prayer

Every once in a while I stop talking about my little brown babies and ask you to pray for a white one instead. Today is one of those days.

Meet Lily Anna. She was just born this morning, weighing in at a not-so-hefty two pounds two ounces, the beautiful daughter of my friends from the ship here, Lorah and Justin. Lily has a long road ahead of her, and I know Lorah and Justin would be more than appreciative of prayers for their little family. I don't have all the details, just what I can glean from Facebook updates and photos from across the ocean, but it looks like she's off to a good start, especially blessed with the parents she has.

Let's pray for this little one, okay?

I come with more sobering news than I've been bringing the last few days. Because just when it seemed that everything was going our way, that wounds were going to be well on their way to healing, today was a sucker punch. One after another, we discovered new evidence of breakdown, new reasons to doubt.

But the truth remains: our God is a God of Healing. He can, and I pray that He will heal these wounds. I think when He says we just need a tiny seed's worth of faith, that what He's saying is that all we need to do is ask. The more I think about that, the more comforting it is. Because it takes all the weight out of my tiny hands and puts it back squarely into the ones that can hold it. The only thing expected of me is simply to come, to ask. The rest He will do. So here is what I ask, and what I want you to ask with me.

Ask for Christine. Her wound has torn back open, and she needs to be under the care of a competent general surgeon as soon as possible. All of the local hospitals are currently on strike, and we don't know what to do. God does.

Ask for Kossiwa and her mama. Kossiwa had her cleft lip repaired almost a week ago, and when we removed the packing holding her nose into the right shape, we found that from the top of her lip all the way through the floor of her nose, all she has is an open hole. Her mama is devastated, and Kossiwa will need more surgery in the future. For now, they have to go home with a baby still broken.

Ask for Therese. She is recovering from VVF surgery, a wound infection and a skin graft. She's doing well, but after what happened with Christine, we're wary, not willing to get excited too soon in case infections rears its ugly head again.

Ask for Beatrice. She also had VVF surgery, and her wound has required the most specialized care we have available. When the ship leaves, so will our technology. She will be going to stay at a local clinic where her wound will be cared for, but we don't know what will happen with it once we leave.

Ask for Josua. He's also battling a stubborn wound, his left over after a hernia operation. He'll be roommates with Beatrice and Therese at the clinic, and we're praying that his infection clears up so that his skin can heal.

Ask for Wasti and his mama. She's still learning to feed him, and the envelope on my desk marked Cow Collection is starting to fill. Their future looks bright, full of the promise of home.

Ask for all these and all the others, almost seven thousand, who came up the gangway this year for surgery. Ask that the Light would shine in their darkness, that Truth would win over lies and that Hope would take the place of despair.

Ask all this.

I should be asleep right now, not writing. I have to get up in a few hours, and the baby I'm going to be caring for is so sick. So very sick.

Oh Hubie.

I don't know if it'll ever get easier. Sitting with a family, explaining that the hope I told them to cling to is fading fast. Watching that single, silent tear track down a mama's cheek to hit the floor with a tiny splash. Pulling back blankets to let a papa touch his baby's foot before he rushes out into the evening, unwilling to sit vigil with his wife, his hard eyes suspiciously red.

It's so hard to pray for God's will to be done when I'm getting more and more convinced that His will isn't what I want.

So when I say Pray for Hubert, I mean so much more than that. I mean pray for his mama, because now, maybe so close to the end, she finally cares, and if he does go back to Jesus, it's going to hurt her. I mean pray for the doctors. We don't have a PICU doctor on the ship, so we've been pulling from the jumbled expertise of everyone around, doing the best we can. I mean pray for the nurses. We've been letting Hubie get a firm hold on our hearts for the past month, and now he's so sick, and we don't know what to do. It's so hard to look at a baby who was getting better, getting fat and happy, and see him pinned to the bed by tubes and wires, his little body shaking with each breath of the ventilator.

I keep praying for God to fill me back up, with love and strength and wisdom, so that I can go back into that room tomorrow and pour myself out again.

I'm starting to think I might be a little too broken to hold all that right now.

Today was horrible in so many ways. I'm drained, body and soul, and I just want to curl up under my covers and forget it ever happened.

Hubert took a turn for the worse this morning. He's now on a ventilator and still struggling to maintain the oxygenation in his blood. The pneumonia in his lungs is much worse, and we're not so sure there's a light at the end of the tunnel anymore.

Please keep praying. I know that's all I've been saying the last few days; pray, pray pray. But we're doing everything we can from the medical side of things, and so there's nothing else to be done.

There was so much more that happened, with another little baby who went back to Jesus, but I just can't talk about it right now because the weight of her body in my arms is still to fresh. I can still smell her on my skin and it's not fair that she was so small and so sick and that she never had a chance.

I'm going to go eat dinner and then I'll go check on Hubert and we'll all keep praying, right?

Tonight at community meeting, we sang a song that nearly had me in tears.

You're the God of this City
You're the King of these people
You're the Lord of this nation
You are

You're the Light in this darkness
You're the Hope to the hopeless
You're the Peace to the restless
You are

There is no one like our God
There is no one like our God

It was when we got to the next part that my heart climbed up into my throat and my eyes misted over.

For greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done in this City
Greater thing have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done in this City

Because there's a little baby lying in the ICU tonight who needs something great to happen in his life. He's not as sick as some we've had in there; he's still breathing on his own, but it's hard work for him and none of us is sure that we can see the light at the end of his tunnel quite yet. His name is Hubert. When his mama is feeling especially loving, she calls him Hubie, but that doesn't happen terribly often.

You see, little Hubie was born with a cleft lip and palate; he's had the surgery to repair his lip, but the roof of his mouth is still a gaping hole. When he was admitted, Hubie weighed less than eight pounds. He's nine months old.

Hubert's mama and four-year old sister sport matching scars on their cheeks, markings inflicted in infancy as part of the Voodoo religion. Hubert's cheeks are smooth and unblemished. When pressed, his mama revealed that she and her husband haven't had his face cut yet because they're not sure they want to claim him. And he lies in the bed, gasping and coughing as his mama sits by his side, her face an inscrutable mask.

I can't fathom it. I can't wrap my head around a system that tells you that your baby is cursed because of a birth defect. I can't come to terms with the fact that his mama cared so little about his life that he was probably just weeks away from starving to death when he came back to us. I just can't understand how you could look into the eyes of your tiny child and actually wrestle with whether or not you were going to take ownership over his life.

And now Hubie's sick. He's picked up a pneumonia, probably a virus that was going around the wards that attacked his already weak body, and he's covered in rashes, burning with fevers and gasping for breath.

But I firmly believe that greater things are still to be done here. We sang that song and I spoke the name of Jesus, because I know that in His name, there is no darkness that has power here, no evil that can cover Hubie's life.

Pray with us, will you? Pray that the darkness would be overcome, that Hubert's life would be saved and that he would be a testament to God's grace for his parents.

Pray for Hubert.

There's a little girl across the world who has stolen so many hearts. Her name is Kate, and she's very, very sick. I first heard about her story when my best friend, Audrey, told me that she had written a song for little Kate.

It hurts to know that, no matter where we live, pain is just around the corner. I've started thinking that it's only here, in the middle of this poverty and desperation, that real pain can be found. Kate's parents beg to differ.

Please pray.

This is Abraham. He gives me more smooches than I've ever dreamed of.

His wrist was bitten by a snake a while ago and healed in a frozen mass of scar tissue. We had him with us at the beginning of the outreach; he was one of my balloon party friends. And now he's back, because he has infected ulcers on that arm that just wouldn't heal.

He endures two dressing changes every day. Ten minutes of his arm being soaked in vinegar while he winces and yelps and then comes back to the ward proclaiming cheerfully, They finish changing bandage. My hand bettah nah. I wan' stickah. I wan' go outside. I love you very much, Good Charge Nurse.

He never stops loving.


The plastic surgeon will be here for two more weeks. We have fourteen days to get rid of his infection (an infection that has lived on his arm for months) or else the doctor won't be able to do the surgery to release his wrist back into a normal position.

And whether or not he ever gets that surgery, we'll keep changing his bandages, and he'll keep slipping his twisted hand into mine as he throws his good arm around my head to pull my face close for yet another kiss.

And we'll both keep loving.

I'm starting to wonder how anyone can live their lives without getting ridiculously excited by the fact that God is in control.

Today was my day off this week, so I decided with a group of friends to head into Monrovia for lunch. As we passed through town on the way home, my friend Tim and I jumped out of the car on Broad Street, bent on trying to find Cathi and Matthew. I knew what hotel they were at, but we weren't quite sure where that was; we set off on our adventure through streets teeming with people and taxis.

After a short trek up the hill led us to the abandoned Hotel Ducor and a dead end, we realized that we were probably lost. But Liberia is a friendly place, so if you're ever at Hotel Ducor, ask for Joe. He's the commander up there, and he'll be happy to show you around. Or, if you're stuck in our boat (the boat of the directionally challenged), he'll be happy to recruit a nearby friend who knows which winding path to take down the other side of the hill, between concrete and tin houses and over piles of garbage until you're safely deposited on the right road.

We made it to the hotel and called Cathi's room. She came downstairs to meet us in the lobby, Matthew asleep in his little quilt, arms folded contentedly across his small chest. She explained that she hadn't come back to the ship yesterday (as was planned, for a checkup with our doctors) because she'd gotten a major electric shock as she first moved into her room. She touched the corner of the blanket Matthew was wrapped in, a blanket quilted by loving hands somewhere else in the world, donated to Mercy Ships and given to him when he came in out of the rain on Tuesday. The blanket you gave him saved his life. I got shocked, but I wasn't touching his skin. I think it's what saved him.

We discussed plans as Matthew gurgled and coughed and smiled in his sleep. Because they were already in the process of adopting, she has all the paperwork she needs to get him home except for a visa. This could take a while, so we exchanged numbers and I'll speak to Dr. Gary about repairing his cleft lip if they're still in Liberia when he's old enough for the surgery. Tim stood next to me, a wide grin across his face as we chatted, reaching out occasionally to touch Matthew's silky hair. It was easy to forget that I met these people just days ago.

And here's where God showed up yet again. It was five thirty, rush hour in Monrovia, and we were getting ready to hand Matthew back and try to catch a taxi home to the ship. No easy task on a good day downtown, finding a car during the busiest time of the day is an endeavor that can have you waiting hours. I looked out the glass doors into the courtyard of the hotel to see a tiny blond girl playing with a puppy. She looks familiar, I thought to myself, a split second before realizing that she was accompanied by her mother, Katharina, and that they were standing next to their Mercy Ships car.

In any other situation, I might have been tempted to call it a coincidence. You happened to be at this hotel, and they happened to need a bathroom and you got a free ride home. So what? But when you factor in the baby with my brother's name in my arms, his weary mother sitting on the couch and a big white ship who just might be able to help after all docked across the harbor, things just don't add up properly.

We sat in the back of the car, bouncing home over the rutted roads. Tim caught my eye, and his grin spread even wider as we repeated one of our favourite Liberian refrains to each other.

God is good?
All the time.
All the time?
Good is good.