I’m currently in the throes of readjusting to life in Boston: still a little jet lagged, thrown wildly by the ten inches of snow we woke up to yesterday morning, and with half my mind and heart still back at Tenwek. But the good news is that Lent starts tomorrow, and it’s an excellent time to start reflecting on what God has done in me over the past month and how that should be part of me moving forward – I appreciate that the liturgical rhythms of my church tradition force me into contemplation and reflection on a regular basis.
My last week was, as usual, all of the things I expected it to be and yet still surprising. I will have equally poignant memories of sitting on the swing in Riverside, relishing beautiful evening hours with friends, and of sitting on the floor in the paeds resuscitation room, holding a weeping mother whose baby had just passed away. There were moments of exhaustion and disbelief and moments of joy and gratitude. I missed my official opportunity to say farewell at Wednesday morning devotions because we were elbows-deep intubating a teenage girl in HDU – though for the record, I’d rather be intubating than making speeches any day. And there was a quiet final round of chai and mandazi (and sausage!) on Friday morning as we calculated TPN for a toddler with an esophageal stricture and the interns surreptitiously circulated a goodbye card while I pretended not to see.
As I told friends there, I’m a terrible leaver, which is perhaps just a euphemism for transitioning poorly. So after doing morning rounds Friday, I insisted on the driver giving me time for lunch with the Ganeys and for a final farewell to the paeds team during their lunch at the Sleeths’. (The simplest route to achieving a later departure? Not showing up until you’re ready to leave.) And then away. I felt the challenge of leaving more intensely this time than I usually do. In part, it’s the busyness and intensity of the service I left behind and a heightened recognition of the challenges of sole responsibility and the scope of the work. Equally, though, is the family I became a part of last month, who welcomed me not as a guest, but as one of their own, and loved me so, so well.
The volume of tears shed on the journey back is best left undiscussed, but the intensity of the embraces in which I was enfolded the next day at church was deeply comforting. And the inevitable question? How was your trip? Well, it was all of the things: wonderful and terrible and heartbreaking and amazing and challenging and exhausting and beautiful.
The sermon text on Sunday was Micah 6:8: He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. Solidarity with the suffering is a whole-life calling, not a one-month-a-year calling, and not something I can tick off on an annual basis. Tomorrow we will be marked by the sign of the cross in the imposition of ashes as we enter a season of repentance, reflection and renewal. I’ll be praying also for stillness and quiet in the next forty days, and for God to speak clearly into it.
