Thin Places

I’m a traveler, from a family of travelers. Our tribe has collectively laid tracks all over the world. My mom and grandmother have had a number of adventures together and I know they would both say one of their favorite places in the world is a scenic, misty island in Scotland called Iona. According to Celtic tradition, Iona is one of the transcendent locations on earth that they refer to as “Thin Places.” It is believed that in these locations the veil between heaven and earth is thinner than elsewhere and one can almost touch the divine there.

Port-au-Prince is pretty dusty and smoggy, far from misty. And while there are fantastic views to be had of beach and mountains, my everyday here is surrounded on all sides by concrete walls. Yet, I understand what the Celts mean by Thin Places, because I feel it here, that palpable spirituality, the lines between earthly and eternal blurring. Maybe it’s because of the all kids we send heavenward on an almost-daily basis and the others who tip-toe up to the very edge and find their way back again, they are bringing heaven in closer. Maybe it’s because the hardest things have a way of dissolving the insignificant parts of life away, bringing soul to surface.  

It seems that you can’t live in the thin places without it having its effect on you, for the veils we hide ourselves under become thin as well. It cuts you open and lays you bare in a most revealing and uncomfortable way. You meet head on every dirty and broken detail of your soul. And this is coming from a person whose every emotion is typically written in bold font across my overly expressive face.

 The force of my emotions the last few weeks has been staggering: joy, pain, frustration. It is exhausting to constantly feel so much, so deeply, and there’s no way around it. You simply can’t be detached and neutral about preserving the lives of children. One evening, totally spent from working and feeling, I thought about what my life would be like if I did something else. Something that didn’t seem like constantly wrestling with Death for possession of these kids. If I just got a job somewhere, where no one’s life ever depended on anything I did and I simply didn’t have to feel so much. And in that pondering I was reminded of just how incredibly blessed I am to be here in this exhausting, terrifying thin place, to serve and feel to my utter limits every day. Because I’m doing something that truly matters, not just now and in this place, but matters eternally.

I’m a dancer and I know how flexibility works. When you stretch to the limit over and over you find that you can go a bit farther each time, your capacity to stretch expands. Every day that I’m poured out to the fullest extent I think the Lord is expanding my capacity to love and serve a little each time. Just maybe my heart is being made larger by all this stretching, more space for the Spirit to fill, a little closer to the heart of God.

A lot of times I don’t like the things that this thin place reveals about me. I’m discovering just how impatient and easily-frustrated I am. I found that the thinnest place for my sanity comes when trying to keep a child unconscious while on the ventilator. Recently we’ve had a few kids who, for varying reasons, needed to be intubated to protect their airway and/ or let their lungs rest and heal. This involves a tube being placed in their trachea and a machine supporting their breathing, and with kids we almost always try to keep them entirely sedated. This is easier said than done given a number of factors, like our limited supply of medications and children’s uncanny ability to metabolize even heavy narcotics like they are water.

All of these factors have contributed to a few shifts in recent weeks where I have spent half of my day straight up wrestling with a groggy kid trying to prevent them from displacing the tube protecting their airway and very life, as they writhe in the discomforting feeling of breathing through a straw, while trying to reach a balance of medications that will keep them calm and asleep. I have discovered that having no less than eight arms and hands is adequate for managing these situations. As I have yet to sprout additional appendages, these are very trying moments indeed. In my mind I’m willing them, “Please relax; let me support you. Sleep and breathe. Don’t fight. Do not be afraid.” When I finally step off the unit, feeling ugly and monstrous and stressed to the max by that little person, I think the Lord is saying something similar to me. He is good and He is on my side.

 I’m incredibly thankful for the beautiful and forgiving people I work with and the ways they lovingly support me when I’m unraveling. I’m thankful for the God who puts me back together again each time, who lets me try again when this thin place shows my failings, who is stretching my capacity to love. I’m thankful for each kiddo that I’ve cared for and opened my heart to. Whether they lived or died, they made my life more blessed forever.

I’m deeply, eternally thankful for the view I get of heaven from this thin place I find myself in. 

Dallas

Somewhere in the airspace over Dallas is where I lose it.

I’m not sure what it is. I do okay in Fort Lauderdale. In Florida everyone is coming and going from the Caribbean and the people are so diverse and I’m still feeling excited about being back in America after three months.

But heading into Dallas is different. Suddenly everyone around me looks like a middle-class American soccer mom or business man. And even though I’m elbow-wrestling with the next person for two inches of arm rest real estate, I suddenly feel miles away from everyone else. And I sit there simultaneously hoping to stay lost in my thoughts without a word spoken to me so I can cling to every memory, and needing to tell someone everything I just saw and did to make it seem more real and less like a dream. But these people are miles away from me. They could never understand the things I walked through, not even the matching-shirted short-term mission team that was on the flight from Haiti. They have no idea. These people who look like my next-door neighbors are aliens to me.

I think Dallas is where my brain feels the split- two worlds that don’t reconcile. Dallas is where I start to feel like it was all a dream. Because if the kid with the iPad and the Starbucks every twenty feet and the immaculate climate-controlled building are all real, how can my malnourished babies and hurting mamas and dusty streets be real too?? It seems like they can’t possibly both be real. And that’s when the tears just come. Even though I was kissing those babies only hours ago, I feel like I’m losing them into that hazy dream-stuff already. And it scares me. Because the memories of those kids are more valuable to me than anything else in this world. I’m trying so hard to hold them tightly and it feels like they are just falling through my fingers.

And to the next person I just look like any other young American with a nice summer tan. They can’t see the frenzy inside as I cling to my treasures- the faces of babies we lost, and of kids that lived, the grief and joy and love defined by those faces. I’m a Texan girl back in Texas, but feeling like a stranger in a strange land.

It’s been a few days. I’m settling into that uncomfortable feeling. The tension of living with this irreconcilable reality. Re-learning how to live with a heart that is divided between two worlds. I’m feeling grateful for the Savior who spans the distance, who is rock-solid and sure in both places. Because if I know nothing else, I know that He is good, He is love, and He is real. Even in Dallas. 

Stained

Some days it’s hard not to give up on people. Not just some people, all of humanity really. It’s hard when my kiddos die of diseases and traumatic accidents and the like, but when the malicious, intentionally evil things seem to keep ruling this place, sometimes you just want to curl up in a ball and ugly-cry your face off. I know, I’ve done it. When yet another gunshot victim, or head-bashed-in-with-a-rock victim, or repeated-stabbing-with-broken-bottles victim comes in.

For me it’s yet another hydrocephalus baby abandoned at the hospital, or even worse, the days-old, spina bifida baby that was brought to us after being found in a dumpster. In the trash. The baby was thrown in the trash. She was thrown away. She’s doing okay now- cleaned up, eating, getting antibiotics and wound care for the lesions covering her body. But thinking about the evil this baby has endured thus far in her little life, it seems too crushing, like an elephant on my chest. Like I said, it’s hard not to give up on people. We’re so ugly and hurtful and hateful, bent and broken and stained by sin, capable of such unspeakable evil.

This is when I really cannot wrap my mind around God’s love. Because sometimes I think He should just squish us. We deserve it. We deserve to be squished. All of us. Especially by Him. Because really even those of us that look okay on the outside, with the manicured lawn and washed windows, on the inside we’re stained too. The selfishness and hatred that lurks in my heart is as dark as baby-trashing. That’s what is really crushing. And He sees it all, even the stains in me that I don’t even know about. He knows them. He sees yours too. We’re all baby-trashers.

“When the time was right, the Anointed One died for all of us who were far from God, powerless, and weak. Now it is rare to find someone willing to die for an upright person, although it’s possible that someone may give up his life for one who is truly good. But think about this: while we were wasting our lives in sin, God revealed His powerful love to us in a tangible display—the Anointed One died for us. As a result, the blood of Jesus has made us right with God now, and certainly we will be rescued by Him from God’s wrath in the future. If we were in the heat of combat with God when His Son reconciled us by laying down His life, then how much more will we be saved by Jesus’ resurrection life? In fact, we stand now reconciled and at peace with God. That’s why we celebrate in God through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed.” Romans 6:6-11

What the what?! Seriously? I have heard the Gospel since I was knee-high to a grasshopper (obviously an expression; I was knee-high to a Harlem Globetrotter by the time I could stand), but it knocks me on my face over and over again. How God could possibly look down on all this mess and not squish us- to still want us and love us and die for us, enduring all of our darkness, so that our stains might be washed clean. To call us not Despised or Evil, but Beloved. It amazes me sometimes the work that God has done in me, to have taken my capacity to love others from thimble-sized to teacup-sized, a work He continues every day despite my failing. But His Love? His Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreakable, Always and Forever Love? I think the song “The Love of God” describes it my favorite way:

Could we with ink the ocean fill,

And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade;

To write the love of God above

Would drain the ocean dry;

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Though stretched from sky to sky

So I guess I’m not going to give up on humanity today. I’m going to dry my eyes and thank my God and keep loving those despicable people. How could I not? He didn’t give up on me. 

Circus Joy

All of my kiddos are special and important, but there are a handful of them that are tattooed on my heart. They have changed me in a way that makes me know my life is more beautiful forever because they are in it. They are the faces I see when I think about what the Kingdom of God is. I would do anything for these kids and they make me realize I can do so little. Most of them have endured unspeakable evil and still have a smile that could light up an entire town.

Last Sunday we were beyond blessed to be gifted with tickets for a few of our patients, all of them those really special, heart-tattoo kind of people, to an outdoor circus here in Port-au-Prince. It sounded like quite an ordeal to take three patients from the spinal cord injury unit and two from pediatrics anywhere, given the combination of their physical states and our available transportation. Challenge accepted.

It took us about thirty minutes to load up. Three half-paralyzed young adults in an X-terra, wound vacs and wheelchairs and all. The circus brought out the creativity in all of us. The three of them have been at the hospital for months without leaving. By golly, we were gonna make this happen.

The rest of us piled into the land-cruiser. Our amazing drivers gingerly guided us around potholes and through the city. We finally arrived, late, and got unloaded, got wheelchairs through the gravel, and were shown to the front row.

If you’ve ever been to a circus, hopefully it was a joyful and exciting experience. If you’ve ever known beautiful and resilient kids who have endured trauma and illness, I’m sure you have been crazy blessed by them. Can I describe to you what the combination is like? I’ll do my best.

This beautiful teenage girl was paralyzed by a gunshot wound to the neck. She was my patient in the pediatric unit for over a month when I first got here and I was privileged to care for her, encouraging her to be strong as she was fighting infections and enduring care for the massive wounds she’d developed. We transferred her to the Spinal Cord Injury unit about a month ago and now I get to just visit her and be her friend, which is the greatest gift of all. She’s getting so much stronger. She smiles often and jokes with her friends on the unit. They tease me about my Kreyol and she speaks slowly and clearly to help me understand. She is one of my most favorite humans ever.

These two young men are in the Spinal Cord Unit, both paralyzed waist down as well. They have been through horrifying trauma, followed by emotional abuse and neglect from others as a result of their physical injuries, yet still have the biggest beaming smiles I’ve ever seen.

This teenage boy has taught me more about God’s faithfulness than maybe anyone else ever. I plan to share much more about his story another day, but for now just know that his life is a complete miracle. I saw him stand on death’s doorstep over and over again, but never give up- not even when we were doing CPR to keep his heart going twice in one week. Even when he was intubated and on a breathing machine he still managed to give me snarky teenager attitude. Just thinking about this boy gives me joy, let alone getting to go with him on a super fun outing for the first time in two months.

 This sweet kiddo is another miracle. He has a crazy wonky congenital heart defect that usually kids usually don’t survive past infancy without cardiac surgery. It is amazing and beautiful that he is alive and he is just the sweetest ever. He was so enraptured by the circus I could have watched his face the entire time.

So all ten of our entourage made our fashionably late entrance and formed our own front row during the sword swallower’s act. Then this happened…

Which I can totally do, can't you? 

Then a little of this…

Then the magician and his lovely assistant "cut an unsuspecting child in half"! I held my breath...

Can you feel the suspense?! 

Then the clowns, who also double as the super buff male acrobat duo did a fantastic routine to the Lion King instrumental soundtrack, made complete by the ominous rain clouds in the background. 

Not sure why you would want to, but they can

Who's the clown now, huh? 

So then the outdoor circus was interrupted when the ominous rain clouds became an actual downpour. We somehow got our entire crew under a tent, via a combination of wheelchair wheelies and piggy-back rides, to wait it out and had a dance party to the music of the impromptu rain parade. 

But the show must go on! And eventually it did just that...

And one of our friends even made it into the show! 

Then this happened. Yes it really did, in all its tight-panted, bedazzled-vested glory. This is the part where I actually almost peed myself from laughing so hard. 

We came up with a lot of names for this act, most of which aren't appropriate to share here. 

Boom, Baby!! That JUST happened! You're welcome. 

This is real life.

 

Peed. Myself. Laughing. 

Then the grand finale fire show. Definitely the way to go out with a bang. And fireworks, which I don't think any of the kids had seen before. Just amazing. 

Best. Night. Ever. 

What a beautiful celebration of life! The joy and laughter and smiles, oh man. I will never forget that night as long as I live. 

When we got back to the hospital and went to see our friends get settled back into the unit, I poked my head into the NICU and saw the look on the nurse's face. A short while later our evening ended with us holding a premature baby while she died. And you know, I wouldn't separate that part of the night from the rest. Because you have to take it all together. The joy and pain, grief and rejoicing. It's the realest, truest life I've ever experienced. And such beauty lies in the contrast, knowing that it is all God's, both sides a perfect illustration of his faithfulness and love towards us. He is the King of life and death; the author of big and small miracles, like boys who live and a night of circus joy.