stitching the gap

“There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is the sound of your own heart… so you’d better learn the sound of it.  Otherwise, you’ll never understand what it’s saying.”
-       Sarah Dessen

So much can happen in seven days, I find, after another week here on the compound.  Really, so much happens in even one day, or even one hour.  Time flies by most of the time, but at other times it stands totally still.  The clock here operates by its own rhythm and tempo.  Hours fly by during parts of the day and it’s all I can do to just barely catch up.  Then in other moments I wonder if the minute hand of my reality has become stuck.  Maybe I should start wearing a watch.

This week seemed the busiest yet, with a handful of kids having fresh bouts of malaria, two of the other five missionary staff being acutely ill, one new baby, and the arrival of delightful eight-member mission team from Canada. The past seven days have not been exempt from the children’s apparent quota of cuts, scrapes, and other various boo-boos; they also had several exciting adventures of the gastrointestinal variety, and one child even bit three others (one of whom suffered a superficial near-degloving of his thumb). We made trips to the local clinic in Sibanga every day (as usual) to see the local doctor and nurse practitioner, and they continue to teach me “how-its-done”.  It seems like someone is always in need of another shindani (injection) or has discovered another spot of shilingi (ringworm).  Most of the time when I am in the middle of something, another issue comes to light that requires tending.  I’ve discovered another unique feature of time here that has taught me its lesson: the word “later” has little meaning; I use the word sincerely, but unless it is concretely scheduled and its completion is practically chased-down, it doesn’t get done.  “Now” seems to be the only time that anything ever gets done.  It’s in those “nows” that time skips a few ticks and I can focus on what’s right in front of me.

Out of the many things that happen here regularly, “silence” continues to not be one of them… at least not on my clock.  This is what I expected, pretty much, but for someone who likes her “quiet time”, it will continue to take some getting-used-to.  Life, especially life with children, seems to run a course of its own that is unpredictable and unscheduled.  As much as the amount of work I have to do seems to have increased steadily, it has actually become less of a struggle; my acceptance of things exactly as they are in the moment seems to be directly proportional to the resolution of the day’s challenges.  The more I “go-with-the-flow”, however unexpected or inconvenient that flow may turn or gush, the easier the task is to complete. 

Instead of me asking the first thought that runs through my head, being awakened at three o’clock in the morning by one of the aunties, “What do you mean that child is seizing? She is on medication for her seizures.  This shouldn’t be happening,” I just get my keys and say, “I’ll be right there.”  Sometimes though, once I “get there”, it is not so simple to sort out a solution.  It’s those minutes of silence that can seem like eternities.  When I’m kneeling on the floor, over the crib of a six-year-old girl who chronically unable to walk or speak, watching her body twitch and squirm in a suspiciously epileptic manner, I hear it: silence.  “Now, really?  This is the time I need to know what to do.”  It’s in those first few moments when I realize silence is happening that I wish my mind would un-button its lips and “dish”. 

            Its what’s been happening next, lately, that’s caught my attention this week.  In between the ticks of the clock, my mind hushed like a child being asked why she stole a cookie from the jar, there’s another voice that steps forward to answer the question before my eyes.  It affords me a moment to consider the situation, and speaks softly, directing my attention toward the next task.  Its gentleness calms me and reminds me that I’ll never have all the answers, and that I only need address the most urgent feature of the most urgent problem, first.  That night, I was grateful to recognize that voice and “follow its directions” to deal with the problem, but after-the-fact was disturbed to remember that this was not the first instance, especially this week, of “hearing” that voice.  There there had been a few other times when I had not listened to what it “told” me.

            A few mornings before the middle-of-the-night seizure episode, I noticed this particular girl, sloppily eating her breakfast, and her facial expression seemed slightly, but uncharacteristically, less animated.  A few times I noticed her putting her fingers to her ears (like you do when it’s too loud) – which is something I had seen her do before, and something I often feel like doing when I am in the veranda after meal-time when the children are just starting to enjoy their post-meal spikes in blood sugar.  I stopped myself, and leaned over to “talk” with her (she follows commands but doesn’t respond verbally; she makes eye-contact and has appropriate facial expressions) and see what I could observe in her.  After a few moments my mind says, “Julia, you’re overreacting.  She’s fine.  It’s loud in here and she’s sensitive.  Quit being a hypochondriac for her.”  But deeper within, a clear and quiet voice within me speaks up, “Something’s not right.  She’s not feeling well.  She’s sick. I wonder if she has malaria.”  I asked the aunties how she had been eating, if there had been any changes in her behavior, and they confirmed that she had been “just fine” with “no problems”.  Still, I stood a moment looking at her, unable to reconcile the unsettled feeling below my mind’s surface.  I still had a plate-full of meds to give, and I walked away.  This happened three days in a row – my clinical mind dismissing my hypervigilance, while the “other voice” told me with increasing urgency that something was the matter.

            Okay, I know how this might sound.  “Great, Julia’s really lost it this time, she’s flown off to Africa and is hearing voices at that orphanage.  Time for a psych consult.”  Really, though, I wonder if you are all so unfamiliar with the phenomenon I’m talking about.  I’m not exactly “hearing voices”– it’s more like experiencing thoughts that are on different levels of my conscious awareness.  It’s the uncomfortable and mysterious experience of knowing that I’m generating two different responses, both seeming to be correct, to one situation.  It’s the gap in which my mind and my heart disagree.

              Two nights before the seizure episode, an auntie came to me and said, “What’s going on with _____?” She spoke the name of the child about whom I had been concerned.  I said, “I believe she is sick, but don’t know why, and everyone has said she isn’t.  What’s wrong?”  She then told me how she had witnessed her having a seizure the day prior, and we found that there had been a simple and innocent miscommunication in me getting the message about it.  That night we were able to get her some medicine to help her, and her condition improved.  But still, I wondered, on some level if we were doing all we could to help her.  Fast-forward to three-a.m. a couple of nights later, as I am dealing with her seizure, and I am wondering how long it will take me to listen to what I believe, rather than what I see.

            I’ve heard the “other voice” called many things and described in many ways with which I identify:  intuition; belly-voice; God-consciousness.  I’ve been instructed in many ways to listen to this message within me, with “trust your guts,” and “to thine own self be true.”  Today, though, there’s one phrase that has surfaced within me as a result of this experience that I hold on to.

            Listen to your heart.

            Yesterday I was indulging in my late-morning/early-afternoon routine, when the kids are outside and the sound coming from the veranda in the main house is not so riotous, of reading.  Usually I’m checking out a medical article, trying to school myself in useful topics like malaria, or malnutrition.  The clock got slow and I realized I had an hour before the clinic run – I didn’t hear anyone crying (no anticipated injuries for the next few minutes) and I knew it was around the babies’ naptime.  I walked out to the veranda, feeling the heat radiating down from the tin-roof ceiling. I saw the little angels, some sprawled out on the mattress, sucking their fingers, asleep.  A few of them were awake, tottling around after each other, or fumbling with a toy.  I saw one of the boys – about sixteen-months old – and he sat up off the edge of the mattress and walked over to me, arms stretched up.  I knelt down as he was clumsily walking over to me and he pretty much threw his little self into my arms.  (This one loves to do that.  It’s kind of our thing.)  I turn to the aunties and say, “I’m stealing this one for a little.”  They’re used to that.

            Something wasn’t right about him.  That voice again.  “He’s not feeling well, something’s wrong.”  We played for a while and I tried to get him to nap.  He felt a little bit warm in the head, but this is not uncommon for the kids especially around midday – if you feel everyone’s forehead around lunchtime, you’d swear they all have fevers, but their measurable temperatures are normal – their skin just throws off excess heat.  I wanted to justify the gut feeling, and I checked his temperature.  99.5 F.  Not even a fever.  Still, I had enough justification to bring him to the clinic, I believed.  My mind said, “Julia, he is just getting over a bout of malaria (for which he was effectively medicated) and is probably just getting back into the swing of things.  He doesn’t even have a fever and you’re just trying to justify an emotional response to this baby.  Here you are, overreacting.”  But that other voice, the one that spoke from a deeper level and nudged me about the girl who ended up seizing, was what I chose to listen to this time.

            We took three kids to the clinic that afternoon to be tested for malaria – two older girls and the baby.  Out of the three, this little boy had the fewest symptoms – the others had headache, GI complaints, exhaustion: much more consistent with malaria than what my little man showed.  Out of the three, who was the only one with malaria?

            Yep.

The wee man.

            Glad I listened this time.

            The other morning, drinking tea, I was talking to one of the other five missionaries, and there was just something off about him to me.  I asked him if he was sick.  He denied it.  The next day I come back from a trip into town (hoo boy, what an adventure THAT was) to find him crumpled up in a ball in the medical room, having vomited, with a temperature of 101.  A visitor had complained to me of a slight headache that then went away, and mentioned she was feeling better, but still, my guts clearly said that time, “She has malaria.”  Unfortunately I wasn’t surprised when I heard the poor dear vomiting later after dinner, confirming what my guts had told me.   

            So, what? Do I think that I have some special ability to magically know which kids are sick and which aren’t before they have any outward signs?  Negative.  Each one of us is subjected to a barrage of information at all times, internal and external.  We have each learned far more than we can ever realize, and I believe the majority of that learning is sub-conscious.  Maybe part of me is recognizing patterns in their mannerisms that indicate to me, on a level below my realization, that they’re sick.  Maybe it’s “nurse’s intuition”, a likely subset of “mother’s intuition.”  Maybe God is just nudging this girl, with her ear turned everyday to His instructions, however distracted she may be.  Maybe it’s something far more psychologically-underpinned.  Maybe it’s something far more magical.  I don’t have to figure it out.  What I do have to do is learn from this, whatever this is. 

            The way I’ve described this phenomenon makes it seem so cut-and-dry; a manner of simplifying of a confusing internal process.  I’ll tell you that this is not what usually happens.  On a daily basis I go through a thousand lines of internal dialogue, many of which build upon unresolved questions or ongoing debates.  I ask myself what I think is logical versus what I believe is correct; what I think is appropriate versus what I believe is loving; what I think is likely versus what I believe is true; what I think is reasonable versus what I believe is right; what I think is known versus what I believe is real. Most of the time, I’ve made decisions throughout the day with my head and my heart needn’t speak about them.  But this work – which is more a life than a job – requires both, in a proportion which fluctuates as inconsistently as the minute-hand seems to. 

And then there are those matters about which no decisions can be made, over which the heart demonstrates day after day that it has complete reign, and yet no control whatsoever.

            This place, these children, these people – they speak to my heart and my heart speaks back.  I recognize God’s amazing power with my mind, which I must use on a daily basis to sort through the many different medically technical issues that regularly arise.  All the while through the day, I can focus on the Loving Presence I feel in my heart.  The Lord’s guidance does not seem to be exclusive to either faculty. 

It is only in God that I find the gap between the heart and the mind can be closed.  I find it mended together, woven expertly.  He is stitching up the frayed ends in myself, sewing together who I am everyday.  It is in this – His closure – that I find the truest opening of my mind, and the most willing opening of my heart.  Perhaps this gap – existing in my confusion, corrected by His grace – can be simultaneously described by the name of the third faculty, unmentioned as of yet in today’s discussion... the spirit.

Baby Lavendar

Sunrise

our newest baby, Lavendar

Evening

Brighton

bringing kids to the clinic

sunset over the compound