Recently I have been asking God to help me feel things more deeply. I have noticed that there seems to be a bit of a disconnect between my heart and everything else. It's not that I don't care. Maybe I have just become a little desensitized. Or maybe it's just really hard to feel things deeply. But I want to, because I know God does, and I know he created me to be moved by the things around me.
Last Wednesday we got to go to a hospital in Maputo to visit and pray over the patients. I ended up with our translator Armendo and a few other girls in the children's wing.
We approach a beautiful girl who is sitting straight up in bed, a cast on her leg. The first thing I notice after the cast is that, unlike every other child in the room, she is alone. We ask her name.
"Carlotta."
She tells our translator Armendo that she was recently hit by a car in Maputo.
"Do your parents visit you often?"
"No."
So simple. She offers nothing else. I have to ask.
"Why not?"
"They're in Beira."
Beira is a city a good 20 hours north of Maputo. It makes sense. Sort of. Pastor Eduardo had mentioned that this hospital in Maputo is the biggest one in the whole country, so I wonder if Carlotta came all the way here to receive better care. But she said that she was hit by the car here in Maputo. I wonder why her parents would have left her alone. So I ask.
"What were you doing here in Maputo?"
The story unfolds, begins to make more sense.
She came to Maputo with her mother's friend, and the friend's daughter. They came on a bus. When they arrived here, the friend left the girls at the bus stop and said, I'll be right back. Wait here. Three days later, the friend still had not returned. The girls have been living on the streets ever since then, alone, until about a month ago when Carlotta was hit by the car.
I can't believe it.
Carlotta tells us that she just wants to go home. Her mother has a phone but she doesn't know the number. She doesn't have anything. She is alone, in a hospital far from home, without her parents. They don't even know where she is.
And I can feel it in my heart how bad it hurts. We start to pray for her and I find myself pleading, pleading with Jesus, Jesus please please please send this girl home. Let her get home somehow, I don't know how, but somehow, let SOMEONE somewhere hear of where she is. Protect her from the streets, from what I'm sure lies waiting for a beautiful, homeless, helpless 11-year old girl like Carlotta. Comfort her Jesus, please be with her. Please be with her. Please watch over her. Get her home to her family.
Carlotta rubs her eyes and leans forward, she seems to be crying. I can feel the tears in my own eyes. I rub her back and tell her that we'll come visit her again next week. She just stares forward blankly. She says an obligatory 'thank you' as we tell her good-bye, and I leave her, sitting helpless on her hospital bed, right where I found her.
We go on to pray for other children and their parents, but I can't seem to shake the sadness off, I can't seem to stop thinking about Carlotta and how badly I wish I could help her. We leave the hospital and I find myself wondering how in the world I am going to move on from this. What do I do? I actually don't know what to do.
I'm not sure I know how to keep myself from the extremes. In the past I have either let burdens like Carlotta crush me, take me out, pull down my spirit, or I have walled off the deep places of my heart so that I feel sad for the circumstances, but I don't let anything beyond that touch me.
I realize that I don't actually know how to be in the middle. How do I let the world around me truly affect me, the way I know it affects God, while not becoming hopeless and feeling helpless? I have a feeling prayer is involved in the answer. I know it is. I think I'm much closer to understanding. I want to be moved to prayer for others, to truly care and intercede, believing in faith that although I have no idea how, God is in control of everything I see.
I have been praying for Carlotta every day since I met her, and asking God to somehow make things right. I hope that when we return to the hospital this Wednesday that she is not there, because her parents came and got her.
I have hope, which is cool. And I am genuinely glad that I don't have to understand the plan for the world or figure out how to make things right. I have a God I know I can trust to bring justice, even though I am far from understanding what that looks like.
