Justice

                I have wanted to live overseas since I was eight years old. I did not go to nursing school because of any particular dream to be a nurse. I do not find the work glamorous, or necessarily all that fulfilling. What I care about, the reason I held on through nursing school and two years of med/surg nursing was this overwhelming sense that where you are born should not determine whether or not you get the healthcare you need.

                As I traveled back and forth to Haiti in college, and contrasted what I saw (or did not see) for healthcare here, with what I experienced in nursing school something rose up in me. I do not think it is just that I felt bad for the people. It was more that as I came to realize that a woman really can bleed to death, that children really do dehydrate, that a six week old baby can suffer from whooping cough only because they happened to be born and live in a place where healthcare is not accessible, everything in me cried out that something was wrong. No, more than wrong, something was deeply broken. I could not abide the fact that you can miss out on even the most basic healthcare because of where you live.

                In part, it is this crushing sense of wrongness that fuels my passion in this country. Don’t get me wrong, I love these people, I love the vibrancy with which life is conducted here. However on those days when culture shock overwhelms, when everyone and everything about this place is overwhelmingly alien, I am held fast, in part, be my desire to see justice in healthcare for the people around me.

                All of that to say, in the past couple weeks I have been given the chance to be a part of mobile clinics in two remote areas. Last week we did two days of clinic up in the mountains at a church affiliated with the mission. Wednesday we traveled to the island of La Gonave off the coast of Haiti and did a short clinic in a village there. We had some difficulties getting back, which may or may not be the subject of another blog post, but I was so grateful to be a part of what was going on.

                My heart burns to see the people I met in those clinics receive high-quality, regular healthcare. Mamas should not have to sit by and watch their babies suffer from coughs and infections with no recourse, constrained by money or distance. Little girls with malaria should not boil in their fevers because there is no Tylenol. Men with hernias should not be left to suffer just because they cannot afford the operation they need.

               Friends, will you join me in praying for justice in healthcare for this beautiful country? Sometimes, when I pray for things like that it feels too big, too audacious and impossible a thing to ask for from the Lord. Except, as I keep reminding myself, He conquered death, so He can probably take this too. Will you partner with me in prayer to see that happen?