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.
