The God Who Is Big Enough
I got home from Liberia 54 days ago. I had the privilege of traveling with 6 incredible women on our first ever Better TogetHER trip. I looked around the center and saw women—some Liberian, some American, truly seeing one another, caring for one another. A baby would vomit onto their sheets and for a split second there would be struggle in the mother’s eyes—“How do I hold my sick child and clean these sheets?” And then not a moment later, another mother from the other side of the world would see the struggle and help clean and hold.
I watched and thought to myself—“this, this is heaven on earth.”
It has taken me 54 days to process. If I am being completely honest with you as a team of ambassadors—this was the hardest trip for me to date. Writing is usually an outlet for me, and I could sit over coffee and talk about JLMCC for DAYS, but there is a part of my heart that has been quiet since returning. It’s hard to put into words the great paradox that exists between those walls:
So. Much. Beauty.
and
So. Much. Heartache.
If I think about the goal of the Better TogetHER program, it is this: For each ambassador to be so familiar with this place that, even if you haven’t stepped through the doors, your heart knows it.
So, let me start with a couple amazingly beautiful things happening within those walls!
1. Specialty care: Think about this—if your child is diagnosed with epilepsy in the States, you are referred to a neurologist. In Liberia, there is one doctor per 20,000 people (and this is a generous estimate). This means that the doctors that are available are focused on mass issues within the country: malaria, typhoid, TB, pneumonia, malnutrition—not your specialty illnesses like epilepsy, sickle cell, and asthma. JLM is treating children every day through inpatient and outpatient care, but the center also hosts a different “focus group” of kids each week.
We were able to see the sickle cell group, and the benefit of that community was so evident—parents forming relationships with other parents who struggled with the same heartache, children receiving individualized care that they need, and staff being able to monitor children each month for any decline.
2. The staff. I could go on, and on, and on about the staff. Steady employment in Liberia is a big deal—and something that the people take great pride in. The nurses and doctors and janitors and PA’s and lab professionals take their jobs seriously. They are the heartbeat of the Jesus Loves Me Children’s Center. The nurses are trained to scan the outpatient line, watching for the sickest of children. If a child is in crisis, they are to pick the child up in their arms and run to inpatient yelling, “Help! Help! Help!” loudly as they run. This will alert inpatient nurses to make room on a bed and gather around the incoming child. Seeing this scenario unfold during my trip was incredibly moving—and witnessing such a response in a country where the healthcare system is so limited felt nothing short of miraculous.
Day 4 at the clinic proved to be the one that took the wind out of all of us. Baby Joanna, 3 years old, had been admitted a couple of days prior. She was a sick, sick toddler who had been previously treated at a bush clinic. She had ingested so many medicinal herbs that she was unconscious upon arrival. The team could not find a vein suitable for an IV, and therefore placed an IO (intraosseous access) directly into the bone marrow into her leg. After days of her body weakening, she coded, and after 2 rounds of CPR, her little body could fight no longer.
We watched the nurse stop CPR and the grandmother start to weep. She was there in place of the mother because the mother had just given birth to a newborn the week prior. Time seemed to stand still in the clinic—the air thick with the grief that comes with a life lost too soon. Joyce, the nurse supervisor, quickly walked over to a large cabinet and pulled out a print of Jesus holding a baby, surrounded by all the beautiful colors of heaven. Thank you, Layne Condra (a friend and supporter in the States) who created this to be given to each parent who loses a baby at the Jesus Loves Me Children’s Center.
This story is hard—but, if I only told you the beautiful parts of the story, you would get a shiny view of a very hard reality. And as a team of ambassadors, I believe that you want to know the gritty. Because the more we know, the more we can do.
So here is the reality: this beautiful place that is so close to all of our hearts is a place where there is a tough paradox every day. Life and death. Giggles and retracted breathing. Mothers full of fear and mothers full of hope. One would think that these great paradoxes cannot exist within the same walls.
But, we just celebrated Easter: a day that somehow encompasses the beauty of life and death. A paradox that our minds cannot fully grasp. May we believe, deep down in our bones, that God is big enough to cradle Joanna in one arm in heaven, while also reaching down and holding every other child in the inpatient ward. And that in both Joanna’s death, and their life, that He is meeting them and holding them—just in different places.
I love you, team.
I am so deeply thankful that we have been brought together to lift this place up. May we always remember what an honor and responsibility it is to live out Matthew 25:40.
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”