let your light shine

i don't think you can know rich, until you know poor.
yes, i was at clinic today.
wealth has less to do with bank accounts and more to do with access and options.  i mean access to many things.  today i mean access to health care. 

access- the ability to approach, or enter or make use of.

this gets complicated. 

today i saw a baby. a cute, smiley, 7 week old little girl who i knew in once glance had something 'off'- more in the way a mom would know, than a doctor.  her mom explained that she was there for an HIV test- her first DNA PCR- to see if she'd contracted it from her mom.  but.  then she added - by the way, her head always flops back.  so i peeled away all the blankets- even thought it's so hot here now- and her head just kept on going.  it was too big, too long, measuring to the size of an adult head.  no wonder she couldn't manage it.  but the question becomes 'now what?'

in the US, primary care is a gateway to something.  here it's not.  this can lead to great dissatisfaction with ones job.  i had an easy time with the hypertensive cases, and the those needing antibiotics or not, even with diabetes we have some options, but this child?  i wanted neuro-imaging, a pediatric neurologist, and the availability of a pediatric neurosurgeon, and i wanted it to be affordable.  but she won't have any of these things. 

availability is a very different thing than access.  here we don't always even have availability, but when we do, the people very often don't have access- they can't 'make use of' because of poverty.

what shape does reassurance take in this situation- what shape does hope take?  what is the point of knowing the problem if you can't fix it?  or perhaps worse, if it's fixable, but just not for her. 

i promised myself i wouldn't cry in clinic- i even prayed that i wouldn't.  i didn't ugly cry, but my eyes got pretty wet. this is why i never wanted to do pediatrics- i can't deal with sick kids- it breaks my heart in little pieces.  or is not the age, but the absolute lack of real access?  what good is knowledge if it won't help.

the mom was looking at me- but her head is fine right? she said.
no.  her head isn't fine.  it's too big. 
and i get it, because i've been there. right there. i've been there with my baby. holding my boy with his big head.  but when i asked her what she was most worried about, she said 'money'.  and money was the farthest thing from my mind when i held my baby and his head. and i knew in that second, how truly rich i am and have always been and always will be.  i have options.  i have availability and i have access.  and i have people that would work extra shifts to pay for access if i couldn't. 

poverty steals something from people that i might not have thought about before- it steals the little bits of control that we have over things that we ultimately have no control over. 

that is the difference.  i am rich- we all are. 

today a group of students from the US are coming to our house to talk to us about why we moved our lives to africa - why we took small children and sold things and ended up here.  we'll give them cookies and tea and fresh juice and then we'll sit down and tell them.  a long time ago we fell in love with east africa.  we knew there was a need and we knew we had some tools that might help. because it pulled and pushed and called out.  because life isn't about being comfortable, it isn't even about being happy all the time.  life is about giving of yourself where you can- where you feel you are supposed to be.  because in life, you do the best you can.  you try to break enough so that you care even more, but not so much you fall apart.  you work and you learn where the systems break down and where you can plug the holes.  you pray every morning that you'll be given the wisdom to know when to make it fixable for one- and for which one.  you allow yourself to cry and you can get up and do it again.

and maybe we do it because we are so very rich in so very many ways.  maybe we do it because my baby boy, who i held in my arms as this woman held her child, just ran across the yard; my healthy, happy, smart almost 7 year old with his no longer big head.  maybe we do it because of a small church in mbale who prayed for that boy- because that is what they could do. maybe because we serve a great big God who answered those prayers and who loves us so dearly and asks us to be lights in this world.  because sometimes being lights takes the form of trying and working in a broken system.  sometimes being lights takes the form of telling that woman my story- to give her hope- in a God who is bigger than the broken system- bigger than her poverty.  sometimes being a light is just being with someone who is standing in darkness.