When You Can't Trace His Hand

At home back at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, every day I dealt with kids that died. I remember the day my first patient died after transplant and I went home and just sobbed, despite the fact that I barely knew her. But in time, with each passing death I encountered, I became somewhat immune. My heart couldn’t handle all the grief and I somehow began to block out the emotion after I’d seen so many children die.

So when I signed up to work with an organization that brings hope and healing to the forgotten poor, I wasn’t expecting a lot of death here onboard the Africa Mercy. More than that, I wasn’t expecting to get attached. Most patients that come through the ward on Mercy Ships come in and out in a matter of weeks. But Anicette and her reluctant little body just didn’t want to gain weight, and she was here for months in the infant feeding program last year. She was loved by everyone and we all got to celebrate in her achievements together. You can read about her in my previous blog post here. After many months of slow growth, she finally had her surgery to repair her cleft lip in November. Here she is just a few days before surgery - a chunky monkey!  We got to see her Mama care for and love this child so much. Anicette was transitioning off her specialized formula and doing great, so she was sent on her way, with the hope to return in 2010 for cleft palate surgery.

So it was quite the shock when she returned to us on Friday from Benin, emaciated beyond imagine and barely recognizable. As I picked her little body up I wanted to cry. I told her mama Zenabou that she did well for bringing her back to us. I hoped with all my heart that we could get her back to what she was when she left us in November.  Clearly there was something very wrong with her little body and its inability to digest nutrients, as she’d been throwing up and having diarrhea for weeks. I hoped we would have the capability to send away for specialized tests to work up whatever metabolic issue it was. I hoped to make a case to the formula company for her incredibly expensive specialized formula that worked previously onboard– a hope that she could get the formula for years to come if needed. Perhaps a large feat for a child living in Africa, but nothing is impossible with God.

But I didn’t get that chance. Yesterday, the overhead pager went off “Emergency Medical Team to A Ward” and my heart sank. I thought “please God we have a full code palliative care patient on A ward. Don’t let it be Anicette.”

But this little bundle of love went to be with Jesus yesterday. Her frail body couldn’t take it anymore when her airway became compromised and she was too weak to fight. I watched her mama Zenabou with wailing sobs as the nurse took her away from the commotion of trying to resuscitate her, and my heart broke.

As the doctor onboard said yesterday, while God didn’t intend for this, he did allow it. Our goal isn’t always to heal people. Sometimes it is to make the effort to help them in the best way we know how. Sometimes that results in death and sometimes in new life.

When Anicette died yesterday, Zenabou explained that Ani was her second baby she’d lost. Her other baby just couldn’t eat she said.  None of us knew she had been through this before.  Currently Zenabou is pregnant for the third time. So after asking for prayer for Anicette yesterday, today I ask for prayer for Zenabou. Pray for a miraculously healthy pregnancy. Pray that the baby in her tummy wouldn’t be born with the same problem that her other two children had. That she would be welcomed back into a village where she was previously cast out for having a child with a deformity. That despite her huge loss and grief, pray that Zenabou would feel overwhelming love and peace that surpasses all understanding.

“God is too good to be unkind. He is too wise to be mistaken. So when you can’t trace His hand, that’s when you must learn to trust His heart.”