I have a friend from my freshman year of college—a really great guy with a lot going for him. A little over a year ago he collapsed while running and everything stopped. No breath in his lungs; no pulse; no brain activity; nothing. For ten minutes he was without life. In what has been considered a miracle, he was revived, and after some time came out of the coma he had gone into. However, because of the length of time that he was gone, he has suffered severe brain trauma. Most likely he will have to be taken care of for the rest of his life; he will be restricted to a wheel chair; he will never run track again. Because he was a senior in college and near the end of the year when it happened, the school has graduated him, but he will probably never get to use his degree. Through one incident, his life has been forever changed—he will never be the same guy that I remember from freshman year.
It breaks my heart every time I think about him. I reflect on his character, his potential, his love for others, even his health—as far as I know, the doctors still can’t figure out what went wrong. I have thought about him a lot this week, and his situation has weighed very heavily on my heart.
For the past week we have been volunteering at the hospital here in Antigua, Guatemala.
A large portion of the hospital serves more as an institution/orphanage for all ages. They have a children’s ward, an area for youth women, youth men, adult women, and adult men. I have been going between the youth women and the children. The language barrier has been difficult enough, but throw in various states of sanity, differing IQ levels, and often low brain capacities and it’s all that much more challenging. Some of them actually are rather high functioning in their brain, but possess speech impediments and obvious severe physical handicaps.
The first day was very awkward and sometimes plain uncomfortable for me. I didn’t know who comprehended Spanish let alone English, who I could touch and who would scratch me, who was even in a state of reality and who was in a world of their own. I was overwhelmed after a hour and didn’t know how I was going to do this for the rest of the time in Antigua.
I haven’t seen my friend since his junior year of college, so I don’t know exactly what he’s like now. I’ve seen pictures and heard stories from our mutual friends, but there is still a lot of mystery as to what state he is in. Each new person I met at the hospital made me think of him—could he have this disability; does he struggle with this issue; can he communicate better or worse than this person? It has made it very hard for me to spend time with these women because I constantly have him on my mind. I think about what he was like before and I wonder what these women could have been like without their various sets of challenges. It has made this whole experience so much more personal to me, and sometimes it’s just too much for me to handle. After a half hour or hour I find myself needing to go over to the children’s area just to get away from the painful thoughts of my friend. Last night, with the lights out and the room dark, I lay awake for a while thinking about him. Tears filled my eyes as I thought about how differently things could have been. I began to pray.
God, I have no idea why you allow things like this to happen to certain people, let alone the ones like ****.I don’t know how you choose who suffers and goes through extremely trying circumstances and who doesn’t. I don’t understand why some horrible people have been able to live health,y long lives and wonderful people are faced with disabilities or death. I have no idea why Moses was allowed to die and tyrants, murderers, or rapists live. I don’t know all of these things, God, but I do trust you. I believe you know exactly what you are doing with **** and I still trust that you had an enormous purpose in mind when you took Moses to be with you—after all, I have already seen some of the fruit from that loss. I will continue to trust you, Lord, but some days it’s just too hard for me to grasp and I just want to know why. Be patient with me when I am overwhelmed by thoughts of what life could have been like for **** or Moses. Thank you for having a plan and purpose for each one of us. Amen.
