A couple months ago, during my on-call night, a
young woman came to the labor and delivery room at Kudjip. The feet and legs of a baby presented through
her birth canal, but the unborn head had been trapped in her uterus for several
hours. Sister Theresia, a dedicated
nurse working at Kudjip, assisted in delivering a deceased baby boy. Lo and behold, another baby quickly
presented, head-first, and delivered – kicking and screaming – into Theresia’s
waiting arms. After addressing this
healthy girl’s immediate needs, our nursing students, alongside the
grandmother, turned their attention to her baby brother’s preparation for
burial. The bittersweet blend of joy and
sadness, so pervasive in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, weighed down the
room.
Our family has been in Tulsa the
past few months on furlough, giving me a little breathing room from the daily
grind. I have reflected on an important
spiritual lesson that my mentor, IHI alumni Dr. Bill McCoy, taught me as we
shared heartaches in the crowded hospital halls at Kudjip. Hope is not the same thing as optimism. Optimism posits that something good is going
to happen, regardless of circumstances.
While something good may happen from any situation, I do not believe
that, as Christians, we have any guarantee of good outcomes in this world. Conversely, hope is a persevering belief that
anything can be redeemed for good. God
can take difficult, even devastating, situations and redeem them for His
purposes – not because those times are good, but because He is.
Hope is one of the three abiding virtues (I Cor
13:13). It is also an anchor for the
soul (Hebrews 6:19). The suffering of
this world, that we battle daily, is not a piece of some optimistic
jigsaw puzzle – it is a field of hopeful opportunity. If I can appreciate this and leave the
outcomes and results to God, my faith may be pressed – but it will not be
crushed. This faith, as David Bentley
Hart says, “has set us free from optimism, and taught us Hope instead”.
Some weeks ago, another young lady arrived into
the labor and delivery ward at Kudjip with a referral note hastily scribbled
onto scrap paper by a nursing officer working in a remote corner of our
province. This mother was barely
conscious, having been struggling to deliver her baby for almost two days. As the nurses scrambled to establish IV
access and begin administering medications, I hastily performed a bedside
ultrasound – with saddening results. The
baby was lodged in the uterus with its face presenting at the cervix, unable to
deliver. There was no heartbeat. I mobilized our operating team, but knew that
we were only performing surgery for this mother’s sake, since her little baby
had already died.
In the operating room I worked quickly. As I removed the lifeless form of this little
one, I told the receiving nurse not to attempt any resuscitation – the baby was
dead. On her way to the basinet, she exclaimed
– “Dokta Mark, em pulim win!” “Dr. Mark,
he took a breath!” She got to work
bagging the baby and, in a few moments, we heard cries of new life. I repaired the uterus and finished mom’s
surgery. Over the next week, mom and
baby recovered nicely and that fizzled spark of hope was fanned for me
again. “This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter
you, and you will come to life” (Ezekiel 37:5).
Now entering our seventh year
working in Papua New Guinea, we see the challenges through hopeful lenses. Our hospital has recently expanded to
accommodate our growing maternity care services and surgical disease
burden. We have entered into a working
relationship with the government to provide referral services for our entire
province. We are taking UPNG medical
students and have taken our first surgical trainee. Our recent Rural Health graduate has been
elected President of the PNG Society for Rural & Remote Health. Through it all, patients are being ministered
to, both physically and spiritually – to the tune of about 70,000 each year!
Our family prays to continue in
God’s calling for us – in the ways that He plans. Please consider joining us in prayers for
perseverance, guidance, provision and continued Hope as we serve in the
highlands of Papua New Guinea.
