Comfort

There are some days I really could care less. This is true.

And yesterday, I just wanted to be sitting in ignorant bliss again. Days when I would read about something terrible in the news, feel the pain of it in my heart, and then the next day, let it roll right off the glossy sheen of pretend concern that we sometimes form over our recited prayers for the world. Nowadays, when I go to bed, I think about the wide, great gap that separates the patients from myself.

I am speaking of the material. The physical, the tangible, the economics of it all. That great wide gap.

We had a pastor's conference here a week ago. As I watched the local pastor's leave the ship donning their finest threads, I heard them chuckle and joke, saying, "Goodbye America, now we are in Liberia again!" In the modest furnishings of our hospital ship, they see the reflection of wealth that the Western world offers.

And in our hospitals, the patients don't understand vital sign machines, the medicines that taste bad or how a person can be opened up, sewn and then recover again.

And when I show a book to an adult patient, the story of Dick and Jane, or a children's Bible, or a story book, they look at me blankly. I think about how my 7 year old nephew is learning how to read and how it will never be a question for him whether or not he will have an education. He will. He just will.

And I am speaking of the spiritual. That great wide gap.

I am talking about a day during which I couldn't care less, and because I couldn't care less, I have to lean into the void of love that is in my heart. In my heart that wishes, I could be numb with pleasure, the things of the world, the happy husband, the happy children, the successful career, the struggle free, sick-free life. With a kind of nice, rustic fence around the house, please. The pretend thing that we all strive for that you will never have. And if you do, then you just want something else. And I walk that 50 feet down the lime green hallway because it is the right thing to do. And it is there that I see Comfort, mother of 10 year old Christian, born deaf and blind.

Comfort is learning how to knit. She is focused. She is proud of her farm. She grows cassava, limes, grapefruit, butter pears (avocados), plums (mangos), and much much more. She wants to make enough money to move to the city. She wants to come back to see me in September before I leave. She gives me a name in her local dialect, Kpelle. She calls me Gorpue. It means "one who shares." She loves Christian, her "pride and joy." She disciplines him, hugs him. He laughs, though he cannot hear his own sweet laughter. He sees now because of a Mercy Ships operation last year. He cannot hear, but he knows a loving touch.

Tonight, the ward is quiet and I am tired. I sit down next to Comfort and tell her just that. She calls me her knitting master. I smile. She begins to sing gospel songs, looking deep into my eyes. Her eyes are brown, like a brown bowl filled with water. She has a slight pink blush against her dark skin. Her hair is braided into a onion sprout pony tail at the top of her head. She sings to me, a song about Jesus and my heart begins filling up. Slowly, slowly. I get up and start dancing, moving around. I can't do African dancing, but its close to it, and the other ladies laugh and clap. She continues to sing, this time in Kpelle. I join her and somehow I know the words, and I think it is because we know the same God.

That spiritual gap begins to closes and I see before me some of the richest people in the world.