Contrast


 


I was exhausted from the previous weeks of figuring out how to take care of both my newly expanded family and all the hospital duties - inpatient medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics, urgent and non urgent consultations, ultrasound interpretations, xray interpretations, administrative duties. I wanted a contrast - a contrast from the long nights in the OR trying to stop the flood of blood from a postpartum hemorrhage or in the obstetrics ward watching an oxytocin drip on a patient with stalled labor.


The furnace of hot season started blasting forth its fires making both our energy levels  and the glasses on my sweaty face slip off. I wanted a contrast. A contrast from the world of brown - brown dirt, brown skies, a weather forecast that said “dust.”


The greatest contrast I could think of from Chad was northern Finland - Lapland. So we left Chad for a three hour tour, or well, in our case, a two week vacation. In a matter of a few flights, we were transported to a world of white - a world of six feet of snow and ice. This world was as opposite in culture, landscape, weather, and food that I could find. I wanted a contrast. 


Suddenly, along with billions of other earth-dwellers, our entire world was changed this spring. The peace and tranquility of our vacation was turned into worry and stress as the borders of Chad closed, and we were locked out. But there was nothing we could do. All land borders were closed, all flights were canceled. The airport simply shut down. No strings existed for us to pull to get back in. Our anxiousness to get back into the country starkly contrasted with the anxiousness of our friends and colleagues needing to get out. While we spent our days cross country skiing in peaceful and lonely forests, our colleagues were battling to survive the long days and longer nights filled with too many patients and too much work. My previous days of seeing 50+ patients day after day were morphed into day after day of seeing no one but my little son and husband. 


Every day we would watch the flights, watch the news, to see if a new reopening day was announced. The weeks rolled on and each reopening day was replaced with another one 2-3 weeks in the future. Our hope of returning to the mission field grew more dim with each passing day. Normally we are always ready to get out of Chad for a break. Now however, we had had so much break, we felt as if we were breaking ourselves, from uncertainty over our futures and confusion on where to go, what to do. Do we abandon thoughts of returning to the missionfield? Have the days of overseas missionaries finished? Do we start building a new life for ourselves in the US?


After months of praying and searching the Lord’s will, the borders finally opened and the confusion over our futures was contrasted with the surety that for at least the coming months, we were going to be in Chad.


Then the nights of getting called by my little son for breast milk became replaced again with calls from urgence for lacerations needing to be sutured or ladies needing help getting their babies out. Gabriel is busy translating books into French to help the people here understand more about God and video-recording missionary stories to send out to the world. We have had several folks come in for flesh repairs after fighting lately. During the harvest time those who grow the fields are at odds with those who herd their cattle through those fields. The arrow pictured I yanked out of a guy's thigh.


And so, we are back in Chad, trying our best to touch lives here for Jesus and give folks a bit more time on earth to learn about His love. We hope to contrast the sufferings of lives lived in sin and darkness with the joy of serving Christ and being transformed into His likeness.


“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.”

‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭9:2‬

Comments

  1. God will take care of you and be with you wherever you go (Genesis 28:15).

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    1. Uplifting you in prayer! Linda Suhari

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