Okay…
I’ve given myself more than just a little bit of time to think about El Salvador. If you read my last blog, you know I promised to update you. I’ve been a little busy—getting ready to move to a different country tends to take time away! There is, though, one story from my trip that I can’t stop thinking about. It has haunted me since I've gotten back... in a really good way.
As I think I’ve already mentioned, I was working with the eye team—meaning, essentially, that I was left in charge of a machine more expensive (perhaps) than my car although I have no more medical training than your average prairie dog when it comes to optometry. I believe the official title of the machine was “Auto-refract”… “ometer”? ...Or something along those lines, but it shall henceforth be referred to as “Glorified Nintendo”, or “GN” for short. Essentially my job was to measure people’s eyes before they went to the legitimate doctors, my job being to provide a more or less accurate estimate of any eye prescription, as well as indicators of astigmatism. Not to be confused with stigmata. My instructions were as follows:
“Just line the [medical jargon for black dot in center of eye] up in the middle of the screen and make sure the focus is correct so we don’t get [medical jargon for when Alyssa does a crappy job and the numbers are wrong]. Point and shoot. And go faster [medical jargon for when Alyssa nervously makes elderly patients hold their eyes open for superhuman periods of time]!”
Right.
Can you imagine? What if you came to a doctor in the states and, Lord help you, I was the person in charge of giving your eye exam? I wouldn’t even be offended if you ran away screaming—I’m completely unqualified for the job! But the crazy thing is that these people were so grateful to even have a clinic to go to that they wouldn’t have cared if Mr. Rogers were administering the eye exam. They wanted someone to talk to, someone with whom to freely discuss eye problems, anyone willing to give them the time of day and try to help them. We’re talking about people who, some of them as old as 50, had never even been to an eye doctor. Upon seeing me in my fancy red scrubs, then, they simply assumed I was a doctor and treated me like it. And I was only the pre-doctor lackey! The locals addressed us with a certain amount of awe. It was strange, really. There was one young woman, who, tragically, epitomizes this case.
At about 15 years old, she seemed somehow old for her age. This teenager, dark hair clinging to her forehead with sweat brought about by the hours waiting in the Salvadoran sun to get into the clinic, was weighed down by something. There was a certain nervous twitch in her manner of holding the piece of paper—her clinic invitation—that brought her across our path. Like many other women who have an eye problem that is physically apparent, she was wearing sunglasses. Her face held eerily still as she sat in our “waiting room” comprised of plastic lawn chairs organized into a loose U-shape. But, when I called her to come sit at my desk to set her up on the GN, her whole countenance changed.
Some sort of long-lost hope was rising from the ashes of her prematurely tired face. She gingerly handed me her paper and followed my every instruction as if I held the power of life or death. She did so smiling. I had no idea what on earth she was so upset about before. Whatever! It gave me this awesome feeling of “look how great I am!” to think about the wonderful work I was so courageously doing. What a splendid human being I am. Helping this sweet girl get her eyes checked and what not. Gah! Focus the machine… don’t get too distracted here… boy I cheered this girl up. Honestly, projects like this make you feel like Rocky at the moment when he finally gets his sweaty body to the top of the stairs—a champion. Here I was, taking part in this nice little clinic that was just, darn it, saving people’s eyesight.
Sadly, though, this girl is the one that totally ruined that perspective.
After about 20 minutes, she was on her way out of the doctors’ room. And she was in tears. Not the normal eye clinic tears because some strange, white, abnormally tall yhetti/man was poking your eyes—she looked like a small child whose favorite doll just got ran over by a train. Destroyed. Broken. Hurting. Crushed. I knew something had to be really wrong, but I had to keep working. After all, we had hundreds of patients to go through. I mean, I had eyesight to save!
But somehow, as I caught glimpses of her outside on the patio waiting to pick out glasses, I knew something inside of me wouldn’t relent until I had figured out what was going on. It’s that feeling you get that hits somewhere between terror and rage. It’s when the hairs on the back of your neck prickle and your stomach begins to churn. You have that sinking feeling that whatever you’re about to do is going to be really hard somehow but you also know that you’ll throw up if you don’t. So I called over my friend, a local that I had trained to run the machine, and went outside to figure out why she was so upset—how could anyone, after receiving our medical attention, be sad?!
Then I found out. This fifteen-year-old girl has a degenerative eye condition that will eventually leave her entirely blind or as close thereto as the evil working in her system can muster. She may never be able to see her own children. If things get really bad, she may not watch her own wedding. Certainly, she won’t drive a car. She had come to our clinic that morning, against all odds, because something inside of her believed that we could make everything better. I mean, we’re Americans, for crying out loud! Our doctors can turn young black men into scary white women. Of course we can fix her eyes! But you know what? We can’t. There is no medical procedure for the kind of genetic disease she has. There is nothing that any doctor on any continent of this world can do for her.
So, just to sum it all up for you, we crushed her dreams and reminded her just once more that her future is literally dark, as the twilight hours of what little eyesight she has dwindle away into the long, bleak night of blindness.
Well, so they say.
But there was another fact that came to me in that moment. A fact greater than any genetic research this world has ever known. A fact more powerful than any Western medicine that optometry has produced.
My God created the eye. He created her eyes. And, most importantly, He created her.
So I knew that I had to pray with this girl. There was absolutely no arguing about it. I walked over, found her dawdling by the door (she couldn’t bring herself to just walk away) and asked if I could pray over her. I laid my hands on her eyes and started--first in English, and then in Spanish, I honestly don’t remember what I was even saying. Then something inside of me wanted to know more about this young woman. At this point we were both crying (except me because I don’t cry. Ever. Not even during sad movies), but I began to ask her questions about her dreams, and what she wants to do with her life. She told me she wanted to be a teacher. Her great aspiration was to help other people learn. (How many of us would be so generous out of such dark despair?!) At this point, a rather obvious thought blurted out of my mouth. “You know, you don’t have to see to teach people.” She looked at me as though I had landed from an alien planet where the inhabitants survive by eating each other’s mucus. But, I noticed, a small smile crept into the deep corners of her mouth.
“I know.”
“No, really, I’m serious. Do you realize that whether or not you ever see again, God can still work in you and transform your life? Do you realize that your blindness does not limit God’s power? That your blindness does not thwart his love and purpose for your life? That it cannot stop God?”
She smiled.
Then she started to laugh. She started to tell me about her family, her school, her homework, and like the flood of tears that preceded it, I felt hope flooding for the first time. Beginning slowly, tiny raindrops of hope were trickling out of her mouth.
And it hit me: whether or not we treat these people medically is not actually the issue here. Do I really understand that they are people? That they are no different from me at all? That every time I meet another person, I am meeting a soul that will last for eternity. That every collision with any soul has the potential to change the world?
I still don’t think I get it.
We are SO quick to forget the immense spiritual realm that surrounds us. That every action you take leaves ripples across time and space for all eternity, and every action you do not take makes no less of an impact. We cannot slide by with excuses like “too much work” or “not enough time” or “not my calling” or “let someone with more experience handle it” any longer. What if I had not talked to this girl? What if I had talked to her sooner?
I am not advocating safari trips into the Wild What If; I am questioning whether we realize that we live in the Wild Right Now. Do not let life’s moments pass you by. Do not let Divine Opportunities to impact a life slip through your fingers. Do not get so caught up in “good works” like I did that you forget that God is working.
My prayer is that it won’t take me half an hour to see a soul in need of God’s comfort ever again. My prayer is that the church would shake of the dust and realize how great our power is because of Him who is within us.
You are no mere mortal.
"another fine bit of writing brought to you by yours truly"
