Some things feel quite weird, but you know
they’re good. I’ve experienced quite a bit of that feeling recently. I work on
a hospital ship, but the extent of my medical expertise includes putting
band-aids on my students and giving them my most sage teacher advice for the
two things that heal any ailment:
1.
“Why don’t you you get a wet paper towel to
put on it for a bit.”
Or…
2.
“How about you go take a big sip of water!”
I want to spend time down with the patients
in the wards, but it’s quite an uncomfortable place for me because I can’t help
them physically in any way and I always feel that I’m in the way. However, if I
don’t intentionally go spend time in the wards, I will never even see the
patients who are the very reason we are all here. Sooooo, that’s how I ended up
for the past two Fridays down in the wards where I don’t feel at all that I
belong… and it was good! I’d like to say that I jumped in and tried to talk to
others in French and Fon and held lots of littles with arms wrapped stiff and
made everyone feel the love of God…it was a bit more like trying to get out of
the way of nurses with medicine, watching babies who I wish I could hold, and awkwardly
smiling at patients with whom I really have no other way of communicating what
with my tiny amount of French and miniscule amount of Fon. But two Fridays ago
I did get to play Uno with a group of patients, and hold one little guy with
wrapped hands before he decided he liked the nurses better, and yesterday I
brought dot paints down for the patients to play with and held the hand of one
of the little girls who couldn’t get out of her bed to play with the dot
paints.
In
the same way I want to intentionally make spending time with patients a normal
activity in my kindergarten class. This past week was the first week that we
went out to deck 7 in the afternoon to play with patients. We talked beforehand
about what they might see and how to treat the patients with care and the girls
immediately expressed fear about going out. I asked what they were scared of
and they said, “well, the bandages and stuff!” We decided to pray that God
would help us to have courage and be kind and I wish everyone could have heard
my littles pray! One of them prayed with such fervor and sincerity, “Dear God,
help the patients to put on Your healing and help us not to be scared because
they are just normal people with nasty diseases! They are just normal people!!!”
When we did go out, the girls were apprehensive, but quite excited! They told
me that they thought they might like to stay close to me and I told them that
that was ok. In accordance with what I have experienced down in the wards, I’d
like to say that it was glamorous and amazing and that my littles became fast
friends with the little patients and they knew God’s love because we came out
to play with them…however it was more of that awkward goodness that I mentioned
before. We brought out a princess memory game and spent quite a bit of time
trying to get the one patient who wanted to play with us to not flip over all
the memory cards at once and attempting not to get in the way of the National
Geographic team that was filming out there. It’s was more jostling and
overwhelming than glamourous and compassionate, but it was a start.
So,
my endeavor to connect with the patients onboard, and have my littles do the
same, has begun. It hasn’t been easy or what I imagined and I don’t always want
to go, but it’s something that is important to me and more importantly, it’s important
to God I believe. So I’ll keep on in the endeavor and pray that as I continue,
the awkward goodness will become less and less awkward, and more and more
goodness.
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