Why me...why Africa?

I was thinking about that question this week, as I prepare to leave and head back to the States. It's easy enough to spout platitudes about helping the poor, to say that I'm a nurse and help heal the hurting. Truly, none of us can take credit for any of this. The more I work in the medical field the more I realize that no matter how good of a job I do as a nurse, it will never be enough. I just do the best job I can, pray, and have to let God do the rest.

So why am I here? It didn't make sense to me at first. An ER nurse going to work on a surgical ship as a pediatric postop nurse; a girl fluent in Indonesian and English going somewhere where they speak French and Ewe. Wouldn't it make sense to go somewhere else, to be involved in something other than surgery? In short, why did God tell me to come to the Africa Mercy?

It was for you my prayer partners to be a part of something bigger that challenges all you might take for granted. It was for the patients and families to see an expression of Christ's love for THEM. And it was for me. I've been strengthened, challenged, stretched, and had my faith deepen in a way I've never known before. I have had my heart broken for the things that break Christ's, and my eyes are wide open.

Life is not all about making sense. That's the wild and crazy thing. It is in our weakness that God can show His strength. Being here, in part, is for me. When I realize my own limitations it is so easy to step back and let God take over. Things that I've never seen happen in the US, things that go against all my emergency training, somehow work. Prayer works, in desperate situations where nothing else does. The prayer, the life, the love and the service is direct contradiction to everything my culture holds up as an ideal, a healthy challenge to a worldly standard. He truly is showing his power in the lives of these patients, my coworkers, and my life. And without a doubt, worship will never be the same after the wild ward church dancing!

Would it have happened without me? Absolutely. Will it go on when I leave? You bet. Can God work in and through my life and talent? That is why he gave them to me. I was here for a purpose. I was here to strip and wax floors and bleach the hospital inside out, to give Mariam my blood when she didn't have enough of her own, to put IV after IV into her and other patients with dehydration and difficult veins. To get a struggling little girl through her first postop night in the ICU, to hold pressure on a bleeding artery, to be CPAP for baby Brian and to soothe and cuddle him as he fought for each breath, to grieve with his mama at her devastating loss. I was here to have long talks with roommates and friends, to give back massages, to carry a love-starved child on my back until she fell asleep. To sing on deck in the sunrise of an Easter morning, to dance with cast footed kids to the beat of the drums, to bring my last gatorade packet to a sick friend or nurse them through an illness...

But if it was only one of these small things that I was here to do, it would be enough...just one.