hot date

Living in constant community with some four hundred people has its advantages. I end up doing things like throwing nearly-silent parties at midnight, whispering the words to the birthday song so as not to wake up the girls one paper-thin wall away in the next cabin. Or sitting together with friends at breakfast talking about anything from lab reports to harebrained schemes for cross-country travel. Or feeling unwell, heading to bed and having someone stop me in the hall and pray for me right then and there.

But community living can get tiring at times. It's nice to know that walking out of my cabin and into the midships lounge means that I'm going to find someone to hang out with at pretty much any hour of the day. But the reverse is also true; walking out of my cabin and into the midships lounge means that I'm not going to be alone. We live on this ship, five hundred feet of four, six, ten-berth cabins, and we are never alone. The only escape is to get off the ship, which plunges me into the whirling cacophony of Monrovia. It can hardly be considered alone time when every eye is fixed on me as I walk down the street with my equally-white companions to calls of White girl! You fine! Marry me! You guys are princesses! Give me your number! (Exclamation points being absolutely essential to this particular style of communication.) And we can never be alone; it's just not safe. So Mercy Shippers go out in droves. Landrovers packed to bursting with eager, pale people who just want to get away from the wireless internet and air conditioning, if only for a few hours.

This is all starting to get to me, especially since The Exodus has begun. No, we're not clawing our way out of Egypt, but it seems like everyone on the ship is packing up and boarding planes for home. Between the end of April and the middle of June, almost everyone who I was friends with when I first got here will have gone back to their lives in the real world (if such a thing even exists anymore). Goodbyes consist of long group hugs on the dock and huge packs of people going out to eat food; there is no such thing as solitude.

To that end, Liz and I went on a date yesterday. Just the two of us. In a taxi. Nary a Landrover in sight. We stopped at the end of Broad Street and made our way up the hill through the cool green shade of mango trees to the Ducor Hotel. We climbed the seven or so flights of stairs and then the ladder all the way to the roof. We sat on the edge, feet dangling over stories and stories of air, shared our hearts and felt like we owned the world. We played with monkeys and ate dinner on a balcony overlooking the ocean. It was refreshing in so many ways. Liz has become a close friend in less time than I had thought possible. Perhaps it's a function of living in such close quarters and seeing each other all the time, or maybe it's just true that we actually are sisters separated at birth, but it's going to be incredibly difficult to say goodbye to her on Sunday. She's the kind of person who will drop everything for a two-man dance party at any given moment, whether we're on the ward at two in the morning or on the remnants of a dance floor on top of a ruined hotel with no music anywhere in earshot. She's the one I can go to on a bad day and know that I'll get sympathy and a cup of tea. And she's become the one to encourage me in my walk, reminding me often that God has big plans for the both of us, but that His timing isn't necessarily what we might think and that it's okay for next year to be a wide-open question mark.

Meg (my PICU buddy from Philly) says that Mercy Ships should maybe advertise about The Third H. We talk all the time, eyes shining, about hope and healing; it's what we do here. But no one mentions the heartache. Whether it's a patient's story of years of sadness and pain or the constant leaving of new friends, this place is hard on the heart. Some say the only way to combat it is to find your group of long-term friends and huddle over by the windows in the dining room, staunchly refusing to meet new people because it just hurts. too. much. to say goodbye again when they inevitably leave. There's much to be said for that method. For crying out loud, at home I'm still friends with the same people I've known since grade one. Creature of habit extraordinaire.

But if I do that, if I refuse to check the new arrivals list and I sit behind the glass at lunch, I'll miss out on all-night talks on the beach and extra plates of popcorn and so much dancing. And that's just not an option. Because I like popcorn.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. (C. S. Lewis)