I first met Nathanael when he was a patient on the wards two years ago here in Togo. He was just a little baby when we repaired his cleft lip, his mama ever-watchful by his side. We knew even then that Nathanael's life wasn't going to be an easy one. His tiny eyes and misshapen features spoke of an unidentifiable disorder, and we doubted that he'd ever walk or talk.
We did what we could do. We fixed his lip and made plans to see him again to repair his palate and we sent them home, just like we always do.
Nathanael was admitted again yesterday, his mama grinning wide as we recognized each other and shared an embrace with Nathanael sandwiched between us. His sweet face squinted up at me, smiling his benign smile, the same Nathanael I remembered from last time. Just bigger now. Just as damaged as we'd expected, badly needing the operation to close his palate to make it easier for him to eat without food going into his nose and down into his lungs.
Not long after he went to the operating room this morning I got a call from Dr. Gary. He had bad news, the kind that makes your heart sink when you look over to the corner of the room to see a mama kneeling by her bed, praying for her son.
Somewhere in the course of the last two years, Nathanael had surgery to try to close his cleft palate at a hospital in Burkina Faso. It wasn't their fault, but the operation failed, leaving the hole even wider than before. Once Nathanael had gone to sleep this morning, Dr. Gary found what he'd been dreading, that there just wasn't enough tissue to attempt a second repair. And it fell to me to tell his mama.
I took her out into the hall with a translator and I explained that what we'd hoped for hadn't happened, that she was going to go to the recovery room and hold her son while he woke up looking just the same as before. I told her I was sorry, and she looked me straight in the eye and spoke confidently.
We have been praying for so long for this surgery. If it has not happened, it must be God's plan. We cannot understand God's plan. If we did, He would not be God.
I had no answer, nothing to add to that incredible truth. I walked her down the hall to recovery, and as we reached the door she put her hand on my shoulder and spoke in English. Ali, you are in my heart, she told me, and went in to see her son.
We walk among giants, Dr. Gary told me when I found him and recounted the conversation, when I gave voice to my secret, suffocating fear that I will never have enough faith to be a mother like Nathanael's. When we get to heaven, we'll see who had the most faith, and it won't be us. And it won't matter.
We walk among giants.
Ali is a pediatric nurse living and working off the coast of West Africa aboard the world's largest non-governmental hospital ship, the M/V Africa Mercy, where they work with Mercy Ships to bring hope and healing to the forgotten poor in West Africa. The whole crew, from cook to captain, is made up of volunteers from more than thirty countries who are dedicated to bringing the love of Jesus to the world.
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