Guatemala: The girl in the wheelchair, Part 1

It was new, all new. I just sat there, seeking to comprehend everything that was going on around me and trying to learn my new role as nurse-caregiver-Spanish speaker (AHEM). People shuffled in and out faster than I could put names to faces. I nearly missed her. But there was something about her face, an anguish that could not be mistaken for anything else. With her were four young children, including a girl, perhaps 8 or 9 years old, occupying a wheelchair.

As this young mom poured out the story of her broken heart, tears formed trails down the dust cloaking her face. With the help of our incredibly compassionate interpreter, she shared the story of her daughter, the girl in the wheelchair. Born with a congenital seizure disorder, M* never goes more than a day or two without facing a debilitating seizure. Years ago, M* dislocated one of her hips, an injury that was never corrected. Without surgery, M* will be confined to a wheelchair permanently.

As M*'s mama sobbed over her daughter's broken state, the love she had for her daughter could not have been more clearly conveyed. She desperately wanted us to fix her child, her baby. There was nothing we could do to fix M*. As our team doctor gently conveyed, again through our interpreter, that he could not take M*'s seizures away or give her the surgery she needed so that she could walk again, my own eyes began to fill with tears.

I could tell M*'s mama would do anything in her power to take away the suffering faced by her daughter every single day. As I wept with everyone else in the room, I was reminded of another Parent, a loving Father who surely cried tears of anguish as He watched His only Son suffer and die the death of a criminal. I cannot begin to imagine the distress this Father felt as He watched His only Son beaten, whipped, and tortured beyond recognition, then hung on a cross and mocked with contempt. Surely He knew this mother's grief. Surely He loved her more than she could comprehend, so much so that He chose to refrain from rescuing His beloved Son from the pain of torture. The tears of a mother, unable to "fix" the hurts of her child, surely fell that day into the mighty hands of a Father who was not unfamiliar with the grief from which those tears poured.

Part 2 to come...