Easter, 2019

I had just been to the eggstravaganza at church on the day before Easter. It was a beautiful cool day to be out under the trees in the grass. Beautiful Easter dresses on the little girls and the amazing smiles on all the children spoke to my heart. It made me wonder if my face would hurt because I was smiling so much with wonder at their wonder.

There was a 12 year-old or so boy who was running one of the game tables all by himself. Dillon was so interactive, kind and gentle with all the little ones. His energy was inspiring as his servant’s heart joyfully burst from his every action.

Afterwards, however, as I was sitting in a shady spot sipping an iced tea, I began to cry. I was crying, in part, because I am in a different stage of life and my little ones are grown. But also, maybe mostly, because I have been at Grace for 27 years and there I was celebrating Easter without even one of my family with me. My mind filled with doubts and self-recrimination as I regretfully considered what could have been different so that my family would be alongside me here serving; serving independently of my faith having found their own; having found a faith in my unparalleled God who fuels them and bursts from them in service. What has gone wrong?

And then, as is my way, I tempered my regret with thoughts of the uselessness and outright sin of trying to place blame. I reminded myself that I am a godly woman who has lived my life of faith out loud, raising my children at Grace and seeking Jesus to fuel me through it all. I claimed God’s promises: It is God’s gig, I say, not mine. He asks me only to be faithful with what/who is in front of me. He promises to take care of the rest.

Yet, I was still crying in my shady spot, unable to accept my own faith as comfort. With my next thought I was back wondering, Why has it not worked? Why have they not caught a glimpse of God through me that has been so welcoming and authentic that they could not stay away?

In my distress, my tears spilling everywhere, I opened to Mr. Chamber’s My Utmost for His Highest:

“Worrying means exactly what this servant implied–‘I know your intent is to leave me unprotected and vulnerable.’”

“Never forget that our capability and capacity for spiritual matters is measured by, and based on, the promises of God. Is God able to fulfill His promises?”

O. Chambers, April 20.

It is a question that God, with blinding precision, used Mr. Chambers to ask me. It was almost as if the Holy Spirit sprang from the page and flew right into me, dispersing my doubt in an instant as I realized the implication of my sorrow.

My heart gasped as God’s truth and the truth of my sorrow was revealed in Mr. Chambers words. I am sorrowful because I am doubting God’s intent and heart. My sorrow sprouting from within an entangling lie. God will never leave me nor forsake me! He will never leave me unprotected and vulnerable. I reject the sorrow of my premise and embraced the new sorrow at doubting my unparalleled God.

This is exactly why we must bring our state of being into God’s light every time. All our sorrows and emotions and questions to the throne of grace where He will reveal His truth in our circumstances.

I do not know the whys and wherefores of my life but I am knowing my unparalleled God. He has told me all along:

“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” Matthew 6:33

Today, I read this verse with my new eyes and I believe anew that some of the things that shall be added to me will include those I love best. And I know this because He is right beside me lighting every step of my seeking way.

Postscript: How perfect is it that He gives me these new eyes at Easter? Easter when we remember Jesus and His suffering, death, burial and Resurrection; because of Easter, I no longer need to be buried by my sorrow and shame; because of Easter, I can choose to be raised to new life (and eyes) by my God Who pursues me. My God Who came to bury my darkness and raise me to new life so that I might have my greatest need filled, my need to be fully loved.

Happy Easter, my friends, because Easter changes everything!

Anne

Sunday, March 24, 2019

“Listen intently with your entire being until you hear the voice of God in the life of another. Never give any thought to

what difficulties it might bring,

just rejoice that his voice has been heard.”

O. Chambers, (Mar, 24)

The difficulties we have seen on this trip have been doorways. When opened, the darkness within is chased out by the light of the truth of Jesus. Some of the darkness has been horrifying yet we have the privilege to rejoice that His voice has been heard. We can rejoice that the renovation can now begin.

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His glorious face

His word shall not fail you,

He promised
Believe Him and all will be well.”

•HH Lemmell•

Adios, Honduras.

~Anne~

Saturday, March 23

It is a brilliant day in the country. We travel 45 minutes out of the city to a rocky, white sand, bowl valley. The hillside is covered with parched beige grass, scatterings of trees and homes. The dirt roads cut into the hillside as if preparing for the building of a subdivision.

This multi level church is built into the hillside in various stages of completion. It is open air, breezy and bright. The bird song is sweet and inviting. I see a sign: Church on the Ridge.

Clinic starts and I go over to CSI. Many of my young adult team members have been doing this all week. There have been many tears and for good reasons. How in the world have they done it? My second patient reduces me to a quivering blob of protoplasm.

Sofia is 10. When I asked her if she’s afraid of anyone in her community she breaks down in heavy sobbing. Eventually we make out that the boys at school call her names and it hurts her heart she says. They tell her they’re going to kill her. She is also afraid of the dark and fears that they might come and kill her then. My first instinct is to tell a grown up but she begs me not to tell her mother and won’t tell me why. I gather her up in my arms and hold her a while, wondering what in the world I can do.

My interpreter, Gina, tells me that she was bullied when she was a child and never told her mother. I have her share this with Sofia. I tell her it’s important to tell someone, to get secrets out in the light. The bullies have power when they think no one else knows. It is important to let somebody know and take their power away.

After some hugging and affirmation, she allows me to tell her mother. Her mother knows. Her mother has talked with the teacher. Her father has talked with the teacher. But the teacher says she has too many students she can’t be bothered with that.

I am, once again, in a painful quandary but it comes to my mind to call over David, the project coordinator. I ask him if there’s anything he can do. He talks to the mom for a bit and they decide that One Child Matters will send a letter to the teacher about the situation and that he will then follow up. This doesn’t seem like enough but it is a start.

I want to take this child’s pain and fear away. I want to fix this. I want to give Sofia power…so I give her two Gospel color bracelets. I tell her God’s story through the colors and I ask her to wear one bracelet and hide one bracelet under her pillow. When she is afraid at night I tell her to hold the bracelet and remember God’s love for her. At school, I want her to remember how precious she is to God and drown out the bullies’ lies with God’s truth.

Though my heart hurts for her, I am reminded of my morning devotion from Mr. Chambers:

“If the Spirit of God detects anything that is wrong. He doesn’t ask you to make it right. He only asks you to accept the light of truth and then He will make it right.”

What a relief to know that God sheds His light on both patient and caregiver. He doesn’t call us to fix it. He calls us to love in the moment and leave the rest to Him. It is a painful, uncertain lesson to learn.

Pastor Michael comes to find me for my next encounter with a mom who, it is feared, is doing drugs and hitting her special needs son. She is a thin, pale woman with golden, shimmering eyeshadow on her eyelids. She smiles and tells me she knows Jesus but doesn’t go to church. She’s afraid she will be judged.

As I talk with her she shares with me that her parents loved her sister more than her so she left home at 9. She survived by cleaning houses. She says she has done a lot of bad things and she struggles with hating her mother, and I suspect, herself.

We talk about how important a mother’s love is and how much pain it can cause and did cause her. Our parents show us who God is so when they fail then our view of God suffers. It is a perfect segway for talking about Who God is; about the importance of being a good mother to our children; for the importance of getting help when we struggle with our children. In the end, I don’t know if she was doing drugs and I don’t know if she’s hitting her son but it is, again, a start, a launching pad for God’s truth.

As I stand aside in clinic and watch as the last patients finish, I wonder what my week’s take away will be. There are random times in my life, between trips, when I think of particular moments standing in clinic. They return to my mind periodically and instantly I am back reliving it. I wonder if this will be one of those times.

There have been multiple times this trip when my emotions have been stretched. When I have had to trust God for an outcome that I will not see. When I need to rest in my knowledge of God’s character and trust He is trustworthy. My morning devotion from Mr. Chambers comes back into view.

“God will see to it that you have a number of opportunities to prove to yourself the miracle of His grace…And you will never cease to be the most amazed person on Earth at what God has done for you on the inside.” (Mar, 23)

He’s right, I stand amazed.

Friday, March 22, 2019

“In You, our fathers trusted…

and You delivered them…

they cried out…and we’re not disappointed. Commit yourself to the Lord,

let Him deliver you…

because He delights in you.”

Psalms 22

I am thinking of our Child Safety Initiative this morning as I read Psalms 22. “Cry out to the Lord”, the Psalmist writes, “and be delivered”. He answers every prayer though not always as we expect. Nonetheless, cry out. He will deliver you.

It is a clear, shining day. The past few have been dulled by the smoke of a forest fire just out of town but today, it is clearing.

Our clinic is in the city, a short drive away. Eva tells me, as we pass by Catholic Cathedral, that it was built by the Spaniards for the rich. There is a smaller one a few blocks away, grand in it’s own way, built for the poor.

The church sanctuary is large and airy. There are white banners on the walls. Each one with golden letters spelling a different name of God: Jireh, El Shaddai, El Elyon, Rafa, Jesus. On the altar there is the Arc of the Covenant in miniature. These are powerful reminders of our powerful, trustworthy God.

We are to see the Child Champions this morning, a kind of Big Brother/Big Sister. They are volunteers in each community who have committed to caring for the children. They wear bright shirts of orange that say “I am a ‘Campeon’.

We are short on interpreters so I watch and help as needed. I close my eyes and listen. The combining sounds float like waves. They ebb and flow in undulating crescendos. Like jumping fish, singular voices rise above the rest to resonate clearly: a baby’s anguished cry, the lyrical popping of joyful laughter, a bursting of grateful Spanish, the hush of voices in prayer. This is the symphony of sound that accompanies the splendid coming together of a clinic in unison. If you listen closely enough you might even hear the whirr of angel wings.

The line to wait for an exam begins to lengthen and there are several young children in it. Seeing this, I grab a tennis ball to distract the little ones and soon find out that all ages beam with delight when it is their turn to catch the ball. I transition to having my new found 3 year old friend, Jeremy, toss the ball to each one. It is a marvelous volley of intergenerational connection, for me as well.

A Champion comes in wearing a purple shirt with Juecus 4:9 printed on it. As she sits, back to me, I try to figure out which Bible book it is. I settle upon Judges 4:9 “Surely I will go with you…for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hands of a woman.” It talks about how God invited Barak to join Him in blessing Israel but he was too afraid to go. As a result the blessing was given to Deborah, a mighty woman of God. This child Champion is indeed a mighty woman of God. She listened to His call and joined Him in His work. The blessing is hers.

God invites us into His work. He doesn’t need us but He invites so that we might experience first-hand how He works and partake of the blessings. I shared this with her and for the rest of the day whenever I saw her, I called her Mighty Woman of God.

When sweet interpreting Johanna becomes free, I grab the open seat and do a few exams. We see a16 year old girl who is 7 months pregnant. She is smiling and interested in all my teaching. My Mighty Woman of God comes beside her and hugs her in greeting. I pray for her and her baby and, smiling though with tears in her eyes, she goes to vitamins.

Emily tells me later that she prayed for the same girl. The girl told her that she did not consent when the baby was conceived. She has some kind of lawsuit out against the baby’s father but wasn’t willing to give any more details.

I marvel at the news. This young woman seems self assured and well loved and adapting nicely to pregnancy. I pray again, this time for my Mighty Woman of God. I ask that she might join God in His work in the life of this Mama to be. I think back to Psalms 22 and smile remembering that God delights in her and has promised to ‘deliver’ her.

There. Do you hear? Angel wings again.

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Today we travel to the south of town. Clinic is at a remote church up, of course, a steep stairway on the top of the hill: Iglesias del Dios.

There is a brightly painted sanctuary with the ample space for clinic. I am paired today with Johana and she is an excellent interpreter. Yay!

We are seeing kids, their moms and abuelas today. I have a mom who comes to me with her three children. She is hypertensive and was diagnosed with diabetes in January. She was sent home on insulin but with no way to monitor her sugar. As we talk, it becomes obvious that her care is complicated and will require the many different talents of our team.

I do the initial assessment. Trisha takes the opportunity to counsel her about her diet. Dr. Rich takes time to adjust her meds. Kelly finds a way do obtain a glucose monitor for her to use at home. The project coordinator and Eva arrange for it’s delivery. Grayce gives them all vitamins. Doreen, Daniel and Vanessa sort out her meds. Charis shares the Gospel color story with her children. And Johana prays with her.

Like a beautiful song, it’s start is slow and dark. The harmony takes over, adding beauty and depth. As the melody quickens, the song ends in crescendo of hope. It is so good when a plan comes together.

Most of the homes below are small, square or rectangular, brick and wood houses with tin metal roofs. They cover every inch of every side of the multi-level small valley reminding me of the terraced farms of the Mayans that I learned about in grade school.

It gets warm at times but the cooling mountain breezes coming through the open windows revive me at regular intervals. There is lively music wafting on the wind mixed with the sound of far away hammering and car horns in the distance. I smell the wood fires of lunch from the valley below but am told it is not from cooking but from two house fires which both burned to the ground.

The smoke in the air is giving many people trouble breathing. I am called away just as I finish with one patient to attend to a 10 year old in respiratory distress. Her name is Nazareth and she is struggling to breathe. She is not moving a lot of oxygen in and out of her lungs. Dr. Roger asked me to give her a breathing treatment and she starts to cry. I reassure her that there will be no ‘dolore’=pain.

She is pale and unmoving as she works hard to move air and I press on quickly. During the treatment, I softly tickle her ears and face as my mother would do with me when I was sick. I loved those times that it almost made being sick worth it to me. When I pause to check her breath sounds, she reaches for my hand and takes it back to her face. It seems she likes it too.

Her mother is frantic with worry, crying and shaking. Her deep love for her daughter shining in her tears. Eva and I come around her, holding her steady and pray. I remember my own desperation when I accidentally dropped one of my babies on his head. I was a nurse and yet I forgot all my training and was frantic as well. It is, I think, a mother’s birthright to freak out just as it is my honor to steady her in her storm.

Soon Nazareth’s whole body is noticeably relaxing. Her skin is pink and her vital signs are improving. She is able to smile now, to wiggle in the chair and even to talk to me. It is not long before she can wave to the camera and ask for a snack.

She will still need monitoring but her scary breathing is over. Her calming Mama prepares to take her to the hospital. When they leave, they are both smiling and we all breathe a grateful sigh of relief.

~Anne~

Wednesday, March 20.

Today is our day off. We will have our fifth day of clinic on Saturday instead.

Having slept in, we load the bus for a tourist adventure. We are going into the mountains today to a park and a town.

I look out my window to see a rolicking teenage brother with his two young sisters playing tag on the narrow upward street. Mama smiling in the nearby doorway.

Driving slowly down a hilly street we pause. I find myself on level with a Mama flipping tortillas in her kitchen. I see her through my tinted window though she is cannot see me. There is something sacred about the sight; something of the divine as I catch a glimpse of her mother’s heart.

As we leave the city, I see a sign in Spanish that I can read. It says Jesus is the only exit. It makes me smile.

I sit next to Eva and we chat all the way up the mountain. She tells me her name means Warrior, Child of the Champion. It is the perfect name for one such as she, whose job it is to fight for the children. She does so with courage and grace and humor.

Picacho de Noche park is our first stop. It is on Silver Mountain and features a giant statue of Jesus at his Ascension. In the 1800’s, this area was rich in gold and silver mines. This mountain in particular is riddled with abandoned Silver mines, hence its name.

It is a haven of natural beauty with Jesus as it’s focal point. He watches over the city with hands outstretched. As I stand behind Him, it is a picture of Deuteronomy 31:8- “the Lord is the One Who goes ahead of you. He will not take away his help from you or give you up, so have no fear”.

The team comes together under the trees to talk about our week. There have been some heavy issues. What a perfect place to gather and encourage each other to bring those issues to God. His statue reminding us that He has gone ahead of us so we do not need to fear.

There is a boulder at the foot of Jesus that holds a plaque of Luke 24:50-51:“…And He lifted up his hands and blessed them.” And so He does, again, today.

We stop at a ‘mini zoo’ for lunch. It features two of the country’s national icons: the national animal, the white tailed deer and the national bird, the scarlet macaw. There is also a tapir, a javelina/warthoggish dude, bunnies, ponies and some very talkative sheep. We find a lovely respite among the trees and flowers.

The afternoon is spent shopping in a quaint town of shop lined streets. It is good to decompress and simply be with each other.