ear to the earth

This week was surgery week. A team of 41 medical people that I worked with all week. Hundreds of patients seen in the clinic, wound and orthopedic consultation area, and ER. 54 surgeries completed. Several car and motorcycle accidents. Early morning and late night radio calls for blood expanders and extra hands. Meals ferried back and forth. Water, water, water, IVs, broken down cars and ATVs, ambulance runs, laughs, candy, hugs, tears, frustration.

This week was one of the most beautiful things I have ever taken part in.

I just waved goodbye to our medical team. Our 41 friends just left to go back to the States. Some of them have a look in their eyes that tells me something: change has occurred. In some way, everyone is leaving changed, more beautiful, emptied and filled.

I don't know how I will get off this couch. I could sit here all day to process. But our next team comes in this evening. We have 6 patients on our ward through the weekend. And we hurtle onwards.

Yet this week has torn me apart too. To be so endlessly served by this team, to watch them love and care and agonize alongside us with our patients, and then to leave, it tears me up. They have become a little family with me this week - and I am sad to see them go.

I am agonizing over the stories of some of our patients.

Crushed by buildings on January 12.

Ulcerations on legs for 8 years, desperately wanting to not have dressings done each day.

Beaten with sugar cane as a child slave.

Abused with battery acid that has disfigured her face.

Dear brothers and sisters, what a wretched world we are in. What a wretched world to be treated so poorly. What injustice. How much my heart aches. How much I desire to cry out for them, yet how beautiful this week to begin to see transformation. Perhaps we can help heal these scars, both physical and emotional. Perhaps we can learn how to walk alongside instead of walk away. Perhaps I can begin to pull myself away from my quiet world where I am safe and comfortable. Perhaps, just perhaps, God can redeem this wicked heart of mine.

May the Gospel grip me today and not let me go. Sweet Jesus, come quickly and sand away the exterior. Allow Truth to seep in and around. May the strength of Jesus manifest in us as we walk along.