also before i went on this trip, i had dinner with my dear friend teresa, who has joined me on 2 of my previous trips to haiti. she had just come back from another visit to haiti and the mother teresa hospital for children there. holding babies at this hospital is a big part of what we do in haiti. over dinner teresa said: tina, when you get to haiti you need to hold a baby for me. in one of the rooms, there was a baby that was oozing all over the place. i just couldn't hold it and i don’t know why. it had a huge sore on its head and it didn't look human. i could hardly even look at it. i feel so bad, so guilty. you have to see if that baby is still there. if you see it i know you will hold it … please. i wondered about this as teresa is usually drawn to the really broken ones.
so our team went to haiti … and as soon as we arrived at the children’s hospital i went to the room i always go into first … a room filled with children who are in critical care. i love to hold these wee ones. i held a 2 year old, 8 lb child … an 8 month old 5 lb baby … a 6 month old 3 lb baby. some were heartier … but … you get the picture? these are the babies you see on world vision … many have AIDS … some have tuberculosis which they will die from … others are severely malnourished … and so forth. i held, sang to and loved these wee ones for the day.
the next day i decided to wander around a bit and see if i could find teresa’s baby. she was quite sure that it would probably have died by the time we arrived and was feeling so guilty for not picking the child up. teresa didn't know the sex or name of the child. she didn't know much about the child at all … except for the way it looked and made her feel.
i walked down the hall toward room room # 3 where teresa said the child was, stopped just outside of the room and observed for a while. there were a couple of women moving in and out of the room, giving care to children who were standing or sitting in their cribs. one child, who just lie on it's back, stuck out to me. something about this child was different. to me, from a distance, it looked … alone. after some time i went into the room and walked toward this child, whose head was stretched far over to one side. on the back of its head was a huge, elephant-man type sore that was oozing. i looked at the child’s face only to see that it had no eye lids. its eyes were perpetually open, eye-balls entirely white and it was obviously blind. its deformed mouth was stretched into a permanent open position, the inside full of sores and it had patches of stretched scarring from what appeared to be acute burns all over its face and body. there was a small wisp of down hair on the top of its head, and it could not have weighed more than 5 lbs. if you've seen the lord of the rings, this child looked like a decrepit little gollum.
i gazed at this child for a long while, did not feel that i had the skill to pick it up un-coached and then feeding time came. i picked up a child i felt i could manage and sat in a rocking chair across from room 3. as i watched how children in room 3 were being handled, everything seemed normal for the environment we were in … for all but one baby … the gollum baby. the person feeding it took a spoon and glanced it over the baby’s ever-open mouth until the child choked the food back. i thought it odd that this care-giver not only did not pick this child up, she also did not make any physical contact with it. usually a child who can not sit up on its own is picked up and fed, no matter how sick. since the sore on the baby’s head was consistent with the types of sores i've seen on children with AIDS, i was beginning to feel more and more uncomfortable with how oddly different life seemed for this one.
so i stayed in my chair and as workers passed by i began asking about this child. no one seemed to know anything about it. i asked the sex of the child and no one answered. i asked the name of the child and no one seemed to know. not even the woman who was assigned to its room and had just fed it seemed to know anything about this child.
at this point i became a bit annoyed, so i inquired with some of the sisters. but even they did not seem to know anything about this child. i found this to be very upsetting … my third trip to this hospital and i had NEVER experienced this type of indifference before. what was going on??!
finally i grabbed the arm of sister stanisha … who gives day to day oversight to the hospital. i asked after the child and she said ‘oh, tina … this child is a very difficult case.’ she told of the child being transferred to them from another hospital. it was a botched abortion. initially the mother was staying at the hospital with it, but her husband came and told her she needed to be with their other children. when the doctor told her that this child was not viable she left it there to die. i could now see that most people who encountered this child had something in common – a denial of, repulsion toward, and disengagement from it. this little moppet, was very much on its own.
as i stood there speaking with sister stanisha, a couple of things came together in the heart of my understanding. first of all, i didn't feel any judgment toward the mother for her attempt on this child’s life. since the child apparently had AIDS i could safely assume that the mother did also. also, poverty is so profound in haiti that many children die of starvation … and the mother may not have felt that she had a choice with other mouths to care for. secondly, as you can tell from my description of it, this child was severely deformed by whatever attempt was made to end its life. what i came to understand is that in haiti, people with deformities are considered to be embodiments of the demonic, or voodoo. haiti's national religion is voodoo and a child considered to “be” voodoo is greatly feared and avoided. also i was told that, in haiti if a child is abandoned - the first person to pick it up is considered responsible for it. even though this would not ordinarily make sense in a hospital facility full of abandoned children … for some reason ... since people equated this child with voodoo, they were distancing themselves from it on every level possible. and thirdly, even the sisters distancing themselves from this little one somehow made sense to me because of their strong feelings against abortion. so the way this child was being treated made sense; it made complete sense in some weak, sick, way. i guess what i am saying is that although i felt that strong injustices prevailed against this child, for some reason i had an aha of grace for those who contributed to its pain.
personally, i felt a strong affinity with this broken, abandoned, marginalized child.
so i taught myself how to pick it up. the first time it howled … partly from pain as i kept accidentally touching its head … and partly because it had become so completely primitive from such profound lack of touch and care.
the next day i learned that this child was a female. she had an enlarged clitoris which somehow only made the care-givers around her even more fearful of her … as they thought that she might be cross-gendered, which would mean; more voodoo and further alienation. she was so obviously a girl in so many ways. it saddened me that even the professionals around her hadn't investigated enough to allay their own misgivings and superstitions. it did, however, explain why no one wanted to name her - no one knew her gender. so i named her Mercy. it just felt right in my heart to call her this since she was such an obvious expression of God’s mercy to those around her. it seemed to me that she was a gift of mercy to all of us … a look in the mirror at our own brokenness … the brokenness in her that we may or may not want to identify with … and a look at the brokenness of those around her who did not want to associate or identify with her.
i bathed and rubbed lotion into her little body … even though she vomited and had diarrhea constantly as i was doing it. i kept washing and rubbing the lotion into her. she seemed to respond to the care that she was being given. i swaddled her … perhaps for the first time … and she loved it. she would get this glow on her little deformed face that was hard to miss. i sang to her and prayed for her, rocked her and cried over her. and you know … Mercy became a totally different little person. she had this little glow of joy from the love that she was receiving. she seemed to literally transform out of a primitive gollum creature, into a beautiful Mercy.
two of our final days in Haiti i spent mornings at the mother teresa home for the dying and afternoons at the children’s hospital with Mercy.
joyce and i had an amazing time at the home for the dying. the first morning we massaged women’s limbs, singing over them and praying for them. many had AIDS and a few had cancer. the second morning was ash wednesday and i went alone. there were only 3 women in the room i was working in … and what do you think the chances would be that two of these women would have the same names as my mother, helen and my grandmother madeliene? i felt something deep stir in my heart during my encounters with these two women.
i later returned to the children’s hospital for my final afternoon with Mercy.
as i rocked my little girl, i reflected on my morning. dots began to connect as i reflected on my grandmother madeliene and her 12 sisters, who grew up in northern ontario. as the story has been passed on to me: during the war and into the depression these young women were all prostitutes as a means of survival. also: their mother, my great grandmother, taught these young women how to bring children into the world … and how to take them out of the world. later in life, my grandmother strongly and successfully pressured my mother to abort some of her children. one abortion took place shortly after my mother had a complete nervous breakdown at 20. she had just left an abusive relationship and already had 3 small children. many years later i became pregnant with my son out of wedlock and my grandmother told my mother that she was going to visit me because she needed to have a talk with me. when she arrived at my home, my grandmother began to weep and implore me ‘tina, please do not throw this baby away … i've thrown so many away … please promise me that you will not do this.’ i then learned of her history and assured her that i had no intention of doing this. but my grandmother’s story and brokenness deeply touched me and i have never forgotten that time with her. my grandmother died a couple of years ago … and my mother has never completely forgiven my grandmother. nor has she lost the stigma of association with my grandmother’s past and some of the parts she played in it. i prayed for reconciliation when my grandmother was alive, and healing for my mom since then. i even took my mother to a seminar once to assist her in working through the pain and grief of her lost children … and to forgive my grandmother. she has found it too difficult to do.
so i sat there with Mercy and thought about this. and it dawned on me that i was living in a redemptive moment of time … right in the centre of my destiny … right in the center of eternity … of what we call in the vineyard the already and the not yet. there was no mistake in my meeting with Mercy. my heritage spoke into hers ... and hers into mine. we were connected by a Love that brought us together and neither of us would ever be the same. "Mercy", i said, "i have come to you from a long line of women who have brought life into and taken life out of the world and i am here with a message of love, justice, and mercy for you … and i want you to live." my heart was filled with love and awe. i said to the Lord, "ok … i have total faith that you can heal this child. it would be such an act of love, bring incredible glory to your name and be a total act of justice if you healed this baby right now." i prepared myself to pray in that vein … and felt the Lord interrupt me. ‘tina, what if the whole reason that you came out here to haiti this visit was so that Mercy could die with dignity? what if that is your destiny … what would you think of that … would it be enough?' well i just started to cry and cry and i thought … yes, it would be just like God to bring redemption to an entire lineage of women through one who thinks that her story is too small - and to bring dignity to a child so utterly abandoned, rejected and disenfranchised ... and for that to be enough. i thought … 'ok God, if Your will has been satisfied then i trust you in this place.'
so i prayed for her and blessed my little Mercy … i gave her deep firm hugs (until then i had been afraid that i might break her bones) … and she just loved it. i swaddled her really tight and laid her in her crib. it was such an act of faith for me to walk away and leave her there and yet i was so overwhelmed with bigness of God.
i will never be the same after my encounter with Mercy. what a severe mercy that God would bring such a broken child into my world. i did not choose her … God chose her for me. yet the first time i saw her, i loved her. i was also curious about all of the behavior around her … and about how she herself had adapted to a primitive way of being, in response to her environment. but the dignity that filled her life from being loved and treated like a human, like a baby, like a beautiful little girl, transformed her.
when we left haiti my ticket was the only one that looked like this:
which was incredibly meaningful to me, as i felt God was saying that i was bringing Mercy back home with me. so i give you Mercy, just as she was given to me.
