanage was her home.
At some point the medical officer came. He gave her a malaria test, and it came back positive immediately. He said to start her on Coartem, an antimalarial. Her family had brought her medical records, but they didn't appear to actually be real. For starters, the recorded weights for the last few months could not possibly have been right. All of the entries were written in the same handwriting and the same pen, as if someone had hastily scrawled it down before turning the corner and handing it to us. It was like this little girl had no past at all.
I was desperate to get her to eat. She would sleep fitfully for a few minutes, then wake up terrified and wail until I picked her up and cradled her against me. She instantly calmed a bit if I took her outside. I spent so much time walking in slow circles in the shade of the big tree outside the house, singing softly to her of "dancing bears, painted wings," my own tears falling to mingle with hers, because I just couldn't make her believe that she was safe. And still, the fever raged, despite dose after systematic dose of baby tylenol. I worried the medicine would be too much for her system to handle-- malaria is is vicious on the liver and spleen. I would lay a cold cloth on her sweaty forehead, and it would literally be hot to the touch seconds later. I sat with her on the stone wall of the courtyard that evening and bounced her from knee to knee, promising over and over again that it was all going to be okay. I'm not sure which one of us I was trying to convince. Majory, one of the nannies, came and sat with us. She cooed to Gladys and stroked her bald little head. "My child died of malaria," she said. I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing. Then she hugged her and gave her back to me. I think it was the only time I saw Majory really hug one of the kids.
I made a cereal/milk mixture that was thick enough to make spooning it a little easier, and I cradled her in my lap. Her head lolled back over my arm, and her mouth hung slack. Her eyes stared up at me. They weren't accusatory anymore. They were just desperate, and tired. I brought half a spoonful of milk to her mouth and dripped it into her cheek. She swallowed. And then she took another spoonful. And then another. And after an hour of painstakingly dripping it into her mouth, she had taken it all down. It wasn't much-- less than 75ml, I think-- but it was something, and for the first time, I let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, we might be able to fight through this together.
The cat adopted her. At first, I put her in the cradle to sleep, but she was really too big for it, and she slept so lightly that if she moved at all and touched the cold metal bars, she would wake up screaming. Chai did her best to help. That first night, I curled up on the couch with the cradle next to me so I could reach out and check on her if I needed to. Chai slept pretty much on my face, with her tail draped lazily over my shoulder. If Gladys moved at all, Chai would hop into the cradle. I woke up more than once to find her snuggled up next to her, and each time I wondered if angels came in feline form.
The fever came in waves, like it does with malaria. I struggled to keep the Coartem down her. She spit up an awful lot for a child who was barely taking down calories at all, and she was pretty much guaranteed to spit up if I gave her the medicine.
One morning one of the nannies and I took several of the babies, including Gladys and Jessie, down to the clinic. There was a group of women sitting a few feet away. The nanny translated for me. They had commented on each of the children in turn. Referring to Gladys, they said, "She is very dark. But also beautiful."
And she was. She was easily the blackest kid at the orphanage, to the point that she looks almost comical in the pictures I have of her next to the other babies. She had a heavy brow and a flat nose with big round nostrils. Her full pink lips were dreadfully difficult to coax into one of her rare grins, but when she did smile, you knew she meant it. She would blow spit bubbles sometimes to amuse herself. She wasn't "pretty" maybe in the way that the world defines it, but I thought she was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, even if she could produce more snot than any child I have ever laid eyes on.
With only two doses of Coartem left, her fever was still going strong. The medical officer gave me a baggie of Quinine to give her. He cut the pills into quarters and left me dosing instructions (which, many weeks later, I discovered were actually way wrong). The quinine was so bitter that she wouldn't swallow it at all. I swear this kid could throw up just on impulse. I tried it for a day and a half, but it just wasn't working. We switched to injection. I don't remember how much they were giving her per injection, but I remember it was an awfully large amount. A baby can only handle about 0.5mL a shot. I think she was getting about 4 times that. Her hip would swell as the fluid was injected, and she would cry in pain if I accidentally put any pressure on the area. After a day and a half of going to the clinic three times a day and waiting around for someone to show up and give her the shot, they finally sent the medicine home with me to give her. Three times a day, I walked down to the nursery to give it to her. I hated doing it. I know how nasty that medicine is, and I could see the physical pain it put her in. It can cause terrible hallucinations as well as permanent deafness and muscle damage, among other things.
Then one morning, the fever broke, and it didn't come back. That was also the first morning that she smiled at me without some major prompting. I just walked in the room, and she smiled.
Eventually, she got to the point that she was trying to gum the spoon to death every time I dropped some formula in her mouth. I tried a bottle again, but she didn't seem to know how to suck. I found a nipple that was split at the end so that the milk came out in a fairly steady stream. She took it. I had to be careful not to give it to her for more than a few seconds because she couldn't quite swallow fast enough to keep up if I did, but it helped her get the hang of a bottle. Then we moved to a normal nipple, and finally she was drinking like any healthy baby would.
She moved to the nursery about halfway through this process because Jessie had come and was demanding pretty much every spare moment I had to give. I just couldn't handle both of them at once. I managed it for two nights, but but they were both eating every two hours, so by the time I fed one and got her to sleep and fed the other it was pretty much time to make a bottle for the first one again. Timmy, Jazz, and Troy were great to take them of a morning so that I could go grab a few hours of solid sleep, but I figured the night nannies were there for a reason, and they could handle Gladys through the night. I had her a lot through the day though, at least until Jessie got worse. She was very, very clingy. She had finally come to trust me, but it was that kind of fragile trust that comes at first, where every time I left the room or put her down she seemed to think I wasn't coming back to pick her up again. Timmy often commented that she was a rather ugly baby (I think partly to annoy me...), but I think he kind of liked her. Once I came into the living room to find him dancing with her to some terrible rock music. She loved it.
She spent a lot of time in the dining room and kitchen with me. One morning Essie scooped her up and comforted her. Sometimes I would put her in the little chair that hooks onto the counter and let her play while I bustled around doing whatever. One time someone gave her a piece of bread to play with, and she thoroughly enjoyed slobbering it into a mushy mess and rubbing it into the counter.
When I would walk into the nursery, whatever nanny was there would jump at the chance to hand her over to me. Gladys was never an easy baby, even after the malaria was gone. They would say, "Your baby is crying for you. Your baby wants you. Your baby, she cries too much." She was kind of stubborn. She wouldn't stretch both arms up for me, but she would hold one hand out when she saw me, as if to say, "Yeah, you can pick me up if you want..."
I loved to go in the nursery first thing in the morning as all the kids were getting dressed. I was helping one of the toddlers into a pair of jeans and distractedly asked a couple of the kids to go rock Gladys in her bouncer, because she was crying and my hands were full. I looked up five seconds later to see Moriah rocking the bouncer with every ounce of her toddler strength. Glady's startled face, which was flying systematically up and down, made me laugh out loud. Thankfully, she was strapped in, or else Moriah would have bounced her headfirst onto the stone floor. I jumped up and grabbed her, and she gave me this scowl that clearly said, "Yeah, thanks..." before dropping her head solidly on my shoulder and sighing theatrically.
Even though she was probably about the same age as Ana and Ephraim, she wasn't nearly as developmentally advanced as they were. She spent most of her playtime sitting on the mat, leaned up against whoever was closest to her, watching the world around her with those giant eyes. She was a very low stimulus kid. Antics that would make the other babies around her age laugh didn't phase her at all. She wasn't particularly happy or unhappy; she was just sort of uninterested, or shy, like she was reserving judgment for now.
The morning Jessie died, Amy reminded me, "You still have Gladys." I needed to fill my empty arms with something, so I went and got her from the nursery and sat with her on that same spot on the wall where Majory had met us five weeks before. I fed her the morning bottle and talked to the kinders, who had all gathered around me, as one by one the Texas group emerged from their rooms to be met by the news that we had lost Jessie. I carried her around a lot that day, and in the days that followed. The Quinine had left it's mark-- she cried in pain if I absentmindedly patted her on the bottom-- but her hearing appeared to be intact. Amy took her at one point and was playing with her on the couch, and she made her giggle. I played with her fat, round little toes and daydreamed about how strange it would be to come back the next summer and find her walking and talking.
The morning we left, I didn't hug her goodbye. She was asleep, and I didn't want to wake her up. She sleeps so lightly, you see, and I hated to disturb her.
And that's how I'll always remember her. She was asleep on her stomach, both arms wrapped up around her head. Her mouth was partly open. Her head was facing away from me to the right. She was wearing a tie-dye shirt and matching shorts that a friend of mine's aunt had sent as a donation. Her long eyelashes curved down to meet those black, round cheeks, and she was peaceful. I whispered to her that it wouldn't be long. Just a few months.
Weeks passed, and school did its best to eat me alive. One morning Timmy chatted me on facebook to let me know that he had walked into the nursery to find Gladys struggling onto all-fours, trying to crawl. I was so proud of her.
Timmy took some pictures of the kids and posted them on facebook for those of us who were stuck stateside. Gladys' face had thinned out so much. Of all the kids, it seemed like she had changed the most since I had left. She was starting to look a bit more like a little girl and a bit less like a baby.
Time went on. Amy told me one morning that Gladys was not doing well. My chest tightened.
I knew that Amy had taken her to the hospital. My head expected the worst. My heart wouldn't believe it, not even when the phone call came, and so I stared at the screen that said "Unknown ID" and willed it not to be. Before I could make myself answer it, the call went to voicemail. The message confirmed what my heart knew. Gladys was gone.
It's hard to process it, really. I'm not there. I didn't see her get sick, and I wasn't with her when she finally gave up. Part of me thinks it won't be completely real until I get back to that crib where I left her and see that she's not in it. It's been an interesting thing to try and handle during the holidays. Someone commented rather coldly that life didn't stop mattering just because one baby had died. They're right. Quite to the contrary, in fact. The things in life that do matter become much clearer, and suddenly what's under the tree and whether that carol has been overplayed this year and all of the consumerist tradition that has grown up to be a holiday really doesn't matter at all. It's all in perspective, I suppose.
These are the fleeting memories I have of her. They're not much, but they are precious to me, as she is. I've caught my self humming a lullaby for the past couple of days. It's one I wanted to share with her when I saw her again. Maybe she's listening now.
"Goodnight my angel, time to close your eyes
And save these questions for another day
I think I know what you've been asking me
I think you know what I've been trying to say
I promised I would never leave you
Then you should always know
Wherever you may go, no matter where you are
I never will be far away."
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Deliver Us
Christmas is coming. It is the season of Advent, and the promise of the “not yet” can be heard, barely a whisper, calling from the quietest corners of an earth begging silently for Deliverance.
Prince of Egypt is one of my favorite movies. It tells the story of Moses and the Exodus. The kids in Kazembe love it too, and we were sure to watch it at least once a week during video time. There is so much more to the story than meets the eye.
It is, first and foremost, a story of Deliverance. The Israelites are desperate. They are carrying loads, both literal and spiritual, that are too much for them to bear, and their hope is breaking. The first song is a hungry plea with an echoing refrain: “Deliver us!”
Prince of Egypt is one of my favorite movies. It tells the story of Moses and the Exodus. The kids in Kazembe love it too, and we were sure to watch it at least once a week during video time. There is so much more to the story than meets the eye.
It is, first and foremost, a story of Deliverance. The Israelites are desperate. They are carrying loads, both literal and spiritual, that are too much for them to bear, and their hope is breaking. The first song is a hungry plea with an echoing refrain: “Deliver us!”
But there was no reply. Heaven was silent.
And then Pharaoh felt that his position was threatened by the growing number of Israelites, so he decreed that every baby boy be thrown into the Nile. Israel cried over the blood of her innocents…
And then Pharaoh felt that his position was threatened by the growing number of Israelites, so he decreed that every baby boy be thrown into the Nile. Israel cried over the blood of her innocents…
and still, heaven was silent.
But one little boy was saved. He was hidden within Egypt itself, drawn from the river and protected by royalty. And so Moses slept safe and warm in the palace of a people not his own. He knew luxury and plenty, and he was protected.
Then something changed. The Bible doesn’t tell us what prompted Moses’ curiosity, and the movie takes a bit of creative license, but it seems that Moses was drawn to the world outside the alabaster walls of the palace. At least twice, he ventured out to peer upon the pain and desperation of his own people. I wonder if he realized that it could have been him carrying that load. He saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite, and Moses killed the Egyptian. He then fled to avoid Pharaoh’s wrath.
Twice an exile-- and both times to save his life-- Moses then wandered to Midian. He rescued some damsels in distress and got a wife out of the deal, and then he settled down to live a nice quiet life.
But one little boy was saved. He was hidden within Egypt itself, drawn from the river and protected by royalty. And so Moses slept safe and warm in the palace of a people not his own. He knew luxury and plenty, and he was protected.
Then something changed. The Bible doesn’t tell us what prompted Moses’ curiosity, and the movie takes a bit of creative license, but it seems that Moses was drawn to the world outside the alabaster walls of the palace. At least twice, he ventured out to peer upon the pain and desperation of his own people. I wonder if he realized that it could have been him carrying that load. He saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite, and Moses killed the Egyptian. He then fled to avoid Pharaoh’s wrath.
Twice an exile-- and both times to save his life-- Moses then wandered to Midian. He rescued some damsels in distress and got a wife out of the deal, and then he settled down to live a nice quiet life.
But heaven was listening after all. And Moses’ life was about to be wrecked by Grace.
He found himself standing on Holy Ground surrounded by the glory of God, and then he was told to go.
And so he went. I bet he didn’t want to. Not completely, anyway. I’m sure he felt a fair amount of helpless compassion for the nation he had left behind, but he was just one man, and he was well aware of his weaknesses. He had a nice, normal, comfortable life in Midian. To return, to face the only “family” he had known growing up and demand from them something he felt sure they wouldn’t willingly give, must have been terrifying. But he went.
In the movie, Moses’ father-in-law reminds him that he might not see the full picture. A single thread in the tapestry can never know its role in the grand design, and so he must seek to look at his life through heaven’s eyes, as a part of a story so much bigger than himself.
I wonder if Moses felt brave, or if he just knew that he had to do it anyway and hoped that courage would come with the doing. I kind of think it might have been the latter.
I wonder how it felt to look his “brother” in the eye (the movie holds that the Pharaoh whom Moses confronted was his adopted brother, and many Biblical scholars agree) and tell him that if he didn’t free Egypt’s workforce then terrible calamity would befall him. I wonder if he felt a little silly saying it, because Pharaoh didn’t believe in the same God that Moses did, and Moses knew this. You might as well threaten me with the wrath of Ra.
He found himself standing on Holy Ground surrounded by the glory of God, and then he was told to go.
And so he went. I bet he didn’t want to. Not completely, anyway. I’m sure he felt a fair amount of helpless compassion for the nation he had left behind, but he was just one man, and he was well aware of his weaknesses. He had a nice, normal, comfortable life in Midian. To return, to face the only “family” he had known growing up and demand from them something he felt sure they wouldn’t willingly give, must have been terrifying. But he went.
In the movie, Moses’ father-in-law reminds him that he might not see the full picture. A single thread in the tapestry can never know its role in the grand design, and so he must seek to look at his life through heaven’s eyes, as a part of a story so much bigger than himself.
I wonder if Moses felt brave, or if he just knew that he had to do it anyway and hoped that courage would come with the doing. I kind of think it might have been the latter.
I wonder how it felt to look his “brother” in the eye (the movie holds that the Pharaoh whom Moses confronted was his adopted brother, and many Biblical scholars agree) and tell him that if he didn’t free Egypt’s workforce then terrible calamity would befall him. I wonder if he felt a little silly saying it, because Pharaoh didn’t believe in the same God that Moses did, and Moses knew this. You might as well threaten me with the wrath of Ra.
I wonder if Moses’ heart broke a little bit every time Pharaoh’s stubbornness brought the judgment of heaven raining down. And I wonder what he felt when his “nephew,” son of the Pharaoh, died the night of Passover because he had not been redeemed by the blood of the sacrificial lamb.
And finally, with the blood of that lamb, the cry for deliverance, lowercase “d,” was answered. Moses and his people walked out of Egypt. God saved them again at the Red Sea, and they knew, without a doubt, because they had seen it, that God was with them.
The movie ends there. What it doesn’t tell you is that the next thing you know, all of those newly delivered people turned their back on their Deliverer and made a golden cow to worship instead.
And finally, with the blood of that lamb, the cry for deliverance, lowercase “d,” was answered. Moses and his people walked out of Egypt. God saved them again at the Red Sea, and they knew, without a doubt, because they had seen it, that God was with them.
The movie ends there. What it doesn’t tell you is that the next thing you know, all of those newly delivered people turned their back on their Deliverer and made a golden cow to worship instead.
Moses’ story was a distant foreshadowing of something greater. Many, many generations later, another child would be born. Another king would try to kill Him, and Royalty would rescue Him, because He was Royalty. He would be hidden in Egypt for a time, and when He grew up, He too would demand the Deliverance, capital “D,” of his people. But the blood of animals can never really redeem anything, and so He became the Passover lamb Himself.
And so it turns out that heaven was listening all along.
And so it turns out that heaven was listening all along.
Sometimes I feel like the Israelites. When materialism and selfish gain drown out the joy that should be Christmas, my heart cries, “Deliver us.” When my dreams are visited by the faces of those I couldn’t save, “Deliver us.” As I fall to my knees, unable to choke out the words of a desperate prayer for a sick child that I can’t be there to hold, “Deliver us.” When I wonder how I will ever be strong enough to board a plane and leave friends, family, relationships, and everything else I’ve accumulated here, while simultaneously knowing that I will never be strong enough not to, “Deliver us.” When I fail to represent Him well (or at all), “Deliver us.”
But He has. He has delivered us. Christmas is coming.
The word “Hosanna” originally meant “Save us!” It is only used once in the Old Testament, in Psalm 118:25. In the New Testament, it takes on a different meaning. It is a cry of exultation, a joyous declaration of “Salvation!” John Piper explains it as the difference between fans who are screaming for a safety to catch the quarterback: the old hosanna screams, “Catch him!” The new hosanna declares, “You got him!” As Piper says, “The word moved from plea to praise; from cry to confidence.”
My hosanna is somewhere in the middle tonight. I know Deliverance has come, but I see around me a world that seems to have forgotten it, or never knew it in the first place, or thinks it knows it but lives a life that screams to the contrary. I repeat the same tired prayer for Gladys, terribly sick and so very far away, and I hope with everything I have that heaven will answer-- because even though it makes absolutely no sense at all to most of you reading this, I love that little girl with all of my heart, the same way you love your child, or your sister, or whoever it is that you dearly love. I don’t know where my thread fits into the tapestry, but it seems to be hopelessly interwoven with those of the children of Kazembe.
But He has. He has delivered us. Christmas is coming.
The word “Hosanna” originally meant “Save us!” It is only used once in the Old Testament, in Psalm 118:25. In the New Testament, it takes on a different meaning. It is a cry of exultation, a joyous declaration of “Salvation!” John Piper explains it as the difference between fans who are screaming for a safety to catch the quarterback: the old hosanna screams, “Catch him!” The new hosanna declares, “You got him!” As Piper says, “The word moved from plea to praise; from cry to confidence.”
My hosanna is somewhere in the middle tonight. I know Deliverance has come, but I see around me a world that seems to have forgotten it, or never knew it in the first place, or thinks it knows it but lives a life that screams to the contrary. I repeat the same tired prayer for Gladys, terribly sick and so very far away, and I hope with everything I have that heaven will answer-- because even though it makes absolutely no sense at all to most of you reading this, I love that little girl with all of my heart, the same way you love your child, or your sister, or whoever it is that you dearly love. I don’t know where my thread fits into the tapestry, but it seems to be hopelessly interwoven with those of the children of Kazembe.
In this moment, I whisper, “Hosanna.”
Christmas is coming.
Christmas is coming.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Birthday Shenanigans
Ladies and gentlemen, it's a wonderful life.
Every year, my birthday falls in the middle of exam weekend. It makes scheduling an absolute nightmare. This year was even worse, because several of my dearest friends are all in the same a capella group, which conveniently scheduled its Christmas party for the night of the ninth. One of them was leaving for home the next morning, so the only way to get everyone there was to work around the aforementioned party. The plan was to go out to eat together at a fancy Italian place, then those of us who are not singing extraordinaires could go to Danielle's place and watch a movie while the others went to their Christmas party.
An hour and a half before I was supposed to be ready to go, two of them kidnapped me, threw me in a car, and sped away quickly. It was actually a lot less melodramatic than that... I needed to go to the bank, so they picked me up early. Then he missed the bank turnoff. And kept driving. Out of town. To a sketchy little strip mall.
We spent the next hour roaming around in a wonderful, magical, giant, booth-style antique store that is basically located in the attic of a Staples. It was like stepping back in time. There were whole sections full of beautiful books that filled the air with paper dust when you flipped through them. We barely had time to scrape the surface of this wonderful treasure trove before we had to leave in a mad rush to get to the restaurant on time.
We had all been seated at the table for about two minutes when one of my friends realized that there was paper on top of the white tablecloth. Immediately, she pulled out her pen and began to doodle. Everyone else followed suit. And so it was that fourteen fancy college students sat and graffitied the table while the waitress took their orders. There were hangman wars, portrait drawing contests, and tic-tac-toe battles. The food got there, and we all ate off of each others' plates. Then someone ordered an amazing slab of tiramisu slathered in chocolate syrup and topped with a single candle. She accidentally took it to the wrong person, which garnered laughs all around. I blew out the candle (repeatedly, as one of my friends felt it should be blown out 21 times in honor of the day) and took a bite. Then I passed it to my right, and there was enough for everyone to enjoy some.
After dinner, those of us who were going to Danielle's piled into our separate carpool caravans and headed that direction. Mine was the first to arrive. As we sat outside her house in the car waiting for her to get there, a man carrying a suitcase climbed out of a large white truck and walked up to her house. Then he went inside. Wondering whether or not she was being robbed blind, we got out of the car and sidled up to the door. Luckily, she pulled in several houses down right before we got to the porch and saved us the embarrassment of demanding to know why someone had entered a house that they probably had every right to be in.
The original plan had been to watch The Godfather III that night. I've seen the first two and wanted to finish out the trilogy. As a backup, David had also brought Saving Private Ryan. Both movies were vetoed by other people in attendance, and we ended up flipping aimlessly through the channels and watching TLC shows. The entertainment was in the company anyway; I appreciated the chance to simply exist in the same room as my friends without some pressing matter banging on the inside of my subconscious. Danielle made a delectable dessert to finish off the night, and we all went home a little after midnight thoroughly stuffed and happy.
The next morning, I clawed my way out of bed before the sun even thought about rising. At seven, I met several Kennedy residents (mostly mine) and David in the lobby. We walked to Pancake Pantry and ate an obscene amount of pancakes. The rest of the day consisted of roaming through antique stores with Danielle and David, becoming entirely too overcaffeinated at Frothy Monkey, speed-walking around the block to blow off some energy, and desperately trying to find the motivation to finish a paper that was due Sunday morning. We decided that baking cookies would be a good study break. Three hours later, the entire kitchen and every person in it were thoroughly coated with flour, and the cookies still weren't done. I may have started the flour war, but I definitely ended up on the losing end. It was quite possibly the most fun I've ever had while baking. We made dozens of reindeer, a sleigh, Santa, his bag of goodies, and three baby reindeer that I named Cocoa, Mocha, and Yum. After all of that excitement, I stayed up half of the night working on my paper and ended up oversleeping Sunday and missing church. Later that afternoon, we went to some friends' house to watch football and further ignore all homework.
In short, I had fun this weekend. I enjoyed myself. I relaxed, and I got a decent amount of sleep, and I laughed so much I thought my gut would split. I did what birthdays are supposed to be about-- I celebrated life. And I did it in the company of people who have come to mean the world to me. I simply cannot think of a better way to usher in another year of such a precious gift.
Much love to you all.
Every year, my birthday falls in the middle of exam weekend. It makes scheduling an absolute nightmare. This year was even worse, because several of my dearest friends are all in the same a capella group, which conveniently scheduled its Christmas party for the night of the ninth. One of them was leaving for home the next morning, so the only way to get everyone there was to work around the aforementioned party. The plan was to go out to eat together at a fancy Italian place, then those of us who are not singing extraordinaires could go to Danielle's place and watch a movie while the others went to their Christmas party.
An hour and a half before I was supposed to be ready to go, two of them kidnapped me, threw me in a car, and sped away quickly. It was actually a lot less melodramatic than that... I needed to go to the bank, so they picked me up early. Then he missed the bank turnoff. And kept driving. Out of town. To a sketchy little strip mall.
We spent the next hour roaming around in a wonderful, magical, giant, booth-style antique store that is basically located in the attic of a Staples. It was like stepping back in time. There were whole sections full of beautiful books that filled the air with paper dust when you flipped through them. We barely had time to scrape the surface of this wonderful treasure trove before we had to leave in a mad rush to get to the restaurant on time.
We had all been seated at the table for about two minutes when one of my friends realized that there was paper on top of the white tablecloth. Immediately, she pulled out her pen and began to doodle. Everyone else followed suit. And so it was that fourteen fancy college students sat and graffitied the table while the waitress took their orders. There were hangman wars, portrait drawing contests, and tic-tac-toe battles. The food got there, and we all ate off of each others' plates. Then someone ordered an amazing slab of tiramisu slathered in chocolate syrup and topped with a single candle. She accidentally took it to the wrong person, which garnered laughs all around. I blew out the candle (repeatedly, as one of my friends felt it should be blown out 21 times in honor of the day) and took a bite. Then I passed it to my right, and there was enough for everyone to enjoy some.
After dinner, those of us who were going to Danielle's piled into our separate carpool caravans and headed that direction. Mine was the first to arrive. As we sat outside her house in the car waiting for her to get there, a man carrying a suitcase climbed out of a large white truck and walked up to her house. Then he went inside. Wondering whether or not she was being robbed blind, we got out of the car and sidled up to the door. Luckily, she pulled in several houses down right before we got to the porch and saved us the embarrassment of demanding to know why someone had entered a house that they probably had every right to be in.
The original plan had been to watch The Godfather III that night. I've seen the first two and wanted to finish out the trilogy. As a backup, David had also brought Saving Private Ryan. Both movies were vetoed by other people in attendance, and we ended up flipping aimlessly through the channels and watching TLC shows. The entertainment was in the company anyway; I appreciated the chance to simply exist in the same room as my friends without some pressing matter banging on the inside of my subconscious. Danielle made a delectable dessert to finish off the night, and we all went home a little after midnight thoroughly stuffed and happy.
The next morning, I clawed my way out of bed before the sun even thought about rising. At seven, I met several Kennedy residents (mostly mine) and David in the lobby. We walked to Pancake Pantry and ate an obscene amount of pancakes. The rest of the day consisted of roaming through antique stores with Danielle and David, becoming entirely too overcaffeinated at Frothy Monkey, speed-walking around the block to blow off some energy, and desperately trying to find the motivation to finish a paper that was due Sunday morning. We decided that baking cookies would be a good study break. Three hours later, the entire kitchen and every person in it were thoroughly coated with flour, and the cookies still weren't done. I may have started the flour war, but I definitely ended up on the losing end. It was quite possibly the most fun I've ever had while baking. We made dozens of reindeer, a sleigh, Santa, his bag of goodies, and three baby reindeer that I named Cocoa, Mocha, and Yum. After all of that excitement, I stayed up half of the night working on my paper and ended up oversleeping Sunday and missing church. Later that afternoon, we went to some friends' house to watch football and further ignore all homework.
In short, I had fun this weekend. I enjoyed myself. I relaxed, and I got a decent amount of sleep, and I laughed so much I thought my gut would split. I did what birthdays are supposed to be about-- I celebrated life. And I did it in the company of people who have come to mean the world to me. I simply cannot think of a better way to usher in another year of such a precious gift.
Much love to you all.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
And then she opened her mouth...
Fair warning: Based on the conversations that have precipitated this post, I’m probably about to step on some toes. If it’s any solace, I stepped on my own first. If you’re going to jump me, do me a favor and at least read the whole post and the links first. J
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Go.
How? Where? Why?
I live at Belmont University. It is a school positively swimming in social activism, and the short-term mission trip culture is as alive here as anywhere. We even work it into some of our study abroad gigs. Half of my friends’ facebook pictures are of them holding a little brown baby (okay, so is mine…).
First, read this post by a family serving as long-term missionaries in Haiti, and take the time to read the many, many comments too. This lady put it so much more eloquently than I possibly could, and her comment section is littered with input from missionaries and aid workers all over the world.
I have been approached by dozens of people over the last three months who have heard about Kazembe and were curious, generally because they were thinking about running off to the third world for a couple weeks over the summer and wanted some advice and encouragement. I have inexpertly offered both. Here are my concerns:
The physical act of going, of removing yourself from one geographical location and placing yourself in another, does NOT in and of itself fulfill the Great Commission. Hopping a plane and going really far away does NOT inherently produce more for the kingdom than plucking up the courage to knock on your neighbor’s door.
I think the “where” and “how” are hugely important too. I know literally dozens of people here at Belmont that would absolutely love to spend some time in the third world for a variety of reasons. Some of those reasons are, I think, very good ones. But what would happen if I took all seventy of them to Kazembe for a summer? Amy could not possibly make enough chicken curry to feed us all. Let’s say for sake of argument that all of them are fluent in Khmer. Now it makes even less sense. Their gifts and abilities make them suited much more to serving in Cambodia. So maybe it wasn’t “wrong” of them to go, but they should have paid a little more attention to their GPS. At the same time, it would be kind of foolish for all 70 of them to descend on the same tiny Cambodian village as well.
(Note: To my knowledge, the Kazembe Orphanage has never had a volunteer who was fluent in Khmer, but if they have, there is definitely the possibility that person was exceptionally helpful and productive. Also, I use Kazembe as an example because that is my context, not because I suspect it is overrun with Cambodians...)
I’m not saying people shouldn’t go. I am saying that blind naivete can be dangerous and harmful.
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Go.
How? Where? Why?
I live at Belmont University. It is a school positively swimming in social activism, and the short-term mission trip culture is as alive here as anywhere. We even work it into some of our study abroad gigs. Half of my friends’ facebook pictures are of them holding a little brown baby (okay, so is mine…).
First, read this post by a family serving as long-term missionaries in Haiti, and take the time to read the many, many comments too. This lady put it so much more eloquently than I possibly could, and her comment section is littered with input from missionaries and aid workers all over the world.
I have been approached by dozens of people over the last three months who have heard about Kazembe and were curious, generally because they were thinking about running off to the third world for a couple weeks over the summer and wanted some advice and encouragement. I have inexpertly offered both. Here are my concerns:
The physical act of going, of removing yourself from one geographical location and placing yourself in another, does NOT in and of itself fulfill the Great Commission. Hopping a plane and going really far away does NOT inherently produce more for the kingdom than plucking up the courage to knock on your neighbor’s door.
I think the “where” and “how” are hugely important too. I know literally dozens of people here at Belmont that would absolutely love to spend some time in the third world for a variety of reasons. Some of those reasons are, I think, very good ones. But what would happen if I took all seventy of them to Kazembe for a summer? Amy could not possibly make enough chicken curry to feed us all. Let’s say for sake of argument that all of them are fluent in Khmer. Now it makes even less sense. Their gifts and abilities make them suited much more to serving in Cambodia. So maybe it wasn’t “wrong” of them to go, but they should have paid a little more attention to their GPS. At the same time, it would be kind of foolish for all 70 of them to descend on the same tiny Cambodian village as well.
(Note: To my knowledge, the Kazembe Orphanage has never had a volunteer who was fluent in Khmer, but if they have, there is definitely the possibility that person was exceptionally helpful and productive. Also, I use Kazembe as an example because that is my context, not because I suspect it is overrun with Cambodians...)
I’m not saying people shouldn’t go. I am saying that blind naivete can be dangerous and harmful.
Honestly, I am struggling for words right now. I don’t know how to clearly articulate my frustrations. I’m not claiming to be innocent of the accusations leveled at STMs during my time in Zambia. I recognize that there might inevitably be some harm mixed with the good that is done with any mission trip, because any relationship has good and bad facets.
I’m not saying all short term mission trips are evil, because I don’t think they are. I’m not saying it’s impossible to do them right, because I don’t think it is. I fully intend to spend next summer in the African bush. In fact, I kind of plan to spend my forever in the African bush. But it would be foolish, selfish, and outright wrong of me to not be constantly considering what is best for those kids, even if it’s not necessarily what I want.
An orphanage should never have to turn a child away due to lack of funds.
I’m not saying all short term mission trips are evil, because I don’t think they are. I’m not saying it’s impossible to do them right, because I don’t think it is. I fully intend to spend next summer in the African bush. In fact, I kind of plan to spend my forever in the African bush. But it would be foolish, selfish, and outright wrong of me to not be constantly considering what is best for those kids, even if it’s not necessarily what I want.
An orphanage should never have to turn a child away due to lack of funds.
“We want hearts to be broken for the orphans, but never at the expense of the orphans.”
One of the most common rebuttals I hear when these concerns are expressed by myself or others is that if God wants people to go, then they will go. Therefore, anyone who ends up on the mission field in any capacity for any length of time is supposed to be there.
Methinks that is a rather poorly thought-out statement. I don’t believe that every little thing that happens is what God wanted to happen. For those of you reading from a Christian perspective, indulge me for a moment. The Bible clearly states that “God is not willing that any should perish.” And yet we believe that people do. Why? Because we have free will. We have the ability to make decisions. I believe that God will bring good out of every situation. That does not give us license to abdicate the very real responsibility of weighing our actions. Good intentions don’t guarantee good results. Sometimes you pray and pray and pray for something and don’t get a concrete answer falling out of heaven. At those times, I can’t help but think that God might be prodding us to just use our heads to make a wise decision rather than blaming our emotionally-driven decisions on Him.
I realize there is a very fine line between sending resources and sending bodies. Maybe part of finding that balance is to look at the needs of the place you intend to go to? Do they need teachers, or do they need schools? If they need both, what is the most efficient way to provide that? The terribly ironic truth is that churches and people seem much less willing to donate money that you intend to just send to an orphanage than they do to donate money that will send you to that orphanage. I live one block from one of the poorest places in Nashville. I wonder how many of the people who have approached me about Africa have walked down to 12th street.
One of the most common rebuttals I hear when these concerns are expressed by myself or others is that if God wants people to go, then they will go. Therefore, anyone who ends up on the mission field in any capacity for any length of time is supposed to be there.
Methinks that is a rather poorly thought-out statement. I don’t believe that every little thing that happens is what God wanted to happen. For those of you reading from a Christian perspective, indulge me for a moment. The Bible clearly states that “God is not willing that any should perish.” And yet we believe that people do. Why? Because we have free will. We have the ability to make decisions. I believe that God will bring good out of every situation. That does not give us license to abdicate the very real responsibility of weighing our actions. Good intentions don’t guarantee good results. Sometimes you pray and pray and pray for something and don’t get a concrete answer falling out of heaven. At those times, I can’t help but think that God might be prodding us to just use our heads to make a wise decision rather than blaming our emotionally-driven decisions on Him.
I realize there is a very fine line between sending resources and sending bodies. Maybe part of finding that balance is to look at the needs of the place you intend to go to? Do they need teachers, or do they need schools? If they need both, what is the most efficient way to provide that? The terribly ironic truth is that churches and people seem much less willing to donate money that you intend to just send to an orphanage than they do to donate money that will send you to that orphanage. I live one block from one of the poorest places in Nashville. I wonder how many of the people who have approached me about Africa have walked down to 12th street.
I haven't. That needs to change.
Because somewhere along the line, we elevated foreign missions to a status much greater than "neighbor missions." It's as though we are those in the Good Samaritan story who walked past the dying man, only we didn't have time to stop because we were on our way to catch a plane to the third world.
There’s also a dangerous flip-side to all of this. I also don’t think that the answer is for people to just fundraise nonchalantly and go about their merry lives, never encountering those in need in any real way.
Where’s the balance?
I don’t know. Maybe it starts with making sure that we can actually meet a need that would not be met without us in the place we’re gallivanting off to, or with realizing that there is so very much need right where we are. Maybe it is in remembering to offer a little grace to ourselves, because even the best thought out and well reasoned ministry in the world still falls short of perfection. Maybe it is in recognizing that if we are honest with ourselves, a massive part of the draw to STMs is purely selfish motivation (not to put it too harshly, but a commenter on the blog I linked to referred to it as “poverty porn”).
Let me just say that I am absolutely 100% still intending to spend next summer and my post-graduation life in Africa. I have asked these questions of myself, and I have done my best to adjust my attitudes and my actions accordingly. But here’s the thing: If I truly believed that not going, or that going in a different capacity or to a different place, was the best way to impact the Kingdom, I pray to sweet God in heaven that I would have the strength to act upon that realization, even if walking away from my kids shattered my heart with the force of the Hiroshima nuke.
Maybe I’m speaking out of turn. I don’t have all the answers. Please, feel free to chime in.
I feel like I’ve spent the better part of this blog backtracking and trying to explain what I’m NOT saying, so you really do need to read the link above if you haven’t already.
I would love to hear your thoughts.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Tired
Today, I am tired.
Physically, I am tired because my circadian rhythm refuses to sync up to my life schedule. I've also cut back drastically on my caffeine intake, so I think that's exaggerating it. Combine that with a ferociously unreasonable homework load, and the result is far too few hours of sleep per night. I've recently determined to go to bed earlier on the nights that precede 8am classes. I'll let you know how that works out. I know I'm capable of it-- I managed to do it for most of the summer. Somehow I didn't mind waking up to the African dawn.
Emotionally, I am tired because as much as this fiercely independent girl hates to admit it, I really missed not being with family over Thanksgiving. Car trouble left me stranded in Nashville. I like to think that I'm a pretty strong person (or actually, I like to let the people around me think that... because vulnerability makes me feel icky), but some tiny voice in the back of my heart keeps reminding me that the time is fast approaching when my Thanksgiving nights will be graced by the southern cross instead of the north star. There are so very many things I will miss. I have several young cousins and a niece that mean the world and more to me. Some of them are young enough that their memory of me will quickly fade. I think a part of me has begun to mourn that loss.
Spiritually, I am tired because I am prone to wander. I love to pour into others. I love to sit with one of my residents and listen to how her world has been upturned, and I love being able to help her set it right again. I love making someone's day a little bit easier, whether by lending a dollar or washing a dish, and I especially love it if I can do it without them noticing (although, curiously enough, it would be difficult to do either of those things anonymously...). This shouldn't come as a surprise to me-- compassion, service, and concern for others should naturally be high on a nurse's list of priorities. And don't get me wrong-- I can also be an exceptionally demanding, possessive, and selfish person. Just ask anyone who ever tried to take Jessie out of my arms, or anyone who has ever been in my presence before dawn. Weariness ensues not because I give too much (on the contrary, there is much more I should give) but rather from a clouded perspective and a distracted lifestyle. Sometimes I forget that I'm not fighting for my life-- I'm fighting because I have Life. The fight is the same, but it's possible to fight the right fight in the right way for all the wrong reasons. I just forget sometimes that it has already been won.
Tomorrow, I will probably still be just as tired as I was yesterday. I will probably still be operating on a woefully small amount of sleep for no good reason. I will still love and miss those people in my life who are distant (or close but absent), and I will still pour my heart into loving and serving the people around me. But maybe, just maybe, I'll be one day wiser and one day stronger. Maybe I'll develop the self-control to crawl in bed earlier. Maybe I'll catch a glimpse of the exceptional community of people that surrounds me here and the priceless little ones waiting for me across the ocean and remember that distance doesn't dull that kind of love. And maybe my heart will put down all the pretty little trinkets it carries and cling instead to a Treasure as the voice of Advent whispers, "The not yet will be worth it."
In Bemba, the word for yesterday and tomorrow is the same: "mailo." Sometimes this causes a little confusion in translation. After a particularly nonproductive school morning last summer, Johnny could sense my frustration (although to be fair, I was barely attempting to hide it). "Don't worry, Auntie Meghan," he consoled me. "It will be better yesterday."
One day at a time.
Physically, I am tired because my circadian rhythm refuses to sync up to my life schedule. I've also cut back drastically on my caffeine intake, so I think that's exaggerating it. Combine that with a ferociously unreasonable homework load, and the result is far too few hours of sleep per night. I've recently determined to go to bed earlier on the nights that precede 8am classes. I'll let you know how that works out. I know I'm capable of it-- I managed to do it for most of the summer. Somehow I didn't mind waking up to the African dawn.
Emotionally, I am tired because as much as this fiercely independent girl hates to admit it, I really missed not being with family over Thanksgiving. Car trouble left me stranded in Nashville. I like to think that I'm a pretty strong person (or actually, I like to let the people around me think that... because vulnerability makes me feel icky), but some tiny voice in the back of my heart keeps reminding me that the time is fast approaching when my Thanksgiving nights will be graced by the southern cross instead of the north star. There are so very many things I will miss. I have several young cousins and a niece that mean the world and more to me. Some of them are young enough that their memory of me will quickly fade. I think a part of me has begun to mourn that loss.
Spiritually, I am tired because I am prone to wander. I love to pour into others. I love to sit with one of my residents and listen to how her world has been upturned, and I love being able to help her set it right again. I love making someone's day a little bit easier, whether by lending a dollar or washing a dish, and I especially love it if I can do it without them noticing (although, curiously enough, it would be difficult to do either of those things anonymously...). This shouldn't come as a surprise to me-- compassion, service, and concern for others should naturally be high on a nurse's list of priorities. And don't get me wrong-- I can also be an exceptionally demanding, possessive, and selfish person. Just ask anyone who ever tried to take Jessie out of my arms, or anyone who has ever been in my presence before dawn. Weariness ensues not because I give too much (on the contrary, there is much more I should give) but rather from a clouded perspective and a distracted lifestyle. Sometimes I forget that I'm not fighting for my life-- I'm fighting because I have Life. The fight is the same, but it's possible to fight the right fight in the right way for all the wrong reasons. I just forget sometimes that it has already been won.
Tomorrow, I will probably still be just as tired as I was yesterday. I will probably still be operating on a woefully small amount of sleep for no good reason. I will still love and miss those people in my life who are distant (or close but absent), and I will still pour my heart into loving and serving the people around me. But maybe, just maybe, I'll be one day wiser and one day stronger. Maybe I'll develop the self-control to crawl in bed earlier. Maybe I'll catch a glimpse of the exceptional community of people that surrounds me here and the priceless little ones waiting for me across the ocean and remember that distance doesn't dull that kind of love. And maybe my heart will put down all the pretty little trinkets it carries and cling instead to a Treasure as the voice of Advent whispers, "The not yet will be worth it."
In Bemba, the word for yesterday and tomorrow is the same: "mailo." Sometimes this causes a little confusion in translation. After a particularly nonproductive school morning last summer, Johnny could sense my frustration (although to be fair, I was barely attempting to hide it). "Don't worry, Auntie Meghan," he consoled me. "It will be better yesterday."
One day at a time.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
The Art of Giving Thanks
And thus commences the obligatory and cliche Thanksgiving blog post.
I have an unreasonably large amount of things to be thankful for, but fortunately for you, my attention span is way too short for me to sit here and write about all of them. So I'll just hit the highlights.
I am thankful for my family. We're a screwed up, sitcom-like, beautifully ridiculous mess, but at the end of the day, we always all still love each other. They've helped make me who I am, and I love them dearly. Also, I am thankful for those who are family in heart rather than blood.
I am thankful for my friends. The first few months of this semester were harder than I could possibly have imagined, and I truly don't know if I could have made it without them. They challenge me, they hold me accountable, they call me out when I'm wrong, and they pick me up when I fall. It's easy to look at your life and see things you want to change. It's much more difficult to actually effect that change in your own life. The support of friends who are also deliberately seeking God, who want to do what is right even if it costs them everything, makes the whole journey exponentially easier (or else it makes me stronger?). Somehow, I just don't think we were meant to do it alone. Maybe that just shows my personal self-control deficit, but there it is...
I am thankful for twenty-three little souls who mean the world to me, and for two more that the world just couldn't hold. They are not merely students, or patients, or summer camp kids. Somehow, in a way that I don't entirely understand, they moved into my heart and took it over. I have never loved anyone or anything as deeply as I love those children. It's not a vague "I-love-all-kids" or "I-love-the-poor-children-of-Africa" thing, though both of those are also true. It is a specific, deliberate, unquenchable, and personal love for each and every one of them. They are real little people, with their own personalities, dreams, and histories. Words fall short, so I'll stop trying now.
I am thankful for the residents of Kennedy Hall, fourth floor south. They are amazing girls. This RA job kind of dropped out of the sky into my unsuspecting hands this semester. Going into it, I didn't know what to expect, but I honestly believe that I have the best floor on campus. I haven't had any trouble with rule violations (unless you count the noise level, which is the direct result of excessive fun). They support each other, and they take care of each other. If one of them is sick, the others check on her. If someone is studying, another resident is likely to bring her food, or coffee, or at least a well-intentioned distraction. I am constantly uplifted by their compassion, dedication, and ability to bring humor into literally any situation. The vast majority of them are engaged on campus, in each others lives, and in the world in general. They exemplify what true community should look like. And very little of that is of credit to me-- they're just that great. I am so very proud of them, and I am honored to call them not just my residents, but also my very dear friends.
The few aforementioned blessings barely scratch the surface of this amazing gift of life that I have been given. There are many more I could write about, but those will do for now.
I wasn't exactly sure where I was going with this post when I started it, but as I skim back over it I notice that the three things that came to my mind first to write about were all related to people. These aren't necessarily the three things I'm most thankful for (for instance, salvation and grace would be somewhere much higher on the list...). That being said, they are apparently three things that fill my heart enough to spill out onto paper (or cyberspace). They are people who remind me what hope is and have shown me what love is. They have fought with me and for me, and for that too I am thankful. This raises some interesting questions and insights into my own psyche that I'll explore later (if I remember), but for now, I'll leave you with these words of wisdom from two very dear friends of mine-- Frodo and Samwise. If any two people were ever thankful for the support of each other, surely it was these two. Every journey is better if a good friend walks it with you, because eventually, you'll need them to remind you why it's worth it to keep walking.
"A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something."
"What are we holding onto, Sam?"
"That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo...
and it's worth fighting for."
I have an unreasonably large amount of things to be thankful for, but fortunately for you, my attention span is way too short for me to sit here and write about all of them. So I'll just hit the highlights.
I am thankful for my family. We're a screwed up, sitcom-like, beautifully ridiculous mess, but at the end of the day, we always all still love each other. They've helped make me who I am, and I love them dearly. Also, I am thankful for those who are family in heart rather than blood.
I am thankful for my friends. The first few months of this semester were harder than I could possibly have imagined, and I truly don't know if I could have made it without them. They challenge me, they hold me accountable, they call me out when I'm wrong, and they pick me up when I fall. It's easy to look at your life and see things you want to change. It's much more difficult to actually effect that change in your own life. The support of friends who are also deliberately seeking God, who want to do what is right even if it costs them everything, makes the whole journey exponentially easier (or else it makes me stronger?). Somehow, I just don't think we were meant to do it alone. Maybe that just shows my personal self-control deficit, but there it is...
I am thankful for twenty-three little souls who mean the world to me, and for two more that the world just couldn't hold. They are not merely students, or patients, or summer camp kids. Somehow, in a way that I don't entirely understand, they moved into my heart and took it over. I have never loved anyone or anything as deeply as I love those children. It's not a vague "I-love-all-kids" or "I-love-the-poor-children-of-Africa" thing, though both of those are also true. It is a specific, deliberate, unquenchable, and personal love for each and every one of them. They are real little people, with their own personalities, dreams, and histories. Words fall short, so I'll stop trying now.
I am thankful for the residents of Kennedy Hall, fourth floor south. They are amazing girls. This RA job kind of dropped out of the sky into my unsuspecting hands this semester. Going into it, I didn't know what to expect, but I honestly believe that I have the best floor on campus. I haven't had any trouble with rule violations (unless you count the noise level, which is the direct result of excessive fun). They support each other, and they take care of each other. If one of them is sick, the others check on her. If someone is studying, another resident is likely to bring her food, or coffee, or at least a well-intentioned distraction. I am constantly uplifted by their compassion, dedication, and ability to bring humor into literally any situation. The vast majority of them are engaged on campus, in each others lives, and in the world in general. They exemplify what true community should look like. And very little of that is of credit to me-- they're just that great. I am so very proud of them, and I am honored to call them not just my residents, but also my very dear friends.
The few aforementioned blessings barely scratch the surface of this amazing gift of life that I have been given. There are many more I could write about, but those will do for now.
I wasn't exactly sure where I was going with this post when I started it, but as I skim back over it I notice that the three things that came to my mind first to write about were all related to people. These aren't necessarily the three things I'm most thankful for (for instance, salvation and grace would be somewhere much higher on the list...). That being said, they are apparently three things that fill my heart enough to spill out onto paper (or cyberspace). They are people who remind me what hope is and have shown me what love is. They have fought with me and for me, and for that too I am thankful. This raises some interesting questions and insights into my own psyche that I'll explore later (if I remember), but for now, I'll leave you with these words of wisdom from two very dear friends of mine-- Frodo and Samwise. If any two people were ever thankful for the support of each other, surely it was these two. Every journey is better if a good friend walks it with you, because eventually, you'll need them to remind you why it's worth it to keep walking.
"A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something."
"What are we holding onto, Sam?"
"That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo...
and it's worth fighting for."
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
I Hope You Dance.
Today, I want to dance. I want to push the table over to the far end of the dining room, open the door to the crisp night African air, and jig the night away. Unfortunately, my Nashville life has an acute shortage of African air and free-time at night, so it's probably not going to happen.
We spent many nights dancing the soles off our feet last summer, and I remember them fondly. Elegance and grace are not my strong points (let's go play in the DIRT!), but I did at least enjoy myself.
Towards the end of the summer, we decided to try and teach the kinders the Irish Jig.
I'm a glutton for punishment.
Johnny didn't want to dance with anyone and was exceptionally uncooperative. Queenie was incredibly confused and kept tripping over her own long legs. Ernest cried because Queenie wouldn't dance with him. Chola was mildly baffled, and Theresa tried really hard but couldn't quite get the counting down.
And then there was Elias.
Going into it, I didn't expect any participation from him at all. We had played group games like soccer and kickball several times through the summer, and many times he simply refused to participate. He generally did okay with Duck Duck Goose, but if there was a ball involved then he wanted no part of it. Every other kid had their thing that they excelled at, but I just couldn't figure out where Elias fit (other than in the time-out chair). Johnny loved the pig organs I showed them, but Elias was thoroughly disgusted.
Elias didn't just lack the general gusto of avid participation, but he also frequently deliberately acted up. He took a pair of scissors to his new book and beanie baby and shredded them both. Here he is picking up the innards of the poor stuffed walrus that he disemboweled.
But the second that music turned on, something clicked for him. It was as though music ran in his veins instead of blood. I tried to walk him through how to do the Jig, but he was having a hard time doing it and learning it simultaneously. So he stepped back and watched my footwork as I walked through it one time. Then he did it perfectly.
Not only did he pick it up almost instantly, but he clearly loved it. His eyes lit up and he looked at me with wonder shining from his eyes, as if to say, "Look! I did something right!" We danced for an hour or so, and then they all scurried off to their next activity. Several times over the next few days, he would come and tug on my shirt and say, "Auntie Meghan, will you dance with me?" Here we are mid-jig:
We spent many nights dancing the soles off our feet last summer, and I remember them fondly. Elegance and grace are not my strong points (let's go play in the DIRT!), but I did at least enjoy myself.
Towards the end of the summer, we decided to try and teach the kinders the Irish Jig.
I'm a glutton for punishment.
Johnny didn't want to dance with anyone and was exceptionally uncooperative. Queenie was incredibly confused and kept tripping over her own long legs. Ernest cried because Queenie wouldn't dance with him. Chola was mildly baffled, and Theresa tried really hard but couldn't quite get the counting down.
And then there was Elias.
Going into it, I didn't expect any participation from him at all. We had played group games like soccer and kickball several times through the summer, and many times he simply refused to participate. He generally did okay with Duck Duck Goose, but if there was a ball involved then he wanted no part of it. Every other kid had their thing that they excelled at, but I just couldn't figure out where Elias fit (other than in the time-out chair). Johnny loved the pig organs I showed them, but Elias was thoroughly disgusted.
 |
| Photo credit Zeger Van den Broele |
Elias didn't just lack the general gusto of avid participation, but he also frequently deliberately acted up. He took a pair of scissors to his new book and beanie baby and shredded them both. Here he is picking up the innards of the poor stuffed walrus that he disemboweled.
But the second that music turned on, something clicked for him. It was as though music ran in his veins instead of blood. I tried to walk him through how to do the Jig, but he was having a hard time doing it and learning it simultaneously. So he stepped back and watched my footwork as I walked through it one time. Then he did it perfectly.
Not only did he pick it up almost instantly, but he clearly loved it. His eyes lit up and he looked at me with wonder shining from his eyes, as if to say, "Look! I did something right!" We danced for an hour or so, and then they all scurried off to their next activity. Several times over the next few days, he would come and tug on my shirt and say, "Auntie Meghan, will you dance with me?" Here we are mid-jig:
There was kind of a running joke this summer concerning Elias's lovability. I would often inform Amy that she would have a few free beds come August when I had to leave, because I fully intended to take a few... or all... of the kids with me. I had two suitcases and a carry-on to work with, so I was pretty sure I could fit most of them. "I'm taking them all!" I would threaten. Her innocent reply was usually, "Except Elias?"
After much deliberation, I've decided I would take him too. I could teach him to play the saxaphone and the piano. I have some friends in a (freaking amazing) a capella group here on campus, and I would love for him to see and hear them sing. His little head would probably just explode from sheer delight. The sounds and beats of Nashville might just sync up to the odd little rhythm of his michievous, trouble-making, jig-dancing soul. I think he should come and visit Auntie Meghan for a while...
Then I would at least have someone to dance with.
Monday, November 14, 2011
My Little Doctor
Pharmacology class makes me think of Johnny.
In a way, I'm kind of okay with that. It means I have something to daydream about during the 3 painful hours of lecture every Monday morning.
I think he would love this class. In a few years, I mean. I love the way that kid thinks. I think it's partly because he reminds me of myself as a kid, only he's smarter. He loves the complexities of how things work, how the body functions, how to make something out of nothing. He can look at a pile of trash and see a completed project. He figured out he could run a string taut between two sticks to make a straight line so that his wall wouldn't be crooked. When I was teaching the kids about the major organs in the body, he was always one step ahead, making connections that they others didn't even grasp at and asking questions that logically led to the next step in whatever process we were discussing. I had to teach him about some of the accessory organs that the other kids never learned about because it was the only way to answer his questions. He is both curious and brilliant, and that is a beautiful combination.
I know he's only a kindergartener, but I've got pretty high hopes for this kid. I'm itching all over to get back over there and keep teaching him. He absorbed an awful lot of information in the 2.5 months that I was there, but I suspect he will not retain much of the science based material. He simply doesn't use it enough. I bet he picks it up again quickly, though. He really loves to learn, and he loves to make other people proud of him. There were many times when he would finish a worksheet or a book and say, "Auntie Meghan, I did it for you!"
Maybe I'm a little biased (yay science yay!), but I think he would make a simply fantastic doctor. He wouldn't have nearly the bedside manner that Chola would have, and he doesn't have Queenie's natural compassion and protectiveness...
Still, that doesn't mean he hasn't shown those attributes many, many times. And he has a tenacity and a sense of justice that might just convince him he can make a difference in the world. Lord willing, he will never outgrow that. But I digress...
Look at his face here. He's pushing in on the lung to see it deflate.
He asked why I sometimes gave him medicine when he was sick and sometimes did not. This led to a discussion about the difference between bacteria and viruses. He's asking if the spot on his left arm needs antibacterial or if his white blood cells can just eat the germs.
He usually plays pretty independently if he is making or building something, but every once in a while he would grudgingly allow one of the little ones to play with him. He wasn't always exceptionally happy about it, but...
I gotta say, folks-- I really miss this kid.
In a way, I'm kind of okay with that. It means I have something to daydream about during the 3 painful hours of lecture every Monday morning.
I think he would love this class. In a few years, I mean. I love the way that kid thinks. I think it's partly because he reminds me of myself as a kid, only he's smarter. He loves the complexities of how things work, how the body functions, how to make something out of nothing. He can look at a pile of trash and see a completed project. He figured out he could run a string taut between two sticks to make a straight line so that his wall wouldn't be crooked. When I was teaching the kids about the major organs in the body, he was always one step ahead, making connections that they others didn't even grasp at and asking questions that logically led to the next step in whatever process we were discussing. I had to teach him about some of the accessory organs that the other kids never learned about because it was the only way to answer his questions. He is both curious and brilliant, and that is a beautiful combination.
I know he's only a kindergartener, but I've got pretty high hopes for this kid. I'm itching all over to get back over there and keep teaching him. He absorbed an awful lot of information in the 2.5 months that I was there, but I suspect he will not retain much of the science based material. He simply doesn't use it enough. I bet he picks it up again quickly, though. He really loves to learn, and he loves to make other people proud of him. There were many times when he would finish a worksheet or a book and say, "Auntie Meghan, I did it for you!"
Maybe I'm a little biased (yay science yay!), but I think he would make a simply fantastic doctor. He wouldn't have nearly the bedside manner that Chola would have, and he doesn't have Queenie's natural compassion and protectiveness...
Still, that doesn't mean he hasn't shown those attributes many, many times. And he has a tenacity and a sense of justice that might just convince him he can make a difference in the world. Lord willing, he will never outgrow that. But I digress...
Look at his face here. He's pushing in on the lung to see it deflate.
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| Photo credit Zeger Van den Broele |
He probably had no idea this one was being taken. He's hard at work building a fortress.
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| Photo credit Zeger Van den Broele |
He asked why I sometimes gave him medicine when he was sick and sometimes did not. This led to a discussion about the difference between bacteria and viruses. He's asking if the spot on his left arm needs antibacterial or if his white blood cells can just eat the germs.
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| Photo credit Zeger Van den Broele |
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| Photo credit Zeger Van den Broele |
I gotta say, folks-- I really miss this kid.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
I shall...
My freshman year of college, I took an Honors writing class in which we were required to write a personal credo. I stumbled upon it as I was organizing the hundreds of random files saved in every place imaginable on my computer, and I had to pause for a moment and wonder: Have I held true to this? If I were to write it today, would it say the same thing? More on that to follow later, but for now...
This is what I shall do: forgive those who do not deserve it, love the unlovable, fight for those who cannot fight for themselves, and refuse to over-look injustice. I shall be bold in my endeavors, never relenting in the pursuit of truth and the greater good. I shall attempt in every way to truly be the body of Christ, to see people through His eyes, to bless and not curse, and to touch the lepers. I shall put my heart on the line, knowing full well that it will probably get trampled, for in doing so I invite others to trust their own hearts. I shall rise above my circumstances, for although they have shaped my path, they will not define my life. I shall find victory in surrender and worth in poverty. I shall dwell in the moment, fearing neither the present nor the future, but embracing this amazing gift called life. I shall cherish the promise of the sunrise, dancing in my heart for the joy of the morning, for each day is a gift, and I shall never wish one away. I shall lead by serving, throwing every ounce of my being into alleviating the human agony, both physical and spiritual, in order that I might spend my life on something that is worth the price. I shall fervently try to judge no person by his outward appearance, but rather by the overflow of his heart. I shall avoid self-pity and empty excuses. I shall shoulder the responsibility for my own mistakes. I shall push myself always, refusing the stagnant dry-rot of complacency. I shall build my relationships on trust and honesty, my standards on the scriptures, and my life on Jesus Christ. I shall not limit God by boxing him in with my narrow expectations and stunted understanding. I shall be open to new ideas and acceptant of differing perspectives, yet I shall not compromise my convictions to please the crowd. I shall be financially wise and prudent, yet I shall give freely where the need is true. I shall never stop learning, and I shall never consider myself better than others. I shall dance is if no one is watching, for even if they are, the dance is not for them. I shall love passionately, trust deeply, and laugh freely. I shall live adventurously, for life is simply too short to waste on boredom.
This is what I shall do: forgive those who do not deserve it, love the unlovable, fight for those who cannot fight for themselves, and refuse to over-look injustice. I shall be bold in my endeavors, never relenting in the pursuit of truth and the greater good. I shall attempt in every way to truly be the body of Christ, to see people through His eyes, to bless and not curse, and to touch the lepers. I shall put my heart on the line, knowing full well that it will probably get trampled, for in doing so I invite others to trust their own hearts. I shall rise above my circumstances, for although they have shaped my path, they will not define my life. I shall find victory in surrender and worth in poverty. I shall dwell in the moment, fearing neither the present nor the future, but embracing this amazing gift called life. I shall cherish the promise of the sunrise, dancing in my heart for the joy of the morning, for each day is a gift, and I shall never wish one away. I shall lead by serving, throwing every ounce of my being into alleviating the human agony, both physical and spiritual, in order that I might spend my life on something that is worth the price. I shall fervently try to judge no person by his outward appearance, but rather by the overflow of his heart. I shall avoid self-pity and empty excuses. I shall shoulder the responsibility for my own mistakes. I shall push myself always, refusing the stagnant dry-rot of complacency. I shall build my relationships on trust and honesty, my standards on the scriptures, and my life on Jesus Christ. I shall not limit God by boxing him in with my narrow expectations and stunted understanding. I shall be open to new ideas and acceptant of differing perspectives, yet I shall not compromise my convictions to please the crowd. I shall be financially wise and prudent, yet I shall give freely where the need is true. I shall never stop learning, and I shall never consider myself better than others. I shall dance is if no one is watching, for even if they are, the dance is not for them. I shall love passionately, trust deeply, and laugh freely. I shall live adventurously, for life is simply too short to waste on boredom.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Hope Rising
Dry earth dusted red
Evening candlelight ambience and drumbeats at the dawn
A cloudless sapphire sky
And a billion brilliant promises holding up the sky at night
Whispering the peace of “star light, star bright”
Children of the promise
Rescued from a world where death is not the greatest evil
Protected for a time
And understanding little the desperate hope that rides on them
The future of a people torn asunder by the wind
Ashes choke the air
Fiery scars blacken a paradise now lost
Death screams victory
Only the careful ear hears life’s resilient rebirth
Hope rising from the nascent green now pushing through the earth
Heaven’s heart breaks
Apathy paralyzes the equipped
We have the chance to change
But the forgotten burn to ash, for we fail to understand
The water of life to quench the flame is resting in our hands
Her victories small
Time beats senselessly against battlements of tradition
Long battles hard won
For fragile souls both prisoners and casualties of war
Sustained by Grace’s cry that they are life worth fighting for
And so, hope is rising...
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Lesson Learned
This week has been an excellent example of when Meg has so very much bouncing around in her head but insufficient ability to mold those thoughts into words. Somehow, all of it came to a culmination today, and I must either write or explode. So if this sounds like it should be about three different blog posts, it probably should. If I were concerned about decorum or literary style, I would separate them-- but I like to live life on the edge.
I started this post during clinical last week but couldn't figure out where to go with it....
As I write this, I'm sitting in the nuclear medicine department at Vanderbildt while my patient undergoes a stress test. She's an absolutely fascinating pathological case study, though most of her care has been relatively straightforward. As complicated as the pharmacodynamics may be, nuclear medicine is mostly a lot of waiting... and waiting... and redosing so you can wait some more. Since she's my only pt today (the joys of being a student), that leaves me with a lot of time to think and remember as the mechanical melody of the hospital-- the shuffling of footsteps, the beeping of monitors, the methodic whir of a CT-- lull me gently into introspective reminiscence.
My thoughts turn to the dozens of patients I've cared for in the last two years. I can still see each of their faces clearly in my mind. One was a certifiable genius. He worked on world-renown projects that you would all recognize if I were allowed to tell you about them. But then he dreamed up a cutting-edge endeavor that went horribly wrong, and several of his coworkers and close friends were killed. He blamed himself and went crazy with guilt. By the time research revealed it wasn't his fault at all, it was too late. He had lost touch with reality completely. Now he was dying alone in a tiny central TN hospital. It is his story I remember when I lose a patient. Sometimes forgiving yourself-- even if the guilt is irrational and misplaced-- is the biggest hurdle.
Another patient I treated was in an incredible amount of pain but was already maxed out on pain meds. He had a plethora of problems that all antagonized each other. The medical focus had become so centered on just keeping him alive that some of the simpler comfort measures had slipped through the cracks. His skin was so dry and itchy that he was literally scratching it off. I brought some lotion and began spreading it on his back. He was too weak to even finish a sentence, but my heart knew the words as he spoke them. "Jesus said, 'Whatever you do for the least of these...'" His is the voice I hear when my heart needs perspective.
I penned those three paragraphs almost effortlessly and then spent about an hour gnawing on my pen and trying to decide what to write next. Those stories have great meaning to me, but I feared they would leave the reader (that's you!) with a bit of a "so what?" feeling. I mean, I've written pretty extensively about my patients before.
Today was another clinical day. I was assigned two patients this morning, and both of them were very medically straightforward and easy to care for. I had a lot of free time, so I bopped from room to room looking for interesting procedures to help with or observe. As I was helping a wound care specialist change multiple bandages on a poor sweet old woman with several pressure sores, she asked some polite chit-chat-type questions: Where are you from? Where do you go to school? What do you want to do with your life? I gave her a ten second summary (...came from Illinois, currently at Belmont, headed to Africa...). She sighed with a smile and said, "You know, I would love to do some mission work, but I know my heart would be captured and I would never be able to come back, so I better just stay here."
I was speechless.
Isn't that the point?!
Such innocent words, spoken with friendly honesty. My heart struggled for a response for a moment before settling on one. Pity and sadness welled within me, for this woman had, due to reasons I am not privy to, deliberately decided to deprive herself of a joy second only to experiencing Christ himself. In fact, it's an experience that would likely include the aforementioned encounter. And in such a sideways way, it was almost like her heart knew it, even if the rest of her had absolutely no idea what she was missing.
And I wished that she could have met that second patient of mine, because her heart seemed to be searching for perspective.
A few minutes later, an exceptionally irritable and difficult patient received an order for a blood draw. She was obese with deep veins and labeled as a "hard stick." IV therapy had been called the last time she needed a blood draw, and the nursing consensus on the floor was that they probably would need to be again. The patient mentioned that they had called a neonatal nurse to stick her during a previous hospitalization (I'm telling you, this lady had freakishly tiny and tricky veins). I decided to give it a go. I got blood on the first stick. As I held the needle and filled the vial, my memories flashed to a tiny little boy I barely had the chance to get to know, a child whose tired little veins just would not accept an IV needle from my inexperienced hand.
Then I remembered my first patient, and decided it might be time to begin forgiving myself.
As the shift neared its close, I slipped into the nurse's lounge to polish off a therapeutic ham sandwich. One of the other nurses from the floor (whom I admire and respect greatly) struck up a conversation that quickly (through her guidance, not mine) turned towards Zambia. She had asked me once before what kind of nurse I wanted to be, and now she was wondering if and when I planned to return to Zambia. She probably didn't expect a month/week/day countdown. I laughed at her surprise. "Sorry-- I suppose I'm just a little anxious to get back to them." Her answer might be the most calming and confirming thing I've heard since I set foot on American soil in August. "Well of course you are-- they're your kids. You can't just walk away from your kids."
What I would give for my family and friends to understand that... or even to understand it better myself!
Because I don't know what those kids are to me, really. Amy and I were talking the other day and she reminded me that I have "23 nieces, or nephews, or pseudokids, or whatever they are..." waiting for me when I return. I don't know who I am to those children, or who exactly they are to me. I mean, I'm Auntie Meghan, but not "Auntie" in quite the same way that some of the hired nannies are-- for many of them, the job is predominantly just that: a job. But I'm not their mom either. I have a niece whom I love dearly and would do anything for. It's sort of similar to that, but still not quite the same. I hope to be in their lives for a very, very long time (approximately forever, actually...) but I don't know what even tomorrow holds, or if I'll be needed more elsewhere sometime down the road. Kazembe may not be where I end up. So the only way I know how to describe them is just to say that, in some way they're mine. They're a lot of other people's, too. A whole lot of people care very deeply for these kids. But that doesn't make me any less attached. That doesn't make me any less protective, possessive, or in love. In many ways, it actually makes me more so. Forgive me if that makes absolutely no sense at all.
This life that I have chosen (or that has chosen me)-- nursing and mission-- is a double-edged vocation: I see people at the best times in their lives, and I see them at the worst times in their lives. I'm expected to be healer and helper, friend and advocate, teacher and prophet, warrior and peacemaker. I smile when they smile, and sometimes I cry when they cry. Shoot, sometimes I cry when they don't cry. Sometimes they look to me for answers that I don't have. Sometimes they demand more of me than what I think I can give. Sometimes my courage and confidence are stretched to the breaking point and then a little further still. Sometimes they learn from me. Usually, they're the teachers.
If today is any indication, I have a lot left to learn, ladies and gentlemen...
One beautiful and unexpected lesson at a time.
I started this post during clinical last week but couldn't figure out where to go with it....
As I write this, I'm sitting in the nuclear medicine department at Vanderbildt while my patient undergoes a stress test. She's an absolutely fascinating pathological case study, though most of her care has been relatively straightforward. As complicated as the pharmacodynamics may be, nuclear medicine is mostly a lot of waiting... and waiting... and redosing so you can wait some more. Since she's my only pt today (the joys of being a student), that leaves me with a lot of time to think and remember as the mechanical melody of the hospital-- the shuffling of footsteps, the beeping of monitors, the methodic whir of a CT-- lull me gently into introspective reminiscence.
My thoughts turn to the dozens of patients I've cared for in the last two years. I can still see each of their faces clearly in my mind. One was a certifiable genius. He worked on world-renown projects that you would all recognize if I were allowed to tell you about them. But then he dreamed up a cutting-edge endeavor that went horribly wrong, and several of his coworkers and close friends were killed. He blamed himself and went crazy with guilt. By the time research revealed it wasn't his fault at all, it was too late. He had lost touch with reality completely. Now he was dying alone in a tiny central TN hospital. It is his story I remember when I lose a patient. Sometimes forgiving yourself-- even if the guilt is irrational and misplaced-- is the biggest hurdle.
Another patient I treated was in an incredible amount of pain but was already maxed out on pain meds. He had a plethora of problems that all antagonized each other. The medical focus had become so centered on just keeping him alive that some of the simpler comfort measures had slipped through the cracks. His skin was so dry and itchy that he was literally scratching it off. I brought some lotion and began spreading it on his back. He was too weak to even finish a sentence, but my heart knew the words as he spoke them. "Jesus said, 'Whatever you do for the least of these...'" His is the voice I hear when my heart needs perspective.
I penned those three paragraphs almost effortlessly and then spent about an hour gnawing on my pen and trying to decide what to write next. Those stories have great meaning to me, but I feared they would leave the reader (that's you!) with a bit of a "so what?" feeling. I mean, I've written pretty extensively about my patients before.
Today was another clinical day. I was assigned two patients this morning, and both of them were very medically straightforward and easy to care for. I had a lot of free time, so I bopped from room to room looking for interesting procedures to help with or observe. As I was helping a wound care specialist change multiple bandages on a poor sweet old woman with several pressure sores, she asked some polite chit-chat-type questions: Where are you from? Where do you go to school? What do you want to do with your life? I gave her a ten second summary (...came from Illinois, currently at Belmont, headed to Africa...). She sighed with a smile and said, "You know, I would love to do some mission work, but I know my heart would be captured and I would never be able to come back, so I better just stay here."
I was speechless.
Isn't that the point?!
Such innocent words, spoken with friendly honesty. My heart struggled for a response for a moment before settling on one. Pity and sadness welled within me, for this woman had, due to reasons I am not privy to, deliberately decided to deprive herself of a joy second only to experiencing Christ himself. In fact, it's an experience that would likely include the aforementioned encounter. And in such a sideways way, it was almost like her heart knew it, even if the rest of her had absolutely no idea what she was missing.
And I wished that she could have met that second patient of mine, because her heart seemed to be searching for perspective.
A few minutes later, an exceptionally irritable and difficult patient received an order for a blood draw. She was obese with deep veins and labeled as a "hard stick." IV therapy had been called the last time she needed a blood draw, and the nursing consensus on the floor was that they probably would need to be again. The patient mentioned that they had called a neonatal nurse to stick her during a previous hospitalization (I'm telling you, this lady had freakishly tiny and tricky veins). I decided to give it a go. I got blood on the first stick. As I held the needle and filled the vial, my memories flashed to a tiny little boy I barely had the chance to get to know, a child whose tired little veins just would not accept an IV needle from my inexperienced hand.
Then I remembered my first patient, and decided it might be time to begin forgiving myself.
As the shift neared its close, I slipped into the nurse's lounge to polish off a therapeutic ham sandwich. One of the other nurses from the floor (whom I admire and respect greatly) struck up a conversation that quickly (through her guidance, not mine) turned towards Zambia. She had asked me once before what kind of nurse I wanted to be, and now she was wondering if and when I planned to return to Zambia. She probably didn't expect a month/week/day countdown. I laughed at her surprise. "Sorry-- I suppose I'm just a little anxious to get back to them." Her answer might be the most calming and confirming thing I've heard since I set foot on American soil in August. "Well of course you are-- they're your kids. You can't just walk away from your kids."
What I would give for my family and friends to understand that... or even to understand it better myself!
Because I don't know what those kids are to me, really. Amy and I were talking the other day and she reminded me that I have "23 nieces, or nephews, or pseudokids, or whatever they are..." waiting for me when I return. I don't know who I am to those children, or who exactly they are to me. I mean, I'm Auntie Meghan, but not "Auntie" in quite the same way that some of the hired nannies are-- for many of them, the job is predominantly just that: a job. But I'm not their mom either. I have a niece whom I love dearly and would do anything for. It's sort of similar to that, but still not quite the same. I hope to be in their lives for a very, very long time (approximately forever, actually...) but I don't know what even tomorrow holds, or if I'll be needed more elsewhere sometime down the road. Kazembe may not be where I end up. So the only way I know how to describe them is just to say that, in some way they're mine. They're a lot of other people's, too. A whole lot of people care very deeply for these kids. But that doesn't make me any less attached. That doesn't make me any less protective, possessive, or in love. In many ways, it actually makes me more so. Forgive me if that makes absolutely no sense at all.
This life that I have chosen (or that has chosen me)-- nursing and mission-- is a double-edged vocation: I see people at the best times in their lives, and I see them at the worst times in their lives. I'm expected to be healer and helper, friend and advocate, teacher and prophet, warrior and peacemaker. I smile when they smile, and sometimes I cry when they cry. Shoot, sometimes I cry when they don't cry. Sometimes they look to me for answers that I don't have. Sometimes they demand more of me than what I think I can give. Sometimes my courage and confidence are stretched to the breaking point and then a little further still. Sometimes they learn from me. Usually, they're the teachers.
If today is any indication, I have a lot left to learn, ladies and gentlemen...
One beautiful and unexpected lesson at a time.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Completely Pointless Ramblings
The semester is officially half over. Part of me is ecstatic-- I loaded way more on my plate than what I should have tried to carry this fall. Work, classes, and the constant and ongoing battle of assimilating into my own culture have proven to be a bit more taxing than I bargained for, so I'm relieved to know that I'm halfway there. At the same time, I'm way behind in several of my classes, and the midterm mark means that time for redemption is short. I should probably be studying instead of blogging....
Fall break brought with it an opportunity to share a little about my summer with one of the churches that helped me go. It was a complete and total fiasco. The pews of the tiny country sanctuary were "packed" with about two dozen people. After much cajoling, I finally managed to convince my little brother to let me use his 32" flatscreen to show pictures on-- you can just plug a flashdrive into it and flip through the pictures on the screen. But because I'm Meg, I ran off and left Nashville without Pegasus (my computer), which had all of my pictures on it. Luckily, I had uploaded many of them to Walgreens.com and could just download them from there. Of course, the internet connection at my mom's was too sketchy to allow that, so I ended up dashing to a friend's house Sunday morning before church to pull the pictures off line. Just as I was downloading the last picture, something glitched and my entire flashdrive-- pictures, files, school papers, everything-- was completely wiped.
That's how I ended up standing nervously behind the pulpit in a tiny, beautiful country church, clutching a wrinkled scrap of paper with six hastily scrawled bullet points to talk about, and completely winging the entire presentation. I had intended to use the pictures as my outline to help pace me, but I was going to have to rearrange my thoughts and sort of make it up as I went along. Two minutes later, I had already sped through my bullet points and was shifting anxiously from foot to foot as I desperately tried to think of a way to explain to these people what I saw and experienced there. My flying thoughts settled on Jessie, and I told her story. Due to a combination of nerves, sleep deprivation, and my own emotional instability, I ended up crying (and so did most of the people in the pews). Then I opened the floor for questions, and by the time we were done, I had run over a solid 20 minutes. Just another morning in the life of Meg.
It was the first time I had shared anything about my summer experience with a group (and in retrospect, I'm glad it was a small and forgiving group). I really enjoyed it. Those kids deserve to have their story told. And I love any excuse to talk about them and brag on them, because they're pretty amazing little munchkins in my book. At the same time, it makes me really uncomfortable when people tell me how proud of me they are, or how brave I must be, or how great it is that I want to spend my life on the mission field. It's not about me. I don't want it to be about me. It's not supposed to be about me. And yet I'm stuck in this interesting and contradictory position where I have to ask for money (which I also hate doing... guess I'm gonna have to get over that, huh?) so I can go back to them. Straighten me out here, cyberfriends-- I'm confusing myself.
In other news, the Cardinals are headed to the World Series. This means that my week will have a tinge of unquenchable giddiness to it no matter what. Also, despite oversleeping and being 45 minutes late to my 8am test, I'm pretty sure I managed to ace it in the 22 minutes I had left to take it. And my afternoon class got cancelled, so I can do something productive this afternoon, like sleep and paint. Probably not at the same time though.
Sorry for consuming two minutes of your life with my pointless and ineloquent ramblings, but to be fair, I warned you in the title...
For those of you keeping up with the count, I'm down to 6 months and 26ish days. Assuming nursing school doesn't kill me first.
Much love!
Fall break brought with it an opportunity to share a little about my summer with one of the churches that helped me go. It was a complete and total fiasco. The pews of the tiny country sanctuary were "packed" with about two dozen people. After much cajoling, I finally managed to convince my little brother to let me use his 32" flatscreen to show pictures on-- you can just plug a flashdrive into it and flip through the pictures on the screen. But because I'm Meg, I ran off and left Nashville without Pegasus (my computer), which had all of my pictures on it. Luckily, I had uploaded many of them to Walgreens.com and could just download them from there. Of course, the internet connection at my mom's was too sketchy to allow that, so I ended up dashing to a friend's house Sunday morning before church to pull the pictures off line. Just as I was downloading the last picture, something glitched and my entire flashdrive-- pictures, files, school papers, everything-- was completely wiped.
That's how I ended up standing nervously behind the pulpit in a tiny, beautiful country church, clutching a wrinkled scrap of paper with six hastily scrawled bullet points to talk about, and completely winging the entire presentation. I had intended to use the pictures as my outline to help pace me, but I was going to have to rearrange my thoughts and sort of make it up as I went along. Two minutes later, I had already sped through my bullet points and was shifting anxiously from foot to foot as I desperately tried to think of a way to explain to these people what I saw and experienced there. My flying thoughts settled on Jessie, and I told her story. Due to a combination of nerves, sleep deprivation, and my own emotional instability, I ended up crying (and so did most of the people in the pews). Then I opened the floor for questions, and by the time we were done, I had run over a solid 20 minutes. Just another morning in the life of Meg.
It was the first time I had shared anything about my summer experience with a group (and in retrospect, I'm glad it was a small and forgiving group). I really enjoyed it. Those kids deserve to have their story told. And I love any excuse to talk about them and brag on them, because they're pretty amazing little munchkins in my book. At the same time, it makes me really uncomfortable when people tell me how proud of me they are, or how brave I must be, or how great it is that I want to spend my life on the mission field. It's not about me. I don't want it to be about me. It's not supposed to be about me. And yet I'm stuck in this interesting and contradictory position where I have to ask for money (which I also hate doing... guess I'm gonna have to get over that, huh?) so I can go back to them. Straighten me out here, cyberfriends-- I'm confusing myself.
In other news, the Cardinals are headed to the World Series. This means that my week will have a tinge of unquenchable giddiness to it no matter what. Also, despite oversleeping and being 45 minutes late to my 8am test, I'm pretty sure I managed to ace it in the 22 minutes I had left to take it. And my afternoon class got cancelled, so I can do something productive this afternoon, like sleep and paint. Probably not at the same time though.
Sorry for consuming two minutes of your life with my pointless and ineloquent ramblings, but to be fair, I warned you in the title...
For those of you keeping up with the count, I'm down to 6 months and 26ish days. Assuming nursing school doesn't kill me first.
Much love!
Monday, October 10, 2011
My Reason Why
This is a post I’ve wanted to write since the end of May, but I just haven’t been able to find the words. Luckily, God has gifted other people with a greater gift of communication than I possess, so I’ll use their words. Bear with me, folks. This post is an answer to questions from a plethora of people, but it’s also an answer to my own questions—so if it doesn’t make complete sense, let’s blame it on that.
I love flying. As an “adult,” that attachment is mostly manifested in my infatuation with airports and a burning desire to go skydiving. But even when I was a kid, I loved the idea of flying. I used to watch Peter Pan right before bedtime in an effort to bring dreams where any merry little thought could life me to the skies.
My first connecting flight on the way to Kazembe this summer was from DC to Addis Ababa. I settled into my window seat and started making origami birds for the kid in front of me. Literally moments before the plane took off, a young South African man sprinted onto the plane and dove into the seat next to me. I was a little startled. He introduced himself, but the name was not one I was familiar with or could pronounce, and I don’t remember it. He told me a little bit about himself. He had come straight from college graduation to the airport to fly back home to Cape Town and had majored in international development and something else. After a polite amount of chatter, we both settled into our seats. A few minutes into the flight I pulled out my journal to chronicle my adventure thus far. It’s a red leatherbound notebook with the names of Jesus engraved on the cover. Almost immediately, the guy next to me pointed to one of the names.
“Who is this?”
I completely froze. What did he mean? What did he want me to say? Was he asking as someone who was curious, or combative, or instigatory, or maybe confused? What base of knowledge did he have—I mean, did I need to start with Genesis? What words could I possibly offer in explanation?
A billion words and phrases rushed through my mind like an unstoppable waterfall. He is Savior, Lord, Redeemer, Friend, Father, Romancer, Advocate, Judge. He’s the reason I get up every morning, the reason I can offer forgiveness rather than demand what is “mine,” the answer to so many questions, and the source of so many more questions. He makes perfect sense but is beyond comprehension; He is the Alpha and Omega of all great mysteries.
How could I possibly explain who He is to me? What He is to me? The religious catchphrases of Christianity fall woefully short and in many cases only serve to confuse or disenchant the asker. How incredibly heartbreaking that the inadequacy of Christian explanation and the inconsistency of Christian action should be the reflection of Christ that a lost and broken world sees. As the mighty philosophers of DC Talk once said, "The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable."
I love flying. As an “adult,” that attachment is mostly manifested in my infatuation with airports and a burning desire to go skydiving. But even when I was a kid, I loved the idea of flying. I used to watch Peter Pan right before bedtime in an effort to bring dreams where any merry little thought could life me to the skies.
My first connecting flight on the way to Kazembe this summer was from DC to Addis Ababa. I settled into my window seat and started making origami birds for the kid in front of me. Literally moments before the plane took off, a young South African man sprinted onto the plane and dove into the seat next to me. I was a little startled. He introduced himself, but the name was not one I was familiar with or could pronounce, and I don’t remember it. He told me a little bit about himself. He had come straight from college graduation to the airport to fly back home to Cape Town and had majored in international development and something else. After a polite amount of chatter, we both settled into our seats. A few minutes into the flight I pulled out my journal to chronicle my adventure thus far. It’s a red leatherbound notebook with the names of Jesus engraved on the cover. Almost immediately, the guy next to me pointed to one of the names.
“Who is this?”
I completely froze. What did he mean? What did he want me to say? Was he asking as someone who was curious, or combative, or instigatory, or maybe confused? What base of knowledge did he have—I mean, did I need to start with Genesis? What words could I possibly offer in explanation?
A billion words and phrases rushed through my mind like an unstoppable waterfall. He is Savior, Lord, Redeemer, Friend, Father, Romancer, Advocate, Judge. He’s the reason I get up every morning, the reason I can offer forgiveness rather than demand what is “mine,” the answer to so many questions, and the source of so many more questions. He makes perfect sense but is beyond comprehension; He is the Alpha and Omega of all great mysteries.
How could I possibly explain who He is to me? What He is to me? The religious catchphrases of Christianity fall woefully short and in many cases only serve to confuse or disenchant the asker. How incredibly heartbreaking that the inadequacy of Christian explanation and the inconsistency of Christian action should be the reflection of Christ that a lost and broken world sees. As the mighty philosophers of DC Talk once said, "The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable."
He is Aslan; He is perfection. He is Shelter and Refuge, but to follow Him—to truly follow Him, in action instead of lipservice— is not safe at all. It will cost you everything you thought was important. And the world will look at you like you’re crazy. But as Jim Elliot wrote, “He is no fool who gives what he can never keep to gain what he can never lose.”
I wanted to pull that kid into my emotions and memories and show him who Jesus is, because words just seemed to be inadequate. Unfortunately, words also seemed to be my only choice.
Scrambling for a verbal cleft to hold onto, I finally offered a brilliant and descriptive answer.
“He…. He… He’s Everything.”
“He…. He… He’s Everything.”
The guy on the plane stared at me patiently, his face impossible to read. No smile or scowl hinted at his intention in asking the question or his perception of my response. Then, before I had a chance to squeak out a feeble follow-up, he asked another: “Why Africa?”
Now there’s a question that can’t be intelligently answered with words. I can justify my dedication a bit more now, since I’ve actually been there and loved on those kids, but as of May I was just some crazy American girl with a few screws loose who had dedicated her life and her love to a people she had never met, who had sacrificed relationships and opportunities in a desperate effort to follow the call that had gripped her heart, because she feared that even the slightest distraction would turn her silly flighty gaze away from what she truly believed God had asked of her. Katie Davis, a young woman from Nashville area Tennessee who dropped everything and went to be a mom to a bunch of Ugandan girls, explains it this way. Emphasis is mine.
Now there’s a question that can’t be intelligently answered with words. I can justify my dedication a bit more now, since I’ve actually been there and loved on those kids, but as of May I was just some crazy American girl with a few screws loose who had dedicated her life and her love to a people she had never met, who had sacrificed relationships and opportunities in a desperate effort to follow the call that had gripped her heart, because she feared that even the slightest distraction would turn her silly flighty gaze away from what she truly believed God had asked of her. Katie Davis, a young woman from Nashville area Tennessee who dropped everything and went to be a mom to a bunch of Ugandan girls, explains it this way. Emphasis is mine.
"You see, Jesus wrecked my life… My heart had been apprehended by a great love, a love that compelled me to live differently… As I read and learned more and more of what Jesus said, I liked the lifestyle I saw around me less and less. I began to realize that God wanted more from me, and I wanted more of Him… Slowly but surely, I began to realize the truth: I had loved and admired and worshiped Jesus without doing what He said… So I quit my life… But after that year, which I spent in Uganda, returning to “normal” wasn’t possible. I had seen what life was about, and I could not pretend I didn’t know."
Why Africa? Because Jesus said to go into all the world. Because to feed a hungry child is to see the face of Jesus looking back at you. Because I want to spend my life on something that is worth the price. Because my soul thirsts for adventure. Because materialism and consumerism is my Achilles’ heel, and I have never been happier than when I lived in a tiny dusty room with a single suitcase of possessions. Because I highly doubt that I will ever look back on my life and think, “Gee, I just fed too many hungry people and treated too many sick kids and loved far too deeply.”
But again, how to explain that to some college grad from South Africa that I had just met?
“Because… Jesus said to go.”
And then, he smiled. His eyes were still fixed on the cover of my journal, so I asked him a question in return.
“And who is Jesus to you?”
“He…. well…. He’s Everything.”
Yep. That pretty much covers it.
Why Africa? Because Jesus said to go into all the world. Because to feed a hungry child is to see the face of Jesus looking back at you. Because I want to spend my life on something that is worth the price. Because my soul thirsts for adventure. Because materialism and consumerism is my Achilles’ heel, and I have never been happier than when I lived in a tiny dusty room with a single suitcase of possessions. Because I highly doubt that I will ever look back on my life and think, “Gee, I just fed too many hungry people and treated too many sick kids and loved far too deeply.”
But again, how to explain that to some college grad from South Africa that I had just met?
“Because… Jesus said to go.”
And then, he smiled. His eyes were still fixed on the cover of my journal, so I asked him a question in return.
“And who is Jesus to you?”
“He…. well…. He’s Everything.”
Yep. That pretty much covers it.
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