Togo might be a tiny little country, but we've got a lot to say about it around here. I've been thinking a lot about what story I want to share with you today, and I can't get O'Brien and Maurius out of my head. Their stories played out alongside each other, extreme in both joy and heartbreak.
They were admitted around the same time, both little boys with cleft lips and palates, both severely malnourished because they just couldn't get the nutrition they needed through mouths split wide open. They both struggled with pneumonia caused when they sucked milk into their lungs instead of into their stomachs.
Maurius quickly gained weight under the watchful eye of the Feeding Program. When we first met him he was weeks (maybe days) away from starving to death, and by the time we sent him to the operating room, he was a completely different baby.
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O'Brien, on the other hand, struggled to gain weight. While Marius needed a little oxygen and some antibiotics for his pneumonia, O'Brien ended up in the ICU, fighting for his tiny little life. In the darkness of an April night, he started to lose that fight. His oxygen saturations dropped, his breathing became more and more labored, and the decision was made to place a breathing tube and put him on the ventilator. As the nurse on duty gathered the supplies, Dr. Gary laid his hands on little O'Brien and prayed.
And then the impossible happened. Over the course of five short minutes, while everyone watched, amazed, O'Brien's oxygen levels crept up until they were better than they had been before he got sick. His breathing calmed, and he was soon resting quietly, totally unaware that he had just been at the centre of a miracle.
It's what got us through the dark days, just a week later, when Maurius' post-operative course ended up being far more complicated than we ever anticipated. He almost died several times the first day alone, and after spending some time on the ventilator, we ended up having to place a tracheostomy so that he'd be able to breathe.
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I remember wrestling with God so much during that season, asking over and over why O'Brien could receive a miracle while Maurius suffered so much. And over and over God would reassure me that His plans are perfect, regardless of whether I could understand them.
I had no idea how much I'd need to trust that reassurance.
During the next two weeks, Maurius gained his health back, improving enough that we were able to remove his tracheostomy and bring him back to the wards, just a few beds away from where O'Brien was nestled in his own nest of blankets. The celebration was bittersweet; while Maurius was getting stronger every day, we had discovered that O'Brien's heart was starting to fail, and we were nearing the end of what we could do for him.
Three short days later, I knelt next to O'Brien's mama as she cradled him his tiny, still body in her arms, listening through my stethoscope for the sound I knew I wasn't going to hear. I'm so sorry. His heart has stopped, I had to tell her, my own breaking along with hers when the translator relayed my words.
Two little boys, one who got to go home with his mama and one who went home to Jesus, and it all just felt so unfair. But in the years that have followed since I got to be a part of their lives, God has been teaching and reteaching me the lesson I started to learn during that endless April.
He is a God of miracles, yes, but He is still God when the miracles don't happen.
I saw it in my own life, when I was healed from the pain of Dengue fever only to turn around and be crippled by arthritis. I see it in every field service, every line at screening day; we will be able to help some, and we will have to send the rest away. But the story is so much bigger than us, than just the patients we see in front of us, and God is working at every turn whether we're blind to it or not.
I don't know that I'll ever fully understand it, but I'm starting to be able to accept it. And that's a start.
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(Photos courtesy of Mercy Ships.)
Did you get to see the 60 Minutes show last night? If you missed it, you can watch it online here. Let me know what you think!
They were admitted around the same time, both little boys with cleft lips and palates, both severely malnourished because they just couldn't get the nutrition they needed through mouths split wide open. They both struggled with pneumonia caused when they sucked milk into their lungs instead of into their stomachs.
Maurius quickly gained weight under the watchful eye of the Feeding Program. When we first met him he was weeks (maybe days) away from starving to death, and by the time we sent him to the operating room, he was a completely different baby.
O'Brien, on the other hand, struggled to gain weight. While Marius needed a little oxygen and some antibiotics for his pneumonia, O'Brien ended up in the ICU, fighting for his tiny little life. In the darkness of an April night, he started to lose that fight. His oxygen saturations dropped, his breathing became more and more labored, and the decision was made to place a breathing tube and put him on the ventilator. As the nurse on duty gathered the supplies, Dr. Gary laid his hands on little O'Brien and prayed.
And then the impossible happened. Over the course of five short minutes, while everyone watched, amazed, O'Brien's oxygen levels crept up until they were better than they had been before he got sick. His breathing calmed, and he was soon resting quietly, totally unaware that he had just been at the centre of a miracle.
It's what got us through the dark days, just a week later, when Maurius' post-operative course ended up being far more complicated than we ever anticipated. He almost died several times the first day alone, and after spending some time on the ventilator, we ended up having to place a tracheostomy so that he'd be able to breathe.
I remember wrestling with God so much during that season, asking over and over why O'Brien could receive a miracle while Maurius suffered so much. And over and over God would reassure me that His plans are perfect, regardless of whether I could understand them.
I had no idea how much I'd need to trust that reassurance.
During the next two weeks, Maurius gained his health back, improving enough that we were able to remove his tracheostomy and bring him back to the wards, just a few beds away from where O'Brien was nestled in his own nest of blankets. The celebration was bittersweet; while Maurius was getting stronger every day, we had discovered that O'Brien's heart was starting to fail, and we were nearing the end of what we could do for him.
Three short days later, I knelt next to O'Brien's mama as she cradled him his tiny, still body in her arms, listening through my stethoscope for the sound I knew I wasn't going to hear. I'm so sorry. His heart has stopped, I had to tell her, my own breaking along with hers when the translator relayed my words.
Two little boys, one who got to go home with his mama and one who went home to Jesus, and it all just felt so unfair. But in the years that have followed since I got to be a part of their lives, God has been teaching and reteaching me the lesson I started to learn during that endless April.
He is a God of miracles, yes, but He is still God when the miracles don't happen.
I saw it in my own life, when I was healed from the pain of Dengue fever only to turn around and be crippled by arthritis. I see it in every field service, every line at screening day; we will be able to help some, and we will have to send the rest away. But the story is so much bigger than us, than just the patients we see in front of us, and God is working at every turn whether we're blind to it or not.
I don't know that I'll ever fully understand it, but I'm starting to be able to accept it. And that's a start.
---
(Photos courtesy of Mercy Ships.)
Did you get to see the 60 Minutes show last night? If you missed it, you can watch it online here. Let me know what you think!