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
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