Most days I can hardly remember what I did last week, let alone the month before. But every now and then I get flashbacks. Today it happened while I was sitting at a bus station. I’ve never been in the military and I know nothing about PTSD but on days like these I think just maybe I understand.
I’m sitting outside on my pack, just waiting. Waiting is something we do a lot of on the World Race. I hear the rumble of the bus engines as they wait loading their passengers. I hear kids playing in the background and my teammate Nicole paying her violin. I hear two men quarreling about something I don’t understand, and I hear squad mates reciting Bible verses to one another as they work to commit it to memory. I look up and see a mother teaching her daughter to dance. It reminds me of a time when my leader Allison taught me to Waltz. Then I see a mother walk past me, making her way to her husband. She is carrying her infant baby wrapped up in blankets. I’m not even sure why I notice this, I think it is because most mothers tie their children to their backs instead of carrying them in there arms. This mother looks more than tired, she’s exhausted.
Suddenly I feel like Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy in the book Prince Caspian, The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S Lewis. The time when they are pulled from the station back to Narnia when Prince Caspian blows the horn. Instead of Narnia, I open my eyes and I’m back on the little island of Lesvos, Greece. It’s a cold night and we have much too many people in the camp, while more keep flooding in. Closing the gate seems near impossible and many people are needed to guard it. The woman and children make their way to the front of the line. Here, they have some shelter and receive blankets to keep warm. There is a woman at the front of the line; she has the same look of exhaustion. She had no interest of getting in the gate herself, but she plops her baby in my arms gives me a bottle so I could go get formula. Soon, she’s asleep on the ground. That night I had free reign, I walked all over that camp with my little bundle of joy in my arms.
We had many laughs with other volunteers as I was asked what her name was and immediately replied shoot, because I realized I didn’t know. My friend KellyAnne found the twin sister. We stayed together at the gate holding the twins and letting a tired momma sleep. We named the girls Phoebe and Pheobe. That night, I watched a mother sleep in peace even though there was chaos all around her. She could sleep in peace knowing her twins made it alive across the rough sea.
I blink and I’m back at a South African bus station. I smile and chuckle to myself about the feeling I get when we travel.
I smile because some days I feel like the refugee friends I have made: dirty clothes, waiting for a bus whose arrival is eternally delayed, or stuck in line at a border waiting to get my passport stamped. I think of my friends and I pray…
I pray that God be with them wherever they are now. Water the seeds that were planted. May they come to know the Lord as their God and Savior, so someday I may see them again.
