“Sometimes I think we waste our words and we waste our moments, and we don't take the time to say the things that are in our hearts when we have the chance.”
– Clay from One Tree Hill
Love stands up for Love
With that being said, I am going to take this opportunity to share with you what is on my heart. Early one Saturday morning I went from leading devotions with a hot cup of coffee in my hand calm and smiling to speeding down the road with a labor in the backseat frantically passing jeepneys and praying for the baby inside of her with heart tones that should be 120-160 below 100 beats per minute. I arrived at the hospital swarming with army all decked out with big guns and a lot of ammunition. I wondered what was going on? I rushed my patient to the emergency room where the nurses calmly checked her in as I proceeded to check heart tones for them saying they are 76 now. They smiled asked me where I was from and if I was single? I wanted to say this is not the freaking time to discuss my relationship status however I knew I needed to comply for the sake of my patient. I answered their questions then started asking my own. “So where’s the doctor?” after hearing their response I asked in complete confusion, “What do you mean there are no doctors here?” I texted with Georgia (the director at Abundant Grace) and she started calling all the doctors until she finally found one who had just got off of night shift but was willing to go back for us. Several hours later an emergency cesarean was performed and a baby boy was welcomed most likely onto a cold metal table far from his mother. Then we discovered our patient we had referred three days before with severe complications was still in the labor room with a pitocin drip. The nurses had started it for her and she had not been seen recently by a doctor. Then we found our patient with severe diarrhea we referred earlier that morning. She was waiting for the doctor doing the cesarean to finish and hopefully treat her as well. Since I was there and in a very inquisitive mood thanks to the frustrating nurses at check-in I was also going to find out what the 30 army men were doing swarming the halls. I discovered three men had been killed the day before and several more injured due to tribal war.
As I drove back to the clinic I kept thinking to myself this is reality. This is not some crazy television show or bad dream. I am really referring women to the hospital for preterm labor praying their uterus will stop contracting and the baby will wait a few more months to be born only to find out the women have left and went to their homes fearing the hospital bills. I am really having to turn away women in labor that I have done several prenatals on because all of our beds are already filled with laboring women. There really are people killing each other in a land so magnificently beautiful over something as stupid as accidentally running over one of their chickens. When I hand a couple their sixth baby girl that was longing for a boy seeing it lay uncuddled wrapped in all blue, I want to be able to open my eyes. When a woman comes in with absolutely no labor support, person to wash her dirty birth laundry or cook a meal for her except her five year old daughter, I want it to be a dream. When I hear that there is a red van roaming the villages in search of children to kidnap and sell their organs everything seems to move in slow motion as I think this can not be reality. Reality is that we have turned a blind eye to the injustices around us long enough. God’s generosity to us must overflow into love for the rest of the world. We can love others because we are outrageously loved. It is urgent that Christians receive and experience a revelation of how much the Lord loves us.
So that is what is currently on my heart…Love is a fight. A fight full of struggles, tears and sleepless nights. A fight that will end with people finding hope, smiling again, sharing peace and feeling extravagantly, overwhelmingly and ravishingly loved by our Father that sacrificed His only Son in order to call us His sons and daughters. Will you join me in this fight for love?
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