On the way home

Today we had the team bonding day aka the day off in the middle of the mission week. After a nice lunch on the river, I decided to hoof it home. I love walking down by the river, even though it was really hot! There is so much to see with each eye full, I feel like I will never be able to take it all in. 

What makes a home, a home?

Sometimes when I refer to the importance of keeping things in perspective, I specifically refer to the fact that I (with guilt) feel like I live in the lap of luxury when there are whole families who live under the ramp of the hospital I work out of. I just wanted to give you a little more understanding of what I mean, even though these few pictures doesn't really do the situation justice. Here is the ramp that I push my patients down every day when they go from the recovery room on the third floor to the ward on the ground floor:

On the ground floor a few families have made their homes:

They've put thatching and some metal as siding and that is where they live, it is their home. I believe that most of the people that live there are somehow connected to the hospital as employees. For many months it blew my mind that families have put down their roots here. It broke my heart and made me want to scoop up the children who reside there and take them home. For a long time I felt this sadness every time I walked past until one day I was pushing a patient down in a wheel chair when I heard the unmistakable sound of a television. I looked around trying to figure out where it was coming from when I realized it was coming from the ramp homes! How they managed to get television in there, I have no idea but it made me giggle. People here manage to make the best of even the most desperate situations and that is one of the reasons I will forever be connected to this country. I would have sworn that there was no way they had any 'modern' luxuries down there but, alas, they do! I still giggle every time I walk by and hear familiar commercials. Really though,  here are my two favorite things about the families who live there:

These kids brighten up my day just about every day. I found myself at work both last Saturday and Sunday but I didn't mind one bit because I got to spend a lot of time playing with Samil and Rupa. There were piggy back rides, walking all the way crouched down so they could put their arms around my shoulders, hide and seek, and lots of other silliness that took place last weekend thanks to them. What I can't stop thinking about is how much the little boy reminds me of my nephew Houston. Both in stature and personality. I think Samil is his Indian doppleganger.

By the way cutest baby of the week goes to:

I am certain that I do not deserve this life I have been given. I am filled with a love that is beyond my comprehension. I still get lost sometimes in the stresses of life, in the bumps in the road. Then, inevitably, I am shown again that nothing is in my control. I contemplate what is in store for me, I want to plan and I want to know what is next. Things change day to day here and as much as I sometimes miss life in California, more often than not I feel the push to let go. To truly give of myself fully because how can one actually be present, when your mind is thousands of miles away?  There are only two things I know and that is of the pure and perfect love I have been shown and the necessity of finding truth in the life I lead. I need to bend lower, to get my hands dirtier. I strive to find the face of love and truth by being the servant, not the served. No matter what happens in eight weeks or eight months, it can not stop here. I wrote an orphanage in Hyderabad, India recently called Joy Home for Children. They are an orphanage who take in children and outreach to kids that have HIV/AIDS or who have lost their parents to HIV/AIDS. I am hoping to go and visit in October and see what they are doing. HIV is a very real problem in the South of India and I have to wonder, how can I give of my time and self there?

Yet somehow, the weekend has come and as always, I feel certain that I need my time. Truthfully, it is not even my time to begin with. I am not here on my own terms, but on the terms of something greater than myself. As if to prove just this, I was sitting here writing this entry hours ago (1:30p.m. to be exact, it is now 6p.m.) I had just started writing about the realization that this life and my time is no longer mine when my phone rang. It was the cleft center, a patient came in with bleeding and they needed me to come in. I felt a twinge of frustration, but what about MY time for ME? Then I looked at the blinking cursor preceded immediately by the sentence:

Truthfully, it is not even my time to begin with.

I couldn't help the smile that crept across my face, as I heard like a soft whisper in my ear "Your life is no longer yours!"