the very first month i blogged I witnessed one of the saddest moments of my life...today I was preparing a diabetes clinic and couldn't figure out why I have been feeling so NOT into diabetes...usually when i don't want to do something, or find something stressfull instead of plowing through and finishing a job well, I just turn it off, don't pay attention and leave it alone...so my diabetes assessment tool was short, thrown together and just handed in as a bit of a write off assignment for me...then half way through the clinic I remembered why I have such huge issues with diabetes, why I hate talking about it so much, why it breaks my heart...this was my blog entry 4 years ago this month...
I had a baby die yesterday. She was born flat and unresponsive. We did chest compressions and ppv on her for a long time. We prayed and cried and prayed and prayed some more. I don't know what to say about how I feel or what went wrong. But that i am totally wrecked and completely at peace that God is bigger than birth. Do I feel that if only she had gone to a hospital things would have turned out different, of course! But I also know that God doesn't make mistakes, even though i do, and He plans divine appointments and He gives you enough strength for each new day of troubles. And i was drowning in troubles yesterday. Andi's choir sang a song about the earth being tired. There is nothing more exhausting than witnessing the Devil do his best to take our joy, hope and strength by showing us how powerless we are in life and death situations. In turning the miracle of birth into a terrifying display of human weakness, inability and showing us that we are just a breath away from death.
I wanted so much to help women in labor, to encourage and witness the thrill and joy of a new life. This was my worst fear. This was the one thought that i prayed against, i wanted God to spare me from a baby dying at birth, you know, you just figure if your in this for His sake, He can be big enough to keep all the bad things from happening. But God didn't spare Jesus, and He wouldn't let me come out of this training without this experience. being a missionary is not bringing God's magic touch into the life of a desperately poor woman. being a missionary is praying and doing chest compressions, cleaning up the blood, dressing the baby, and listening to a father cry.
I am hanging on to the fact that God can bring life into any situation. He can reveal himself in the dark sometimes better than the light. Although the fig tree doesn't blossom, the labor of the olive tree fail, the flock be cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stahls, yet i will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. The lord is my strength and He will make my feet like hinds feet, and He will make me to walk upon my high places. hab 3:17-19.
This baby died in large part to undiagnosed, untreated diabetes...and although though finding out the reason for her death helped alittle...I still hate diabetes. Tomorrow I have to present this clinic to a room full of people who are being helped with medicine, nutrition, education about diabetes...this is a good thing. I hope I am more myself tomorrow and up for that task than I feel right now...right now I cried alittle, for a baby i only held and never got to 'meet'...
I hate diabetes.
1 comment:
Wow... Very powerful, and tear jerking. I hope you're okay, but you need or want to talk I'm available.
Sometimes I hate the fact that tragedies such as this take place in our world, and stories like this make me question a lot of thing regarding God, and why he would let a baby die... But what you say in here makes sense, at least for your life. You were meant to experience this for some reason, but it's still hard to think the God 'let' the baby die. Just makes the world seem that much more unjust...
But you are right in that missionary work, or experiences aren't necessarily meant to be happy. Through missionary work we see a lot of things that we normally wouldn't see in our privileged life. Its good to have our eyes open from God to witness such tragedies so that we can do God's work and help them in their grief, and so that we can ultimate re-define our perspectives on life.
Hang in there...
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