I am not forgotten

Chantalle's face lit up as she danced her whole heart out in praise to the Lord. Arms lifted high in praise, her feet pounded out the rhythm along with other mama and patients, a worship service like no other. Because this congregation is still bandaged, still bleeding, still casted, still disfigured. Nurses mixed in with the patients - a fussing child tied on a yovo back here and there to give a mama some relief.

Jasmine sat on my lap, still drooling a bit after her palate surgery almost a week ago. I remember just the day after I had taken care of her in the ICU mama called me over on deck to rejoice with her that the nasal airway was taken out and she was breathing well on her own. The little nose is clear now of airways and feeding tubes, the small fingers twined around mine as we sing, "I can't do without you in my life, oh Lord..."

Baby Brian lay in mama's arms in a corner bed, body bouncing a bit as she clapped in time. He is still on a bit of oxygen, our miracle baby is still a sick little boy, still has his moments where he struggles to breathe and then stops, to start again.

Like everything else in our floating world, the songs and sermons and sharing are a mix of English translated to French to Ewe and Fon, or vice versa. The maracas and small drums played by patients and staff, a whiskered cleft lip baby dancing on his mother's lap. A little girl with her face melted away by Noma banging legos together and singing in a language no one else understands.

It puts my heart to shame, witnessing this unabandoned joy in worship. How often do we refuse to rejoice, refuse to be thankful, thinking of all that we could have. And these who have nothing, worshipping with everything they have. Those who have been cast out and forgotten, the broken and hurting, with maybe just enough to survive.

I haven't told you about Chantalle. She came early with her little boy Mark, a skeletal 4-month-old with a smile for everyone. Bit by bit he gained weight, tucked away in a corner of the ward or at the hospitality center until his lip and palate could be fixed. I didn't recognize him when I saw him again, with dimples in his knees and a chubby fist tucked in around the cleft.

Like so many of our babies with holes in their mouths, he inhaled his milk one day and surgery had to be postponed until the pneumonia was treated. Finally the surgery day arrived, only to have his throat close down in reaction to the anesthetic gas. Emergently intubated, then trached, Mark is still in the ICU with a hole in his throat allowing him to breathe, connected to oxygen and tube feeds and central IV lines. "What about this one," I asked God. "Ana you took home, Brian you kept here. Have you forgotten this one?" And yet in all of this Chantalle continues to praise her Lord with her whole heart, with total abandon.

What makes us think that we can demand things of God, that we are entitled to privelege, health, and wholeness? When is it that we will finally be able to say with Job, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised!" When will we be able to rejoice in the presence of God, knowing with certainty that they, and we, are NOT forgotten.