Life's not fair. We know. But sometimes Life seems so much more appallingly unfair to some than to others.
As some of you know from the emails and Facebook publicity I began circulating a few weeks ago, one of the fourth grade students at Christian Academy of Petit Gôave (CAP), Haiti is very sick. Anaika, eensy, weensy, teeny, tiny, petite, quick as a hiccup, sharp as a tack, and sometimes as sassy as a snapdragon, sweet little Anaika who has been achieving top-marks since she could make "rounds" and "lines" on the chalkboard with the other three-year old dumplings in Preschool 1, is sick. Bed-ridden, hospital-resident, no-release-date sick.
Life in Haiti is always dramatic, constantly an on-the-edge risky business with Death the next careless chauffer taking the corner too fast in his careening charcoal truck. Sickness shared through the household along with the blankets, bar of soap, comb, and soup plate. Death is so commonplace that funerals are as much celebration of life and social to-do as weddings and graduations.
Death has already taken two CAP students, one just under a year ago. Death has come much too close to Anaika already.
The local hospital could do no more for her when the oxygen ran out and they had no more resources to help her swollen little body. They sent her off to the capital, with best wishes perhaps, while we who have taken children to that hospital as patients, hoped it could only go up from here.
At first, Anaika's move seemed a curse. She was refused entrance. She couldn't be treated. She didn't have the proper paperwork. The hospital was unreachable through traffic or road blockades. Anaika's trip seems to run into only the brick walls of the hopeless maze of the Haitian medical "system."
Fortunately God doesn't abide by the laws of physics and is not the least inhibited by walls. God instead arranged a complex network of people who knew people who made calls who got things moving and opened doors. An ambulance was sent for Anaika: a fully-equipped ambulance with oxygen and monitoring machines and trained EMTs. This ambulance navigated the congested roads of Port au Prince and in just 15 minutes had Anaika at Hope Hospital in her own room.
There, in her own full-sized hospital bed, further dwarfing her malnourished, underdeveloped nine-year old form, Anaika was attended to by capable staff, under the care of the only available nephrologist (kidney doctor) in the country. Hope Hospital not only boasts this nephrologist but excellent equipment and hygienic, well-maintained facilities that are indeed a rarity in Haiti.
Anaika has been under the good care of the Hope Hospital staff since March 16. Her parents have been rather overwhelmed with the size and technology of the hospital. Loving, bubbling, gregarious people, Anaika's mother and father have always been incredibly supportive of their childrens' education and the school as a whole. As of this year all three of their children attend the school (the youngest is in Preschool 1) and all are very bright. Mom and Dad clearly see the benefit of education, such that might bring their children out of the one-room house with a dirt-floor, that might relieve them of the worry of eviction and starvation, that might afford medical care.
Clearly Hope Hospital is a larger, grander, more modern and pristine facility than that to which the family, in fact most families of CAP students, is accustomed. However, despite being out of their ken, pulled from their town and home to stand at the bedside of their terribly ill daughter, Mom and Dad keep smiling. Despite the enormity of the medical bills continuing to pile, money they could never hope to make in their lifetimes as a marchand and mason, despite the dreadful prospect of dialysis multiple times a week for forever--Mom and Dad are not overwhelmed.
I see in their faces and hear in their voices the same cheerful gratitude and head-shaking, awe-inspiring, humbling resilience I have always witnessed. Because these are people utterly reliant on God, people joyous through every circumstance, struck down but not destroyed.
Just today the school Director Beverly sent me a
video of Anaika’s mama, Madame JM, standing at Anaika’s bedside
where she was curled up on her side in blue hospital gown, wires connected to
her bare feet, hair tucked into a cap. Madame stands with one hand on Anaika’s forehead
and smiles into the camera, expressing gratitude for all the help they’ve been
given, “for without it, we couldn’t manage. Nou pa’t kapab.”
Along with these two short videos of Madame were photos of
Anaika sleeping. Her little face is scrunched up in discomfort, knees drawn up
to her abdomen. Her kidneys hurt before dialysis, Beverly tells me. And my heart
breaks all over again.
Dialysis is a terrible thing. It's a dreadful non-future, a cruel fate of constant waiting, pain, suffering, uncertainty. Dialysis is dreadful for anyone to endure: it seems worse for a child. It seems worser for a child from a country like Haiti. For a child like Anaika, so bright, such a shining star in school, such a pride and joy to her parents, people who for all their lives have scrambled for the crumbs and scraps Life has spitefully, niggardly occasionally doled them.
It's so unfair. I want to pound my fists and kick my heels and scream and cry. Sometimes I do. I cry out to God and bawl about how it's so unfair and how can He allow this?
"Why don't You just heal her?" I demand, sometimes. "You can, God! You told the little girl to Get Up! and she did!" And I read again about Jairus' daughter, how Jesus took her hand and commanded her to Get Up, then returned her to her delighted parents.
It's so unfair. So unfair that some are healed, that some are healthy, and some are not. So unfair that some of us are born into such privilege and comfort, and some are not. It's not fair.
Some weeks ago our pastor at First Congregational Church of Kingston, Pastor Josh, reminded us about the most unfair event that ever happened. He told us about a man who was struggling. The man really didn't want to do what God was calling him to do. He knew it would be hard, it would be painful, it would be awful. And he would be all alone. No one could do it for him. No one could go with him. In fact, even God Himself would abandon the man. Obviously the man didn't want to do it.
He prayed hard, asking God, begging God, to make another way. The man was exhausted from traveling and working long hours teaching, but he stayed up late into the night, praying. He asked his friends to pray with him because it was so important. The man was so upset and so lonely he was hoping his friends could comfort and support him. Instead, they fell asleep. He woke them up and asked them to pray again, then went back by himself, face-down before God, asking for another way so he would not have to go through such a terrible ordeal.
Twice more the man checked in with his friends. Both times they had fallen asleep instead of praying over him like he had asked. But the man wasn't angry. He still felt empathy for them. He knew they were tired and sad and scared, too. The man had accepted what God wanted him to do. It was horrible, it was going to be the worst thing anyone would ever do, but the man agreed to do it.
"If You want me to, I will," he said. "Not mine, but Your Will be done."
The man would be arrested on a false charge. He would be lied about by hired "witnesses" who couldn't agree on their alleged testimonies. He would be accused of doing things he never did. His words were twisted and perverted and his lessons of love rejected with hatred. People hit him. They covered his eyes then hit him and laughed and told him to guess who had hit him. They passed him from one judge to another. The judges realized the charges were false and the "witnesses" were faulty. They realized that there was no reason to imprison or punish the man. But the judges were scared of the mobs of people. They were scared for their reputations, of losing face, losing power and position. One judge agreed to let a proven murder and terrorist go free from prison instead of the man. Then he agreed to have the man whipped, and then to be executed. And the same people who had only days before paraded around the man proclaiming their excitement, fauned over him and fought for his attention, laughed at him as he walked to his death, bleeding from dozens of wounds.
The man had no last request. No last meal. No last call or last visit. His mother could not see him. He was arrested in the dead of night in a park, tried, beaten, and executed in under 24 hours with no defense, counsel, or hope of appeal. Swift justice. No justice.
The man was innocent. He was innocent of the crimes of which he was accused. He was innocent of any crime, of any misdeed, any shadow of misconduct. The man never spoke words which were not kind or helpful. He never lied. He never pushed or kicked or hit or slapped anyone. He never pulled a girl's hair or spied on the neighbors. He never stole. He always shared. He always told the truth, even if it was painful or made people dislike him. He paid taxes. He helped sick people, people no one else wanted to help. He respected his mother. He studied God's Word and honored God in everything he did. The man was everything good and right and wonderful and loving.
He was the best man that ever was or ever will be. He was perfect. And he was executed like the worst of criminals. It was so unfair.
Every time we begin to stumble under the grumbling gravity of the claim, or even the truth, of "Life's not fair!," ; every time we start listing the litany of all things wrong with the world today, or every intolerable action going on unthwarted by an immoral world, we ought to stop and remember Jesus, who is the epitome of injustice visited upon the innocent. Jesus, the First Example of the unfairness of life.
No, it is not fair that Anaika is so sick. It is not fair when children are stuck in the hospital instead of romping outside or at once aggravating and delighting us in the classroom or the kitchen. It's not fair that so many live in dirt-floor poverty while some have air conditioners, Bluetooth in the shower, storage lockers, and paid vacation.
It is not fair. Nevertheless, let us not weigh ourselves down with the negativity of all this unfairness, but let us seek God's plan, His maneuvering against the laws of physics, the networking, the provision, the small blessings and great miracles He works through the unfairness.
Life is not fair. God is still Good.
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| Anaika reading the Bible in her hospital bed |
Anaika's medical bills are on-going and she needs all the help you can give!
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