The morning began like most month four mornings began – wriggle out of my sleeping bag, roll off the couch bed, avoiding the noisiest springs a couch has ever had, have quiet time by the window overlooking the noisy street, enjoy a gentle breakfast fit for my virus-ravaged tummy.
The emotions this particular morning were different, though. A new excitement twisted through my body, threatening to upset the calm I’d worked so hard to cultivate. That nauseating excitement soon settled into an eager peace, which quickly became a joyful spirit of adventure. By the end of the day, though, my heart was in pieces. Here’s what happened:
My host this month attends an international church, so we did too. Also attending that church are American doctors who alternate between practicing medicine in the states and teaching medical students and residents in Macedonia. Some Saturdays, they venture into the mountains. This particular Saturday, I got to accompany them.
The day was like something from a National Geographic article. There was a one lane, windy, steeper-than-steep road with no guardrail snaking its way up to improbable living scenarios. But it was at the end of this road where we were greeted with smiles stretching beyond joy, cheek kisses, and a warm welcome into a home whose walls just barely hold back the cold of the impending winter months. Spreading between those walls were rugs, uncoordinated and beautiful, that served as chairs, dining tables, a space to hold friendly and controversial conversation, and doctors’ examination tables. When we’d eaten our fill of homemade burek, and sweet peppers and had exhausted all topics from arranged marriages to football to the devastating lack of health care accessibility in the winter, the doctors got to work. As symptoms and concerns were translated, they responded with relief, remedies, and wisdom.
Goodbyes were exchanged (once inside, once outside as per custom) and we followed the sun down the mountain, these words offered in gratitude and bitterness ringing in my ears: “you and the birds are our only visitors here.”
Twist after icy turn and one uneasy semi-truck encounter later, a doctor received a call. “One more visit,” he said. This one didn’t need medical care, just care.
We pulled up to a large, new apartment building. In the shadow of that building were the bare bones of a home. We were hurried in quickly to keep the cold out, but I didn’t feel a difference. I was thankful for my thick REI fleece and couldn’t imagine taking it off during the visit.
The ceiling in the corridor was only taped up sheets of plastic. An earthquake had demolished the already crumbling ceiling months back. Others promised to help, but no one delivered.
We followed our host into a small side-room where we were met by three beautiful young girls huddling near the small stove for warmth. We took our seats and our host asked how the homeowner had been since they’d last seen each other.
“My name is happiness,” she began. “But I have none.”
She proceeded to share her recent struggles – the story of the roof, the ways her daughters detest going to school because of the way the other children treat them because they have little, the ways those sharing her own religion have turned against her and refused to extend help in her darkest times, the ways her society prevent her from rising up.
Her name was Happiness, but she had none.
Unlike with the people we visited earlier, we hardly had anything to give her as remedy – only the coat off my back, the warmth in our hearts, and the prayers on our lips.
As we walked to the car, my heart was heavy with the weight of Happiness’ burdens, and heavier still with the weight of the truth of her neighbors. The owners of the apartment are Islam extremists, intent on building their own kingdom in the name of religion, blind to those suffering below them.
I wish there was a happy ending to this story. I wish there was more I could have done in the moment. I pray Happiness’ situation changes. I pray that despite her situation, she will know true and lasting joy.
So thankful I was, and continue to be, for the truth that there is no distance too far to travel to let someone know they are loved. So thankful I am for the opportunity to travel so far to let Happiness she is loved. So grateful I am for the reminder of who our neighbors are and how we are to love them.
May we forever be ones who take the steep mountain journeys to let others know their worth, but may never live such lofty lives that the deep needs are visible only by looking down; always remembering to see the ones living, hurting, needing, right beside us.
