Confessions from Paul

I awake abruptly.

The room is still dark.  My breath catches and a sense of uncertainity fills my chest.  I feel Teddy's warmth as I shift my feet in the bed.  I fumble for the phone, pushing buttons to check the time.
0534 am.  What woke me? 

My mind hovers between sleep and awake.  I am further confused when I realized that I forgot to pull the mosquito net down over my bed.

Then I remember.

I am in my bed in the midwest, USA.  I am not in Kenya.  I do not sleep under a mosquito net.  I do not filter my drinking water.  I do not fall asleep to the sound of rain.

I relax into the darkness and think about tomorrow.  Many of  my days have been spent working on my caselist, getting my house re-opened and beginning to reconnect with family and friends.  But there is also a lot of time spent alone.

Alone with just me thinking about Kenya.....being here....what to do next.

I should probably stop eating so much ice cream. 



Why can't I sleep like Teddy?!



I am awakend by a loud metallic noise.  Startled, I wonder if Teddy had done something in the kitchen.... I am confined to a small and very springy bed.  It is not my own.

I breathe and try to orient myself.

I am sleeping in the call room on a locums job in Some Hospital, Midwest.  Light from under the door way to the busy hallway outside keeps the room in an eerie glow.  It was the slamming of the stairwell door that woke me. 

My mind wanders to my patients... I think of the first case I did since returning to the US.   What did the staff see when they looked at me?  Could they tell that I was uncomfortable with the paper gown and all the paper draping?  I am so accustomed to cloth now.  And the sensation of actually scrubbing with a brush and not just a bar of soap....so foreign and decadent.  I wanted to save everything we used and wash it.....towels, bovie.....   The lights were SO bright.  I was nervous - I wasn't sure when I was allowed to start.  In Kenya - it was after the prayer.

Prayer before surgery.... it was a divine poetry to pray for wisdom and guidance...watch a patient slip so trusting into that drug induced sleep and then put cold knife to warm skin. 

It took me 30 minutes to write the post-op orders after the case - I felt like a resident again.  Looking things up, asking a hundred questions.......overwhelmed by all the options for my patient!  Incentive spirometry, labs twice daily, respiratory therapy, PT/OT - forget being overwhelmed by all the different kinds of ice cream - I am freaking out because of all the things I can give my patients after a surgery!

I awake to a dull pain in my neck.  There is small child staring at me from the seat in front of mine.  I look out the window....while I slept, the plane has taken off.  I am on my way to Oregon for a debriefing conference.  These small groups are centered around those who have recently returned to the US from the mission field; their objective to help put the past in perspective and provide hints for a smoother transition.

The child stares at me with solemn brown eyes.  She has long curly hair.  Beautiful.  I remember how my friend Elijah's daughter in Kenya loved to play with my hair when I visited them.  Her own little head was shaved bald per the protocol of the public schools in the village.

"My name is Oliver,"  my nosy neighbor informs me.  Oh.  A boy.  Okay.  "I'm four."

"Hello, Oliver."

"I wear underpants in the day time and diapers at night."

"Hmmm.  Congratualtions, Oliver."

I am so not in Kenya anymore.

Oregon 2012

Some mountain in Oregon

Life begins anew...

Paul to the Church at Corinth, in 2 Corinthians, chapter 1:

⁸ We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure.......But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. ¹⁰ He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, ¹¹ as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.