“There is a far kingdom, aways from here -
Beyond the storm and the sea”
I completed writing the note for what felt like the hundredth patient for the day – and I hadn’t even finished rounds yet. As I did so, a sinking feeling came over me and I went looking for the newborn I had delivered about twelve hours prior. The nurses couldn’t tell me where he was, and I didn’t see any paperwork. The ghost-like appearance of his skin when I did the cesarean section the night before filled my mind and brought a too-familiar premonition to my heart.
I went to
the nurses desk in search of paperwork – resigning myself to the sense that my
operation of the night before had failed to save the little one I held so
briefly on its way into the world. Unable to locate the forms needing my
signature, I decided to start in on my maternity rounds and return later to
complete them.
This was the first of our furloughs in which I did not pursue any locums work and it afforded additional time for friends, family, rest, relaxing, a trip to Canada, and some teaching at the In His Image residency. Many things that filled my cup.
But I am glad to return to the care of my highlands community back at Kudjip since our stay in the US this summer.
As I round most mornings, faces with bright smiles alternate with mothers just waking with the morning sun as I make my way through the hospital. Some I need to disturb for an exam, others I let sleep while I review vital signs, lab results, nurse notations, or the reports of medical students.
But in recent days some great challenges threatened to overwhelm me.
A woman came to Kudjip to deliver her baby in the safety of our maternity unit, but the child was born with a significant congenital defect. Though I attempted to provide the treatments I knew could help, the baby got weaker over the next several days and eventually passed away.
As I walked away from the family, I glanced into a delivery room and saw the face of another mother I had been caring for smiling at me. I instinctively smiled back – but as I walked on, a heaviness descended as I reflected on who she was.
A colleague had evaluated her almost two weeks ago when she came to the hospital concerned about not feeling her baby move for some time. We discovered that her little one had died in-utero and counseled and prayed for her. But her ordeal stretched on as we struggled to effectively deliver her– hoping to avoid an operation that would result in a painful and prolonged recovery for a now-deceased child.
Having just had her baby, her smile conveyed gratitude that, after many attempts over several days, she did not need to have surgery. I, too, was relieved and grateful. Yet I pondered on that smile for some time – wondering in what kind of world a mother delivering a dead baby brings her a comfort and a smile? Shouldn’t the world - shouldn’t I - expect better than that?
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has always been my favorite book in the Chronicles of Narnia. Two of the Pevensie children along with Eustace and the honorable Reepicheep make a journey to the very end of the world. There they behold an amazing thing: Aslan’s country. Beautiful beyond description but muted a bit when gazed upon through a standing wave of the sea. Though they do not enter his realm, the sight remains with them for the rest of their lives. Lewis describes Lucy reflecting on that glimpse of it years later –
““It would break your heart.”
“Why,” said I, “was it so sad?”
“Sad? No!,” said Lucy.”
My blog entries have thinned out in their frequency down the years. I have asked myself if I am getting calloused, or no longer moved by the suffering that often overwhelms our highland community in Papua New Guinea.
Have I given up on the redemption that I have heard about? I spend so much of my time in a place where loss feels like the norm, outside of that restored kingdom, and it makes me wonder if I will ever see it.
I went on with my rounds, anticipating a bit of a hollow day.
In bed number one, a young woman, whose face I remembered well, slept peacefully under pain medication, while a dutiful grandmother held a beautiful baby against her breast – delightfully filling himself with a first-ever meal. That ghostly child from the night before. Tears rimmed my eyes as I went through the rest of my ward rounds moving from patient to patient in a glad mist.
“There is a far kingdom on the other side of the glass
And by a faint light we see.
Still there is more gladness longing for the sight,
Than to behold, or be filled by, anything.”
After so many years of depending on God’s sovereignty in the face of my many failures, and successes, here I felt like I learned something new in that moment. I had been given a glimpse into that restored world. Seen, as ever, through a veil and a haze. Yet real enough to provide more than the grace and strength to just continue – enough to receive gladness. And I feel it during both the great privileges and the great burdens.
That it is more filling to simply stand on a threshold, occasionally peering into God’s redemption, than to pursue anything else.
“I would rather be a gatekeeper in the house of the Lord
than live the good life in the land of the wicked”
Psalm 84:10 (NASV)
