I pray...

I am blogging from my Blackberry right now! This either makes me incredibly cool, or a huge tool...I'll just leave it up to you to decide! But being the avid blogger that I am (my own personal blog is http://jessswanson.blogspot.com) I find this new bridge of technology very exciting. And also I apologize if there are lots of typos, it's a very tiny screen!

Anyway, I felt like a very major follow up from my last posting was due after our team met yesterday. In our very dreary and cold basement, under an afternoon thunderstorm, the team sat around a circular table "like dinner!" I exclaimed when I realized what we were doing, with one of Sarah's absolutely delicious brownies still half-masticated in my mouth. Always a lady.

Anyway, we passed around charts from last year. A huge stack from just one day of last year's work. When it got to me I said "alright God, pick me a good one!", moved my hand from the one I was going to grab and chose another. We all went around, butchered our patient's lovely Zulu names into our own unrecognizable English version of their names. We lifted them up to God, prayed for that person.

At first I contemplated saying "I can't do this" when it became my turn. I couldn't pronounce her name, and furthermore I didn't know what to say. But strength was summoned from inside, and just enough was there to get it out. She was remarkably ill, they all were. But looking at this list of symptoms, and most heartbreaking, her age- I knew I couldn't pray for her comfort or her healing in the way everyone had just done for their patient.

With shaky hands and eyes very very desperately holding back tears I just prayed for that would God would usher her to His side.

The same fate that I have happily accepted for my own life. Scares me very deeply for this woman. I've prayed that prayer a million times for myself, and through out life when death inevitably makes its way back into my life. But it's never felt like that. Never quite like that. Praying for a piece of paper. The name upon which I couldn't even read.

I will not claim that I don't cry. But I am unrelenting when it comes to sticking to my life-long identity of being the girl who slaps a smile on everything. I went through 8 years of braces, and also its a pretty handy coping mechanism. I realized yesterday that I will not be slapping a smile on this trip. These people are going to see me cry, probably a lot.

I want to meet my piece-of-paper lady. I want to pray open-handedly with her, I WANT HER TO TEACH ME HOW TO SAY HER NAME, and as the theme of this post dictates, I want to get the chance to cry with her, even better: to laugh.

She has no idea, wherever she is. But she is changing my life. From a piece of paper.