brokenness

This place is such an odd kaleidescope of conflicting emotions. Twist the glass one way and your sides hurt from laughing. Turn to face the light and your heart is shattered. Today was a day of both.

Dawayne is eight. He's in third grade. (Do the math and you'll realize that he's in the right year for his age. It's the first time I've seen it since coming here.) He's a bright kid, and I'm not just talking about the lightness of his skin; he read me the story of Jonah this morning, only stumbling over words like Ninevah and repentance. He's really not too sick; as I was leaving work he was being called to the operating room to have his hernia repaired.

This morning, Dawayne provided me with two of the funnier moments I can remember. I went over to him, needles in hand, and explained to him that I needed to juke him small for an IV. That I would make sure I got it on the first try. And that, if he held still, I would give him not just one, but seven whole stickers. His eyes lit up and he stuck out his hand, brimming with confidence. His bravado failed him, however, as I approached his skin with the needle. His eyes rolled heavenwards in supplication as he screamed out in utter seriousness, JESUS, take me now! I had to stop and compose myself before starting that IV.

A little while later, the mamas in his corner called me over. They prophesied over me that, once I get back to the States, the first thing I will do is born a baby. While my ovaries don't mind the thought of that, I explained that I had to get a husband first. One mama laughingly offered her three-year old son. I told her he was too small and that I needed a big man. At which point little Dawayne rolled over, looked up at me, and with raised eyebrows and a sassy little head tilt delivered a perfect impression of Joey Tribiani. How you doin'? I almost peed myself.

And the kaleidescope shifts and Eddie fills my view and laughter is the last thing on my mind.

Eddie is four months old. From the neck down, he's like any other baby. He's the firstborn in his family, a little porker with chubby thighs and a miniature pot belly. Eddie is cherished. When he was born in the middle of the rainy season, his mama made sure to always cover him with a mosquito net when he slept, to make sure he didn't get malaria. About two months ago, an aunty was doing something by candlelight as the baby slept, secure under his net. She placed the candle on the ground, and in just a few seconds, little Eddie's life went up in flames. The net caught fire around him, and his face and head were horribly burned.

I hold Eddie and rock him and kiss the angry pink skin on his cheeks. I tell him he's beautiful. To anyone other than us, though, he's hideous. He doesn't look like a baby anymore. His eyes can barely open and close. His lips are a static mass of scar tissue. His nose is gone, leaving only two small holes in the centre of his face. The top of his head is an open sore. Everything else about him is the way it should be. His skin is creamy brown, his fingers delicate and perfect. It's just his face, the first thing everyone will see for the rest of his life. It's just his face that's been destroyed.

His mama loves him. She holds him and rocks him and dresses him in little outfits that we've scrounged from the bottom of donation boxes. She can't bear to be there when we change his bandage, so we take him to another room. He wails as we soak the infected sores on his head with vinegar, shaking from side to side, trying to make it stop. And then he quiets, submits, gives up, and that's maybe worse than all his screams.

I'm afraid for little Eddie. I'm afraid of what his life is going to be. He will never know what it means to be normal. He will live forever with people staring at him. People hating him. People ignoring him or making fun of him or calling him ugly. We sit here and we tell him he's beautiful (and he is, really; you just have to ignore the obvious), but he's not going to hear that very often when he leaves here.

Which made it all the more poignant when I heard his mama singing. I looked over to their bed in the corner to see her lying down, Eddie propped up on her stomach. From behind, all I could see was the plumpness of his diapered bottom, encased in a clean, white onesie, and the fresh whiteness of the bandage around his head. She bounced him up and down as she sang quietly.

I am on the Lord's side.
I will never give up.
I am an overcomer,
For the Lord God is on my side.

I pray that Eddie would be an overcomer. That he would somehow have the chance to grow up and go to school to learn to read like Dawayne. That he would be surrounded by people who can see past the scars.

That he would know love.

As if I needed another reason to love my family, my cousin, Becki, recently created this.

It breaks my heart in places I never even knew about, ripping holes in parts I thought were going to be forever sturdy. And it's the reason that, come December, I might not make it home entirely whole.

I've been hesitant to write about this. Truth be told, I've spent the last four months or so hiding it all away, and so the prospect of spilling my proverbial guts on these pages is a little overwhelming. However. I find that I no longer want to keep this to myself.

It started a few months after that needlestick. I was always tired, and every time I worked night shift I would spend the next couple days recovering from violent illness. I caught every cold going around, and I felt like an absolute weakling. It all seemed easy to explain, though, since I live on a ship and breathe the same air as four hundred other people.

It was around the time that Baby Greg first came to us that I signed up to be a blood donor and gave a sample to the lab for routine testing. I was sitting by Greg's bedside in the ICU, willing him to breathe, when the crew nurse poked her head around the door and asked me to come to the clinic. I figured my hemoglobin was too low or my electrolytes were out of whack from my latest round if sickness. I just wasn't expecting Dr. Craig to say what he did.

You have Hepatitis B.

My world quietly crumpled and I sat, numb, while he drew more blood to repeat the test and explained to me that the man whose blood I had injected into my finger must have been very recently infected. That there was only a small chance of the virus going chronic. That I would probably recover.

And the whole time, all I could see in front of me were the yellow eyes and swollen bellies of patients I've cared for with liver disease. I found my way back to the ICU, back to my critically ill baby, forcing myself to concentrate. Willing myself to believe that it was going to be okay.


But it's hard to believe that things are going to be okay when you're a couple months away from your twenty-fifth birthday, living on a ship off the coast of West Africa, and infected with a potentially deadly virus. I'll admit it now; I was angry. Back when I was preparing to come to Liberia, people constantly told me to be careful. It's so scary over there! I can't believe you're doing something so dangerous! Anything could happen! I smiled and shot back the same glib answer every time. If God wants me there, He'll protect me.

But He hadn't. I'd somehow slipped out from under the shelter of His hands and into the big, bad world where things like incurable diseases lurked. I couldn't figure out why He would let it happen.

I spent the next three months waking up in cold sweats, wondering how I'd be able to afford a liver transplant. (I'm not sure Talent Trust covers that sort of thing. They do, however, make provision for repatriation of mortal remains. Which I was also thinking I might have to use, in a worst-case fulminant-hepatitis sort of scenario.) I dodged questions as to why I was drinking soda instead of Club beer with my dinners when we went out on a Friday night. I held on to my little secret, feeling dirty and diseased, and I tried to pretend that everything was all right.

Which, in true I-worried-about-this-for-nothing style, it is.

I'm now, as of a couple weeks ago, the proud posessor of another little pink slip of paper that bears my latest test results: negative. Just like over ninety percent of everyone who gets infected. (Those odds, interestingly enough, don't seem so great at three in the morning when your cabin is dark and your mind won't stop racing.)

I still don't know why it happened. I'm still a little bitter, if I'm being totally honest. Because I can't help thinking He failed me.

But, oh, His voice speaks into the silence of my pain. I know every hair, He reminds me. I knit your body together as you grew in the secret places. Every day and every moment of your life, I planned it all. Have you ever known me to make a mistake?

No. No. A thousand times no.

Funny how I was just commenting on my cathartic need to write. Because today will take some sorting.

I've been here almost seven months now and I'm one of the more experienced nurses around. Scary, I know. So they've asked me to start doing some charge shifts. It was inevitable but, truth be told, I'm not jumping out of my skin with excitement. I'm much more content pottering through a shift with my four or twelve patients and not really worrying about anything else. God, however, knows what's best for me, so off to charge-land I shall go. Today was my second day of orientation, and I was starting to get a feel for things. At which point, The Call came.

Hi. This is Reception. There's a patient out on the dock.

I asked my boss yesterday what I should do if I ever got The Call while in charge. She made it sound so easy. If they're not someone we did surgery on, tell them no. Send them away. Be firm. Be kind. Tell them no.

And when we went outside there was a white woman holding the smallest brown baby and it was raining and all her suitcases were huddled around her like sentries and he sounded like Baby Greg when he breathed. I took him in my arms, stood there on the dock and my prayer was a silent scream. God, no. I can't do this again. I can't watch another one die.

We found shelter at the top of the gangway and discussed what to do. The little one in my arms gasped and coughed, his lip split in two angry gashes, his palate a gapaing hole and his hair soft in tiny ringlets against my arm. We couldn't admit him; we don't even have enough beds for our own patients right now. So we brought them inside to wait until we could find someone willing to drive them to the MSF pediatric hospital where he could be seen by a pediatric doctor.

I stood in the cafe, my body swaying in a rhythm I didn't know as the small one's cries quieted and he fell asleep. The woman sitting in the chair in front of me, eyes tired, shared her story with me.

She wasn't planning on any of this. She was just a mother from Minnesota, a mother with one child alive and two taken from her in a car accident a few years ago. She was just a nurse, an ER nurse who wanted to come and serve God for a few weeks in Liberia. She had been working up country at a bush hospital when she heard of this little one. He had been abandoned by his mother, convinced that her own pregnancy had been stolen from her and this evil spirit baby with the hideous face replaced in her womb. Of course she didn't want him. (At which point the little one grunted and settled closer into my arms, one tiny hand curled up against a mocha cheek.) Cathi, the woman sitting in front of me, explained that they were just feeding him water, waiting for him to die.

No, she said. He needs milk. I will give him milk. There was no milk at the hospital, and if she wanted him to have it, she would have to take him home. So she did. She got back to the house where she was living, and her understandably surprised roommates asked her the baby's name. She pointed to the two men who had seen her home safely; Matthew Steven. 'Left with adoptive mother' is what the note in his chart read, and she figured Why not make that truth?

You see, Cathi has a room in her home in Minnesota all ready for a baby. She and her husband have been working for years to adpot a baby to fill that room; she just wasn't planning on finding him in the Liberian bush, clinging to his little life with dogged persistence. God, however, seems to have had other plans, because all the paperwork for the adoption was finalized within two weeks. I'm not going to lose this one, she told me, her expression unreadable, somewhere between despair and determination.

We drove through the market traffic to the MSF hospital, descending from the car into a sea of babies and mamas and little children swathed in thick bandages, the edges of their burns showing angry red where the gauze had slipped. We opened the door to the ER to see skeletal children being fed through tubes, babies lying listlessly, two or three on each low cot, and a group of doctors and nurses quietly trying to save the life of a newborn on a table in the middle of the room. No, this isn't urgent. We'll wait outside.

Back out into the damp heat to smile and pull faces at the little kids surrounding me, trying to ignore the thoughts in my head. These are the kids who will need Mercy Ships later on, when their burns have healed badly and their little fingers and elbows and necks are locked in scars. These are the babies who need to be fed every few hours, but there might not be enough milk here either. These are the ones you can't help. You aren't doing enough.

Matthew was seen by the ICU doctor. He didn't have pneumonia and wasn't sick enough to be admitted. We brought them back to the ship and another crew member drove them to a local hotel where Cathi is going to continue her vigil until he's well enough to fly home. And I went back to work. Played with the kids on our wards. Put in some IVs, answered some questions, fought back tears.


How is it okay? How can I go to sleep in my room tonight knowing that Cathi is in town somewhere, fighting for little Matthew's life? I'm sitting here and I can't erase the images from my head. All those kids. Waves of suffering and humanity and hope and we drove up in our white Landrover and they surrounded me and then we drove away and some of them looked bewildered. Because we're supposed to help. We live on the white ship and we have white skin and we're supposed to be able to help.

Sometimes it feels like we're making some kind of difference; our wards are full right now. Kids are bouncing off the ceilings and the VVF list reads like an awards ceremony. Dry. Dry. Dry. But it's not enough. It will never be enough. This world we live in is so hurt and broken and I have no idea where to start in putting it back together.

I'm glad I'm not the one in charge of that.

It's hard to know what to say when faced with the death of a baby. What can I possibly offer to a mother who has just lost her heart? What words can I say that will blunt the searing pain? And what comfort can I give when that mama is faced with the sight of her son's bed, occupied by another small, brown baby, one who is sitting up and smiling at the world around him?

Marion came to visit me today. She's something of a celebrity around here, and it took me almost fifteen minutes just to get her down the stairs to the hospital as almost everyone we passed stopped to say hello. As we walked down the hall towards B Ward, she was all smiles, laughing and greeting her friends, nurses, translators and disciplers. It was only when we were inside amidst the bustle of a full ward that the flood of memory overwhelmed her. I stood there with my arm around her tiny shoulders as tears coursed silently down her cheeks. She turned twenty-one yesterday. She's a child herself, and yet she stood there, mute and small, mourning the loss of her third baby.

We turned away and went upstairs to eat lunch. We sat at a table by the window as she pushed the rice around her plate and told us about a dream she'd had. In it, she was out walking. Or working. She wasn't quite sure. People came up to her one after another and told her what a fine baby she had. Asked her how he was. She repeated to them over and over that she didn't have a baby. That he had died.

No, they said, he's right there. He's right there on your back. That was a good dream, we agreed.


Bendu, the sassy-pants who was burned after she had a seizure and knocked over her kerosene lamp, was back for a dressing change in our outpatient clinic. She and Marion became close while Baby Greg was still with us, so when Bendu's appointment was finished I signed her back in as my visitor too. We passed the rest of the afternoon like any silly twenty-something year old friends. We wandered around the ship, ate grilled cheese at the cafe, tried to call friends in Canada and hung out in my room for a while, laughing and filming video messages on my camera.

Weeks ago, as we stood by Baby Greg's bedside, watching him fight to breathe, Bendu told me that she was very sad. I asked her why, and she went on to tell me that she was going to be alone for the rest of her life. She didn't meet my eyes as she gently touched the warped, pink skin of her cheek and forehead. Quiet tears filled her eyes and as she explained that no man would want to marry her, not given the way she looks. So I will be alone. That is what makes me very sad.

Marion is a woman living under the shadow of curse. The longer I spend here in West Africa, the more aware I become of the reality of spiritual warfare. It's easy to be in my comfortable room and scoff at the idea that words could have such an effect on someone's life. But then I leave this room and go out and sit with Marion in her house and I am utterly convinced that this battle is so much bigger and so much more intangible than I could have imagined.

Given all this, I was struck today at how normal the day was. I think I expect women who have lost babies and been terribly disfigured by burns to be somehow different. More sedate, more aware, in a way, of the cloud surrounding them. But apart from the small moments when they retreat into themselves, lost in worlds of pain I can only guess at, Marion and Bendu are you and I and any woman ever. They're maybe more broken, a little more shattered, but underneath the scars and shining through the tears, I can so clearly see their love.

I want to love like this.

I've never been much one for postural prayer. I don't always bow my head when I talk to my God, and I sure as heck don't find myself on my knees very often. Today was different; I spent yet another twelve hours at Baby Greg's side.

He didn't have a very good day. Once lunchtime had come and gone, Greg decided that he hated everything about life and would just cry for the rest of the afternoon. This meant CPAP that didn't work properly and a heartrate that had me wondering just how much longer he could keep it up. Beds in our wards are low to the ground, and I've never really been short, so by about one o'clock, my back was screaming and my legs were ready to give out. And still Baby Greg cried and thrashed and fought.

So I knelt next to his bed, leaned over his little body and started to pray. I patted his chest, the span of my hand measuring exactly space between his skinny shoulders, and I cried out to God for peace. Peace for Baby Greg so that he could just find sleep. Peace for his mama, facing the loss of yet another child. Peace for us nurses, shattered yet again by a baby who might not make it. In the midst of it all, Greg managed to work his arms free from the blanket swaddling him. As I knelt there, my eyes shut tight, I felt two feathery hands curl around my fingers. I looked down into the wide open eyes of every baby I have ever cared for, and he was pleading with me, like they all do, to just make it stop.

This is not what I thought I was getting myself into when I came here. Truth be told, I was maybe ready for a small break from the intensity of the PICU. Some time away from telling parents horrible news about their children. Hope and healing. Instead here I am, stuck in yet another situation where hope seems the very thing we can't grasp.

We took Marion, Greg's mama, into another room to talk with her about Greg's condition. We sat with her and explained that it's not her fault and it's not our fault and it's not anyone's fault. But things aren't good. And she sat with that stone face that so many mamas wear to mask the hurt. And I felt my life repeating, a record skipping over and over, and I wanted to scream.

And then something happened that I've never experienced before in a family meeting. One of our disciplers, a woman named Lucy, got down on her knees in front of Marion's chair. She took Marion's hands in her own and began to sing quietly.

Able.
Able.
I know He is able.
I know my God is able,
to carry me through.

We joined in, voices quavering and small, and Lucy prayed as tears slid down our cheeks. She prayed strong prayers to a God she was fully convinced was just waiting to work miracles. And then it was finished and we went back to the ward and Marion took Greg in her arms and nothing had changed and I'm left wondering where my miracle is.

Because I know God is listening. I spent hours today at that bedside, my hands covering Greg's body, like so many mamas, thinking somehow my hands could be enough to protect this little one who isn't even my own. I knelt there and prayed over and over the words from a song I once sang in a candlelit church in Germany. Oh Lord, hear my prayer. Oh Lord, hear my prayer. When I cry, answer me. Oh Lord, hear my prayer. Oh Lord, hear my prayer. Come and listen to me. And I knew He was listening. I knew His heart was breaking along with mine. And I know that He can do the miracle we're all asking for.



I'm just trying to come to terms with what it will mean if He doesn't.

Things have been amazing with my job recently. I've been privileged to care for some of the most beautiful patients, and I've been feeling so content and satisfied and just plain fulfilled in my work here. I've been writing story after story about joy and miracles and successes. It seems like all sunshine and roses, and I don't want to be painting a false picture.

So I have to be honest. The truth is, I'm tired and I'm heartsick and right now, I just want to go home. I saw a photo last night of my brother and sister and cousin and friend sitting around my kitchen table drinking tea, and I dissolved into tears. I called home this morning to talk to my mother and was given the next piece of horrible news. Every. single. time. that I call home, it's something else, and it hurts. It hurts so much.

It's not like I can sit down with my mum and cry and just hash things out. It's not like I can go out to breakfast with daddy and hear the words of wisdom that he always gives to me in that chrome-lined diner. I can't jump into sister's hammock while she perches on her stool and calms my restless fears. I'm halfway across the world, and that world is getting bigger every day as my family and all the people I love recede into the dark distance.

I've gotten into the habit recently of writing down verses that jump out at me while I'm reading my Bible. Just now, I needed to calm my heart before going to work, so I pulled out my book and starting reading through the pages.

And God is able to make all grace abound to you. (2 Corinthians 9:8)

Great peace have they who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble. (Psalm 119:165)

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are 'yes' in Christ. As so through him, the 'amen' is spoken to us by the glory of God. (2 Corinthians 1:20)

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? (Isaiah 40:12)

He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food. (Job 36:16)

Save me, for I am yours. (Psalm 119:94)

The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. (Exodus 14:14)

There is nothing to add.

When faced with the immanent death of her child years ago, my aunt asked my brother's father-in-law in despair Is there any good news? He looked at her and said quietly Yes. God is on the throne.

So I cling to that truth. As I search for solid ground, I find some kind of shaky solace in the fact that there is a God who knows more than I do. I'm scared to move, that much is true. I'm scared that this little patch of firm ground will dissolve underneath me if I take a wrong step.

I might just not call home anymore.

Rain is falling and I am far from home.

It's been over a hundred days since I've seen my family. It will be hundreds more before I see them again. A hundred days of learning and laughing and failing and crying and growing. I am surrounded by people who, four months ago, I had never dreamed of meeting, people I never knew existed. I call them friends, but now, when my world has been shaken and my footing is less than steady, I don't know who to turn to.

Beloved, I hear Him say, all this water cannot quench love. Don't you realize? My love is stronger than death, less yielding than the grave.

I have been placed, a seal over His heart, and I will rest there, in the hollow of His hands.



(Outside, the rain has stopped, and the sun is starting to shine again.)

I wasn't sure if I wanted to post this. I don't want this blog to devolve into a series of sob stories, each more heart-wrenching than the last. I want to be able to share the joy that this place brings me. The pure, unadulterated happiness I feel when I get to be the first one to show a mother the results of a surgery that has given her baby a chance at a normal life. The laughter and silliness that pervades the wards during downtimes when we sit on the floor and color or build lego castles or make balloon animals. The smiles on the faces of patients who come back to visit after they've gone home from successful surgeries.

Instead I have to tell you the story of Fatima, because she's the only thing in my mind right now.

I don't know exactly what kind of cancer is growing in her small body, jutting fiercely out from the place where her right eye should be. All I know is that it's going to kill her, and there's nothing we can do about it.

I sat next to Fatima's mother as we told her the results of the CT scan. Her body stiffened as Dr. Mark began to speak and then, as though her spine had been broken along with her heart, she crumpled. I went to get tissues, put my hand into the cupboard and came out with the a box of the same brand we used back in the PICU at home. And everything was suddenly the same as every other experience I've ever had with this sort of thing.

Mark and I sat there, helpless, tears in our eyes as she wept. She gathered Fatima into her arms, quietly keening the same cry that every mother makes when she's told that her baby is going to die. I sat next to her, mute, as she curved her body around her bewildered child, as though her own life could be an acceptable substitute. As though she could protect her.

Liberians make a hand gesture unique to this culture. They clap and then pull their hands open, usually ending with the palms facing upwards. It can mean anything. I'm tired. I'm hungry. I think what just happened is hilarious.

Or, apparently, My heart is broken. Because when Fatima's mother had gotten over the first bone-shaking sobs, she sat up and did just that. Clapped quietly and then just let her hands fall apart, defeat etched deep into her eyes, tears falling onto the bandage wrapped around her daughter's head.

And then my shift was over, and I left the ward to try and muddle through the rest of the afternoon with the sound of that quiet cry ringing in my ears.

And yet.

Don't be afraid. I have saved you. I have called you by your name, and you are (and always will be) mine. When you feel like you're drowning, I'm next to you in the deep waters. When you walk through the fire, I'm next to you in the pain, and you will not be overcome. Because I love you. And I would trade all of creation just to make you mine. (Isaiah 43)

This child, like all the others I have ever cared for, is God's. Created, known, and loved by Him. I am not called to save every life. I am called simply (if I can presume to call such a task simple) to be God's arms holding a grieving mother. God's hands winding fresh bandages around angry wounds. God's heart breaking when His children are in pain.

I think this is what it means when Jesus says Thy kingdom come.

(On earth as it is in heaven.)

Today started out like any other. I got report, checked on my kids, helped put in an IV. Since all the beds on the ward are right next to each other, it made sense for me to help our charge nurse, Red, when she went to draw labs from a patient next to one of mine. We got the blood and I went to fill the lab tubes. It's something I've done hundreds of times before.

I could blame it on second-day jitters. I could say the boat rocked, or that another patient jostled the bed I was sitting on. Unfortunately, the truth is that I watched as the world slowed and, completely unprovoked, I stuck the bloody needle directly into my finger. I've never done that before. To have it happen for the first time on a boat in Liberia while drawing blood to test for HIV was possibly the worst case scenario.

Sitting in the crew physician's office, I felt like a small child. One look from the nurse, and I burst into tears, regaining composure only long enough to lose it again when Dr. Wolfgang asked me if I was scared. Was he crazy? Of course I was scared. I was facing the possibility (however minute it may have been) that I had just contracted an incurable disease. I was shattered.

"I think the first thing we should do is pray," the doctor said. Now, I can be a bit of a skeptic when it comes to the emotional manifestations of faith (ask me sometime about the moonwalking pastor from church last weekend), so I was a little surprised at what happened. As Dr. Wolfgang prayed, I felt God's very real presence. Peace surrounded me as the Healer spoke comfort to my ragged little soul. There's no other way to describe it. I stopped that awkward hiccuping that comes after a hard cry (you know what I'm talking about), and the paralyzing weight was lifted from my chest. I went back to the ward, laughed at my naked two-and-a-half year old patient, and wasn't the least bit shocked when the man's test results came back negative.

I've said it before- I'm a forgetful child. All too often it's far too easy for me to forget how truly dependent I am. I start to rely on my own skill and knowledge; God fades into the background when I'm sure I can handle things. Today rocked that confidence to its core. But as I came to the end of myself, it was pure joy to find that God had only just begun.

I promised to wait until I had photos to share about screening with you, but I just finished looking through a friend's blog entry, and I have to write.

I had been nervous about yesterday, afraid that I would see things that would be too much for me to bear. Instead, I spent ten hours amidst a delicious cacophony of crayons and balloon animals. Children are children; some are just more broken than others.

... Cynthia, dressed to the nines in a miniature African dress, her twisted face bent low over her paper long after the others had begun to look up and share their wide, perfect smiles.

... The weight of Obadiah's twisted body, pressed against my heart like a prayer, his sweaty head tucked firmly under my chin as he struggled to hold his crayon.

... Abraham. Sweet, small Abraham. Too afraid to leave the line and play with the other kids. His features locked in a hardened mask with eyes that wept constant tears because he could no longer even blink. His scars extended over his head, down his arms and back. His left hand was a ball of scar tissue, his right twisted and small.

Kimberly wrote in her blog:

He didn't cry or complain. He was quite content playing with his blue balloon that one of the staff had given him ... In addition to the balloon, a blue shiny star was firmly attached to the tip of his nose. This was really the only point on his face that still looked somewhat normal.

When I saw those words this morning, I lost it for the first time. Because I know where that star came from. I had gone over to him, armed with a balloon and some stickers, absolutely no idea how I could connect with a child who couldn't move his mouth to smile. As I sat on the ground next to him, offering my own smile in place of his, I felt a small body lean against my back. I turned to look into the perfect eyes of Eric, a little guy I'd been playing with before seeing Abraham. Eric wasn't a patient; he was waiting for his mother to go through the line, and his face was, by this time, covered in stickers. It was obvious that Eric was somewhat disconcerted by the distorted face in front of him. He stared unashamedly at Abraham before turning back to me. He touched his nose, adorned with a purple heart. Then mine, where I had a gold star, placed there by some other eager child. He pointed to Abraham and then chose a blue star for Abraham's nose. So we could all be the same.


Abraham doesn't have an appointment yet, but he will be seen by the plastic surgeons once they arrive. As I sit by the window and the ship buzzes with anticipation while we wait for Her Excellency President Sirleaf to arrive for her visit this afternoon, I'm acutely aware of where my own heart is. Not in politics or glamour or high-profile positions. My heart is in the dirt and in the streets and in the maimed hands of a boy named Abraham.

I can't wait to take care of him when he comes to the ship.

if: God is Love
and: God is in Us
then: Love is in Us

(it's as simple as that)

It's one in the morning. I'm sitting on the couch in Audrey's new house in Nashville. I leave for Jersey in the morning, and I shouldn't still be awake. I tried to close my eyes and drift away but sleep eluded me. I turned on my ipod and found it in the middle of a song I recently heard for the first time. I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever heard God speak to me as clearly as I do when I hear these words sung:

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Are You done forgiving?
Or can You look past my pretending, Lord?
I'm so tired of defending what I've become.
(What have I become?)

I hear You say,
"My love is over, it's underneath.
It's inside, it's in between.
The times you doubt me,
When you can't feel.
The times that you question: is this for real?
The times that you're broken, the times that you mend.
The times you hate me and the times that you bend.

My love is over, it's underneath.
It's inside, it's in between.
These times you're healing, and when your heart breaks;
The times that you feel like you've fallen from grace.
The times you're hurting,
The times that you heal,
The times you go hungry and attempted to steal.

In times of confusion and chaos and pain,
I'm there in your sorrow, under the weight of your shame;
I'm there through your heartache,
I'm there through the storm.
My love, I will keep you by my power alone-
I don't care where you've fallen
Or where you have been.
I'll never forsake you.
My love never ends.
It never ends."

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I laid here, curled up in the dark, as these words drove deep into my heart. I tasted salt in the corner of my mouth, and I realized all over again how unworthy I am of God's heart. I have been untrue and unfaithful and unfit. I have run from him every time I've been given the chance. And He has pursued me to the ends of my soul and back. He has wooed me with sweet promises and sure love. Despite the fact that He does not need me, He has made it his work enter into relationship with me.

I am so in love.