speak

It happened this morning. While no one was paying attention, when she saw her chance, Anicette slipped home to Jesus. I could write it a thousand times, using a thousand different words, and it still wouldn't make any sense at all. Airway obstruction. Possible metabolic disorder. Chronic malnutrition. None of those words brings her back, nothing comes close to explaining what happened in the corner of A Ward this morning.

I've done this before. I've had tiny brown babies between my hands, my thumbs crushing relentlessly at their chests, willing back spirits that had already flown. But this time, the entire time, someone's hands were on my back, steadying me as I bent to my task, and if it hadn't been for those hands I wouldn't have kept it together as long as I did.

Even so, by the time the team came, swift on the heels of the call, I knew we had to stop. Knew we had to keep going. Knew there was nothing I could do that was going to make it okay, no decision I was going to make that would come close to mending a mama's shattered heart.

And so we stopped. We lifted our hands and I gathered her into my arms, all bundled in an impossibly cheerful blanket. I've lost track of how many times I heard her mama cry her name when I brought her into the room where she was waiting. Je fait tout, she cried, over and over again. I did everything. Anicette. Why, Anicette. Anicette.

When I undressed her for her last bath, every one of her bones was visible beneath her skin, her spine like a row of tiny stones down her back, and all I could think of was what it must be for her in heaven now. To finally be able to run and play. To not feel pain. For the first time to know what it feels like to not be hungry.

For her mama, though, no such comfort. No release from a pain that's just starting all over again. Because I found out today that Zenabou had another child before Anicette, a child who also died from a mysterious sickness in which it would not eat. She's been through all this before, and now she's doing it with Anicette's little brother or sister growing inside her, a third child to be born into this broken family.

We've gathered together so many times today to pray. To ask for comfort in Zenabou's life. To pray for healing and peace. But most of all, we have gathered to speak life. Life into Zenabou, the second wife who has given her husband nothing but broken children, children who went back far too soon. Life into their village, where hatred and bitterness run deep. Life into the baby, safe for now but facing a world so twisted.


How long? How long before He speaks the words that will make it all whole again? How long do babies have to starve to death before this world has groaned enough?

Speak, Lord. Speak life.