This year had an odd start. Before I knew it, it had begun. Two thousand and eleven was far behind me, and as the fireworks shot through the air I knew that I know nothing.
This year also came with a highly anticipated internship at Hospital Vozandes Quito. On January 3rd it began slowly and awkwardly (perhaps mirroring my own self).
I began with Clinical rotation where I rarely got to see patients but rather listened intently to symptoms and possible diagnosis in the daily meetings the clinical doctors had. I was excited for the 8th of January to roll around for I would be in surgical rotation. I got to observe two amazing surgeries. But I couldn't shake the feeling of the importance of the patient. The importance of the person inside.
This had never mattered before,
or maybe it was all that had mattered before.
This week in my ER rotation a patient came in that seemed to bring everything into focus, or was it out of focus? I'm still not sure. This patient had physical wounds that required a lot of money to restore to full capacity. Money which they did not have.
So simple healing, not restoration, seemed like the only option left. And although bravery encompassed this patient fully, there was something beyond the eyes that screamed out sadness.
And my heart ached, for even though we could give the patient physical healing, there was a whole other part that didn't seem to also heal. It seemed as if the patient's spirit was also broken. How my hands ached to reach out and whisper comfort, whisper hope!
The only Hope I have known.
But this hope now seemed like a thin thread I was hanging onto dearly.
A thread that threatened to break every hour, every day.
I still longed to whisper of this God I once thought I knew.
Oh how I ached; how I ache still!
How could I breathe life into dry bones? How could I bring light into dark eyes?
How could I give someone the Hope I have been searching for and have not found fully? How could I share this very last fragment of Hope I have when I don't know what it means still? How could I explain this metaphysical area which I cannot fully grasp?
I couldn't. I can't.
I reluctantly left the patient. For although an inner war waged within my soul about God. He had never seemed so real as he did then.
When the last scrap of hope I owned seemed to leap out of me. When my hope in God was the only thing that room that seemed to really make things okay.
I still don't understand a lot. And all that I know is this hope. But maybe it's enough. Maybe it is what will pull me from this darkness. This hope in God that seems to speak louder than my faith. The God in which I hope. The God that stirs something deep within my soul, beyond what I could recognize.
