Tonight I sat and told a story and tried to calm the fears. My words tumbled out and I'm not even completely sure what I said. I know the message I wanted to send. And I know how passionate I got. More passionate, more aggressive, more agitated than any of them had probably ever seen me be before.
It all started with a simple question about Ebola. One of pure innocence and wanting to understand. I tried to sit on my hands and clamp my mouth, but I'm afraid I inundated her and the rest of my rather captive audience.
"You probably don't know, but I've been to Liberia. I worked in a medical clinic there." I hastened to add "Just for a week... in high school. But I worked with..." My voice trailed off. "Well I know some of the people who have died from Ebola." My voice caught and I also realized my matter of fact tone.
{I know "some" is the overstatement of the year! I know a few, a handful of the many people who have died. I know the people and the souls who lived in those bodies...Please give me grace}
When you're dealing with disease, poverty, corruption, and a place half a world away sometimes you have to be matter of fact. When you're dealing with all these things you can't change, sometimes you just have to stick to your guns that you will not be emotionally effected by these truths. Because sometimes the more you hear something the more it becomes real. And your active imagination can see these things, you can touch them, and you can smell them.
That's the thing about Liberia, it has a smell. You can smell the red earth, the moisture in the air, the air itself. Sometimes the perfume mixes in the smoky charcoal texture. There are other things that have a smell - so does disease, poverty, corruption.
What I appreciated about these women around me was their questions and their general acceptance of the things that I was sharing. Not that I was sharing the correct information or that I didn't have some of my facts jumbled. It was rather that they listened and accepted me. They accepted that this was something that as important to me and that I really did check the news everyday for stories. To me it gave me life to see these faces looking at me, eager to hear words, and open arms to my heart.
I didn't talk about my friends or the culture. I didn't talk about specifics. Just the news, and some of a recent missionary update. And when I talked about it at the end I wanted it to be all about hope. All about the things that were beautiful coming out of this horrendous situation. All of the things where God was being glorified.
