Such are the Dreams of a Corporate Woman

So last night I had a dream.  I dreamed I was back in the office again, working at a computer and making a comfortable living.  I'm going to be very honest here.....at times, the thought of going back to that lifestyle appeals to me.  I've always found myself successful at jobs where I know the rules.  There's a right way to do something, and there's a wrong way to do something.  There's never really any sort of panic involved in having to put out little fires every day.  It's routine.  It's predictable.  And, let's face it, in a land of constant unpredictability, expecting something and it actually being the way you expected it sounds pretty good to me.  Especially on the days where there isn't any power or running water.  But I also know that lifestyle of predictability was sucking the life out of me.  I was excelling at my job, I loved my co workers and they loved me, I was making enough money to live a very comfortable lifestyle and was even in the process of taking classes to get a promotion.  But I wasn't happy.  The things I deal with on a daily basis are hard.  People get sick and die.  Extreme poverty unlike I have ever seen is constantly and endlessly abounding.  There is an merciless amount of corruption, greed, and violence.  Without a doubt, this is the most difficult place I have ever lived in my entire life.  Yet, the remarkable thing is, despite this, I have never been happier. Living in God's purpose makes all of the other things look like gravy.  Yes, going through these thing is difficult.  Sometimes, it's so difficult I find myself longing for an airplane and a ticket back to the states.  But then I think of all that I would miss if I chose to go back to being safe.  I would miss working in God's purpose for me.  I would experiencing all of the miraculous and wondrous ways He manages to untangle even the most seemingly impossible problems, in ways better than I ever could have imagined.  I would miss finding out who I am capable of being, not by my possessions but by my character.  I would miss seeing God's love, mercy and grace transform seemingly helpless individuals into givers of light.  I would miss the glory of God in all of its amazing and incredible splendor.  And for me, being "safe" is not worth sacrificing even one of those things, let alone all of them.  The rewards I reap here far outweigh any sort of uncomfortable situation I might experience.  Some people think i'm crazy for wanting to live my life here.  And I can understand that.  From an outsider's point of view it may seem like a very dangerous and difficult place to set up shop.  But the way I see it is this....how can I even think of living anywhere or doing anything else?  Nothing is better than today....nothing is more perfect than this moment.

Karibu Sophie's Place!

"Then Jesus said, 'Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28

For about three months now, I have felt the Lord calling me to expand my ministry.  Some of you many know that my ultimate goal for the ministry is to provide hospice services for women who are dying of AIDS and other catastrophic illnesses, are homeless and have been abandoned by their friends, families, and even their churches.  However, I am also a realist.  God has shown me time and time again that I must learn to crawl before I learn to walk.
That said, when I return from the states in July, I would like to forge ahead with the opening of Sophie's Place.  Sophie's Place is named for my great grandmother, Sophia Dietrich, and my grandmother, Juliette Sophia Dietrich Robinson, two Christian women who were the kindest women I have ever known.  It only seemed fitting to name this place after them.  The intent of Sophie's Place is to provide women with an opportunity to have respite from their household responsibilities and rest from the burdens of their illnesses for two days per month. The plan is for one woman at a time to come to my home at nine o'clock in the morning, and leave at four.  During this time she will have the opportunity to have three full, healthy meals and choose from a wide variety of activities including:

1. Having her own private bedroom for rest and contemplation.

2. Lying in the hammock or on the grass.

3. Reading from the bible or from a wide variety of books.

4.  Listening to relaxing music.

5.  Receiving a foot massage with lotions and/or scented oils.

6.  Watching a movie.

7.  Going for walks or meditating in nature.

8.  Spending one on one time with me, talking about hopes, dream, fears, or anything else.

9.  Each woman will receive her own journal to take with her when she leaves.

10. Possible pet therapy

As you may imagine, this is going to take some money.  However, not nearly as much as you might think.  The first priority I have is a need for a one time $50 donation to buy a mattress, bed frame, blankets, pillows and sheets.  Believe it or not, $50 will buy all of that.  I'm going to be needing weekly donations of $20 for transportation to and from the center, and a weekly donation of about $40 for food, soaps, lotions, etc.  And really, that's about it.  If you'd like to help out,it would be such a blessing and I would love to hear from you. Be blessed!

                                                       Karibu Sophie's Place!

Caleb

Little Caleb.  And when I say little Caleb, I mean little Caleb.  He was one of the littlest guys in the children's cancer ward.  He was always a silent warrior of neuroblastoma.  I never heard him complain, and I never saw him cry.  His eyes always held a gentle, sweet sadness.  Any questions you asked him always got the same reply: "Caleb".  How are you today?  Caleb.  Would you like a sweet?  Caleb.  The thing I remember most about Caleb is that, despite the fact that both of us could not understand each other's language, it didn't matter.  The love we shared easily broke through all communication barriers and we knew what we were saying.  His little body fit so easily into my embrace.  He allowed me to hold him for hours, singing to him, rubbing his back, kissing his cheek.  He silently and completely absorbed all of the love and comfort I could give to him.  He would wrap his little arms around my neck or my waist and hug me just as long as I was hugging him.  Caleb taught me that love doesn't need to come with a price tag, or grandiose gestures.  Sometimes, a simple hug and holding onto the ones who mean the most in our lives do just fine.

Loving Unconditionally

I met a new friend this past week.  Her name is Carly*, and she's from the US.  When I first met her, I thought she was very nice and gracious (she introduced herself and then immediately invited me to lunch), and she reminded me a lot of me when I first came to Kenya.  Very naive, VERY excitable, a little immature, and thinking I didn't need any sort of instruction whatsoever with living in the culture or living among Kenyan people.  She asked to accompany me to the hospital, so I invited her to go with me yesterday.  While we were in the hospital, I saw her change before my eyes. I wanted to make sure she wouldn't have a lot of surprises, so I talked with her about the things she may see and experience before we went.  The very first thing we did is something I do once or twice a week: we hand fed bananas to people who are so severely burned, they can't move.  Up until that moment, Carly had been volunteering in an orphanage.  Don't get me wrong; orphanages are great and of course they are necessary.  However, I feel that in some, they might not offer the true depth of the difficult reality of the plight of Kenyan people.  When faced with the bare bones of the harsh and brutal realities of Kenya staring back at her, I saw her change.  It was a surprise, but also such a delight to see.  She found an inner strength inside herself that she never knew was there.  She was compassionate, loving, kind and humble.  She no longer felt like she knew everything, and she asked a lot of good questions.  Most importantly, she showed the patients that, despite their situations that cause most folks to turn away in fear, underneath the burns and scars they are actual people who deserve to be loved, cared for, and treated with the same respect as anyone else. Throughout the six and a half months since its beginning, P.A.L. has hosted many volunteers from all over the world.  One of the joys for me is to see these beautiful transformations in people who come into the hospital one way, and emerge at the end of the day transformed.  I can talk about the hospital and my patients until I am blue in the face (seriously, I really can!), but it's like describing a color no one has ever seen before.  You can't know the true depth of what it actually means to share God's love with people until you've actually rolled up your sleeves and done it.  Until you've continued praying or comforting someone in pain among the screams, moans and cries of the other patients.  Until you've continued praying for someone despite having any number of bodily fluids unexpectantly being spewed across the room, and experienced God's protection being safely out of harm's way.  Until you've actually seen before your eyes the love of God fill a person's soul and relieve them from agonizing, unrelenting pain they had been experiencing moments before.  Until you see the beautiful joy and elation in their eyes when you tell them they aren't hurting anymore because you employed the simple solution of asking the Lord for help and He answered your prayer.  Until you feed someone who can't feed themselves.  Until you go to wherever a person is, be it on the floor, in a chair, on a bed, or in the street, and hold that person who feels completely unloveable and have their tears soak your shirt as you tell them they are loved, and loved unconditionally.  I really could write about this forever, but my depictions mean nothing unless you experience it first hand.

Feeling unconditionally loved by God and by others is all I could ask not only for my patients, but for everyone.  At the end of the day if people's interactions with me allow them to feel loved and worthy of love, it was a very successful day.  Apart from the fact that I have been passionate about the medical field my entire life, I think another reason why I am so passionate about my patients and am willing to dedicate my life to sharing God's love with them is because I know what it feels like to feel unloveable.  I also know what it feels like to experience unconditional love and the incredible changes in one's self than can come about from experiencing that.  I feel like I can do absolutely anything.  No dream or desire is too big for me and God to fulfill.  I want nothing more for my life than to help others feel this way, too.  There's an old adage we are fond of saying around here: Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day.  Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime.  I don't necessarily want to make other people's dreams come true.  I don't have the ability to do that, nor do I claim to. What I want for my patients is for them to know they have the power to make their own dreams come true.  I can only imagine the amazing, glorious changes this world would experience if everyone felt their big, beautiful dreams could somehow come true.  I've seen so many lives changed for the better because people believed they could make their dreams come true.  The common denominator in all of this is that we share unconditional love with others because we first experienced God's unconditional love for us.  When I think of how much  the Father loves all of us and the amazing things that love can do, it brings tears to my eyes. If we allow its natural flow in the order of our lives, the power of unconditional love has infinite possibilities.

*Name changed to protect privacy

Only the Strong Survive.....

DISCLAIMER: This entry is about a traumatizing incident involving a newborn baby boy.  If this subject matter offends you or makes you uncomfortable, please stop reading now.  Thank you.

So today, I was on my way to volunteer and give donations for an organization called Living Positive Kenya.  I was feeling pretty good, because I love these women.  They are all HIV positive, but they are happy, loving, kind and, most importantly surviving AND thriving.  I had to be accompanied by one of the ladies because I still did not know my way.  Shortly before we reached the building, my escort said to me, "I have to tell you there is a dead baby on the side of the road up ahead.  We have to use this road because there isn't any other road to use,".  She was so used to situations like this, it was like she was telling me about the weather.  I've heard of hundreds of these unfortunate babies born to mothers who couldn't take care of them and are dumped. But I had never seen one.  I asked her if she was sure the baby was dead.  She didn't know.  She also didn't know how long he had been there.  Apart from the fact that there really was no other way to travel than straight ahead, I also have medical training as an EMT, so I was praying I wasn't too late to save the baby's life.
I was too late.  Without going into all of the details, it was obvious to me from the moment I laid eyes on him that he had been dead for quite some time.  He was also lying in a garbage bag, tossed aside like discarded trash.  I cried out and stepped back so quickly I almost tripped over my own feet.  My reaction was automatic.  Throughout the two and a half cumulative years that I have been a hospital and hospice chaplain in Kenya, I've seen many, many people who have passed away.  Some were even babies.  But I had never seen anything, anything like this.  I was shaking, and I felt sick to my stomach.  I was advised to leave quickly before the police arrived, lest they think I had been involved in this baby's death in some way.  I said a quick prayer for the beautiful baby boy with the full of head of gorgeous, curly black hair, and went on my way.  About a half hour later I returned to see if he had been removed, and he had.

I promised myself from the beginning that I would be honest, so here it is: God has been whispering to my heart all day of the plight of the baby's mother.  How scared she must have been. How young. How inexperienced.  How desperate.  And I hear Him.  But I still can't help but feel angry, and even a little unsympathetic.  No matter what the circumstances, I can't wrap my brain around any form of justification as to why someone would do something like that.  Something is telling me that this baby's mother was very afraid that if she abandoned this child even to a reputable organizations that deal with this very problem, she would have been thrown in jail or forced to pay a bribe.  She wanted to see her baby be put in the arms of Jesus quickly rather than slowly, and with pain.  The possibilities are endless.  I named the baby Matthew, which means "gift from God", to remind myself and others that every single child is such a beautiful and precious gift from God, and, as such, they need to be loved and nourished and cared for.

After praying for bay Matthew, I proceeded to the center, gave out my donations, sang and prayed for the women there, and even gave a couple of the massages.  That is what we do.  We experience the situation, feel our feelings and process our emotions, cry if necessary, and then we move on.  I know it may make us appear to be cold and callus, but that is what we have to do to survive, and that is what we have to do to continue sharing God's love, mercy and grace with others who need it.  If we give in to chronic despair and depression in every situation that is handed to us, we will not be able to do God's good work, and satan will have won.  I cried with the program director after seeing baby Matthew. And I cried again in the bathroom of a medical clinic.  And I'm crying again right now as I am writing this.  And that's OK.  Through the tears I am still working for the glory of God.  Through all of the horrors and depressive circumstances I still believe we can and are changing the world one person at a time.  As long as there are people in the world who need God's love, mercy and grace, we will be there, regardless of circumstance.  This sin't just about feeding people, or loving them, or praying for them, or donating to them.  It is about finding a strength within you that you never knew you had, and using that strength to empower and change others.  Rest in peace, beautiful baby boy.  I will continue to share God's love, mercy and grace in your honor and memory.  You are loved.

Simple Pleasures

Earlier this evening, I was lying in my hammock, watching the sunset, and it occurred to me: God gave me such an awesome life.  Here I am, at the beginning of what could potentially be a very stressful time for me in planning my trip home, and through the grace of God, I'm calm.  I can enjoy this beautiful day the Lord has given me.  It wasn't so long ago, that wasn't the case.  It's taken me a long time to get adjusted to this new way of life.  I'm not just talking about living in a completely and thoroughly different culture, although I still find myself adjusting to that.  I'm talking about a life that did not include unmanageable amounts of stress and confusion each and every hour I was awake.  I used to thrive on drama and stress; now I really don't want any part of it.  I've lost some people in my life because I didn't want to deal with the constant drama.  However, I've also gained some pretty awesome people, too.  People who thrive not on drama, but serenity and peace.  Don't get me wrong; there are still times when my inner drama queen rears her annoying self, especially when there are constant stressors that trigger her appearance.  However, thankfully, those times are fewer and farther between (although these past few months have been a beaut and a half.  But, by God, I'm still standing).

I never, ever tire of the amazing love, grace and mercy of God.  He never ceases to amaze me in His love for  all of us.  Even in the sick and dying, He is able to give them joy, love and comfort.  Someone once told me that peace is always present, and can be found in any situation.  Sometimes it can be harder to find than others, but it is always there.  Sometimes, like in my living situation, you need to be proactive.  God was patiently waiting to give me everything I could ever want in a living situation in Kenya; however, I had to first be willing to want it for myself, too.  I had to love myself enough to believe that I deserved to live in an environment that is clean, safe, beautiful and quiet.  Once I let go and accepted that fact, everything else seemed to fall in place pretty quickly. Roughly two days after I started looking, I found the house of my dreams in the lower end of my price range, in a beautiful, quiet location.  Amazing.  The healing power of letting go.