Sacred Spaces
It’s my first week back in Kapsowar after a short time in the USA with family and friends. I promised myself I would try to write more when I returned, forgetting how tired I often am at the end of the week here. As Regan, my wife, says: it’s not realistic to make plans while you’re on your coffee high and on vacation for your life at home.
Yet here I sit at the end of a tough, yet beautiful, week back. I suppose it is best to write because it reminds me of the great paradox I exist in—immense beauty and extreme tragedy. Perhaps I write primarily for myself, but given that others have asked what it’s like working in Kapsowar, I will write for them as well. Hopefully this gives a little glimpse into my world.
It’s 9 PM on Sunday before my first shift.
The kids are down for the night and I am lying awake, my mind swirling with anticipation for tomorrow and a mixture of jet lag fog. Suddenly, I receive a call from another physician telling me a three-year-old girl has just arrived at the hospital not breathing. As we talk, I realize the prognosis is grim—we don’t have the resources to care for a child this sick. He recommends transfer to a referral hospital, but the mother and grandmother say they do not have the money to pay for the ambulance. We talk through the detailed care plan, knowing that without a drastic improvement soon that she is not going to make it.
The next morning I wake and find that, due to the amazing care the physician, Dr. Tadeo, provided throughout the night, she survived until morning. However, as I walk to the bedside, she is still unconscious and breathing only four times a minute, which is not sustainable for life. As I talk with the mother, I cannot find a clear explanation for the child’s condition or a quickly reversible cause.
Thankfully, we have a visiting pediatric critical care nurse named Mary at the hospital who took over her nursing care. Throughout the day we communicate, and by the evening things take a turn for the worse, and she passes. While doing my death exam, the grandmother came to the bedside, weeping, and looked at Mary who had been providing nonstop care and said, “I have seen everything you have done and I am so grateful for you.”
Also greeting me on my first day back in the newborn unit were three babies, all very premature and weighing just over two pounds. One of the mothers had just delivered at a small clinic. The provider there there told her that the baby was too small to survive and placed the child in a cardboard box for the mother to take home and bury. However, on the motorcycle ride home, the father miraculously noticed the baby breathing and decided to bring her to Kapsowar Mission Hospital.
Upon arrival, the baby was severely hypothermic and clinging to life. Dr. Tadeo and the nurses jumped into action—tying off the umbilical cord, which was pouring out blood, placing her in an incubator, and putting her on oxygen to support her breathing. The child celebrated her first week of life this Thursday, and although she has an incredibly long road to discharge and death remains ever a possibility, we cling to the hope of a full life.
As I sit here taking in the beautiful Kapsowar vista, I hold these two stories together—immense beauty and extreme tragedy. By this I do not simply mean that each story is wholly beautiful or tragic. Rather, both stories have parts, some parts extremely beautiful, and some profoundly tragic. How beautiful the grandmother’s words to Mary, yet how tragic the outcome. How awful a mother being given her baby and told they are going to die, yet how profound the opportunity of our hospital team to step in and pull them back from death.
In the stories, I believe the kingdom of God is coming to life. I believe our God is the God who brings light to to dark places and partners with us to make us lamps in this broken and dark corners of this world.
As the poet and writer, Wendell Berry, says “There are no sacred and unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. My belief is that our life and the world in it are conditional gifts.” How can I live my life to create these sacred spaces even difficult times? This is a question that I often ponder and, if I am honest, many times fail to live into.
However, a great comfort to me is that I don’t think my failure surprises God. When you read the Bible, its easy to find people falling short. In spite of our failures, I believe that what God truly desires is my heart to be with Him. As the Trappist monk Thomas Merton put it so eloquently in his prayer, “But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.”
Despite my weaknesses, despite my failures, I pray that prayer - that I would desire to use my life, which is such a precious and unconditional gift, to create those sacred places and see the kingdom of God at work.