lub

I know I talked about Audrey yesterday, but I have to mention her again, because she inadvertently ended up causing what might have been my favourite part of this entire week.

She wrote me an e-mail today, and one part of it rang so true with my experience here.

Man bears within himself a dignity he cannot lose, for he is created in the image of God. We all share this dignity, regardless of religion, race, or creed, and so we shelter one another, seeing Christ in every woman and every man.

I've thought this so many times before, just not in such simplicity. But it's so true. This afternoon, amidst the clamor of twenty patients, nineteen caregivers, three extra babies, and a whole lot of nurses, I realized all over again just how relevant those words are to our life here. We are the shelter for these kids; the wards are a sanctuary where, maybe for the first time, they can run and play and not worry about anyone laughing at them. No one shies away because the kid in the next bed over had her nose and ear and eye burned off in a fire. They just pass over the crayons and hold up their own bandaged limbs for inspection, because really, we're all broken, aren't we?

And then I got to the part where Audrey told me what to say to Aissa, who's finally been having a couple of spectacularly good days after a couple of spectacularly horrible ones. I pulled her onto my lap and delivered the message on the screen. Audrey says 'Hi.' Also, she says, 'I love you.' After thinking about that for a moment, Aissa turned to where she could look at me through her good eye, pointed right at my heart and shouted back at me at the top of her lungs.

I LUB you!

And then she rested her bandaged cheek on my chest, put her arms around me and said it again, quieter this time. I lub, lub, lub you. I lub you, while my heart threatened to burst into a thousand pieces and go spinning into every corner of the ward.

She has no idea what she's saying yet, but I've learned how to say it in Fulfulde, and so we're going to teach her the cry of all our hearts. We're going to tell anyone who will listen.

We love you, each one of you who comes up our gangway with all your hurts and all your fears. We see the image of God in your scarred faces. We see the Carpenter hands of Christ in your twisted fingers, His feet in your bent ones. We love you and we want to throw our arms around you and let that love break through your pain. We want to shelter you here.

We're going to tell them all.