Where Joy and Sorrow meet

Look through the window of the pilot's entrance, and you will see a single hospital bed with the husk of a young woman so frail she could almost be blown away by the light breeze.  Just a few yards away, the sun is starting to fall over the waters and rocks and beaches beyond, streaming into the opened doors and onto the sheet.  The singing is soft in the sea air, Akpedada ye dze ne...He is worthy of thanks.

The pilot's entrance on deck 3 is designed to be opened during a sail, to let the port pilot on or off the ship, or to access the water for any other reason.  Usually we keep the doors closed, with eye patients going to and from surgery in the little room adjacent.  But Thursday was different, and with permission from the captain and help from a very accommodating eye team and deck crew, we wheeled Chanti and her big bed down the hall from ICU into the tiny room next door for some fresh air - a wistful request from earlier that morning.

Chanti has been here since the beginning, admitted shortly after screening day with badly infected wounds from a skin graft years ago.  Over the months she endured long dressing changes to keep her wounds clean and healing, surgeries, and - as it became evident that her body was not adequately fighting the infection – round after round of antibiotics.  Her nurses and physiotherapists, the patient life counselors, and the other patients on the ward became a family for her– there to pray with her, encourage her, and cheer her on in little successes like walking to the bathroom on her own.

I knew her mostly as emergency room nurses know their patients – in bits and pieces, hours and moments of fragmented care, while other nurses provide the steady and patient encouragement and monitoring over weeks and months of wound dressings and feeds and antibiotics and transfusions.  I was paged to start IVs and draw blood, to attempt EKG readings through and under the thick sterile dressings on her chest, and to make the blood transfusions run faster when they wouldn’t go quite fast enough.  It wasn’t until this week that I took care of Chanti for my first shift…and her last.  

Less than an hour after getting back to the ICU from the sunshine and sea and singing, after a last quiet talk in the language of her heart, Chanti passed away.  Her last words to a dayworker next to her bed were Jesus is here.  Because for Chanti it wasn't physical healing that she found on our hospital ship, but spiritual.  A few weeks ago, she met Jesus, and in him she has found life and hope and love.  We as her family grieve her loss and our limitations of care, but in her life and passing I've also found a true challenge to trust.  We may not always see the reasoning behind God's purposes, but He is good, and He is enough.  If the only reason Chanti was on ship for almost 3 months was to see Jesus, then this too is enough.

I'm in the place tonight where joy and sorrow meet.  But for Chanti, there is only joy now...Jesus is here.