Where is God in all the mess?

Sometimes it’s hard to get my head around writing certain posts. This is one of them. Two Sundays ago I was sitting in the home of one of the mums in our womens empowerment program. When we first became aware of her early last year, neither she nor her children had eaten for a few days. At first glance it was obvious her baby had down syndrome and one of her older girls was suffering from malnutrition – she was also blind, mute and unable to sit or even feed herself. Her support network was sitting at about zero, her husband who she hadn’t seen for several months had multiple wives and only visited her occasionally, providing no source of income. Children with disabilities are commonly shunned here due to many reasons, and the fact that she still had them both was a credit to her as many would have abandoned them long ago. Her situation could at best be described as desperate. Fast forward about one year, and she is now earning an income through the skills she’s learned in our program and is receiving continual business mentoring and encouragement as she looks for additional business to boost her income. Hope has entered her world, and the smile that she now wears is evidence that it exists. 

Back to that Sunday afternoon. Despite the trips to various doctors and hospitals over the past year seeking treatment or advice for her older daughters failing condition, we were no closer to any answers. In fact, as horrible as it is to say, it seemed very clear the doctors saw no value in her life and wanted to wipe their hands of her.

At ten years she weighs just 10kg (the weight of my babies at around one year). While we have been providing nutritional support for her, we’ve been unable to access some specialised therapeutic foods that this sweet girl so desperately needs. So here I sat with our new Jordan House nurse, and another two JH staff. This day we were determined to come up with a workable plan before it was too late. It wasn’t as simple as finding a hospital that would admit her. In Uganda, a caregiver must stay with a patient to provide basic cares and food or they will simply be left – unfed and often untreated. The problem we faced was a single mum with 5 children and no-one else to go to the hospital in her place nor to stay with her children at home if she went. To complicate it more, she needed an extended hospital stay which would mean even if mum could go with her to hospital she wouldn’t be able to work to earn an income, she had no money saved to provide food for the children at home and she’d still need to pay rent while she was gone. 

And then we saw the five year old daughter that was sick with measles. Which means the other children in the family including Rita and her baby sister with downs that already had a nasty chest infection had been exposed to it. People die from measles complications here. Just last week I heard of another three victims. These two girls already had struggling immune systems. The fact that my bare feet were in a puddle of urine on the concrete floor wasn’t enough to distract me from the tears that were threatening to spill – hadn’t this family faced enough? Needless to say, we came up with a plan that has since been adjusted several times. Rita is finally in a nutrition ward receiving the treatment she needs (though that is another post in itself). We’re closely monitoring her progress as there’s 150 patients on the ward with only a handful of staff, so to make sure she gets what she needs we have to be very proactive.

I was thinking later that night – how easy it is to ask God where He is in all this mess. The previous few days I’d been monitoring a girl in the community very sick with measles, her mother having spent her last money on some juice for her and now unable to afford any treatment or food as she couldn’t work while looking after her daughter. And then there was the single pregnant mother to be who came to Jordan House asking me what she had to do to get her unborn baby into the orphanage. Out it came, just like someone would ask for travel directions. Then she introduced me to her sister who she lived with, also pregnant and without a job and wanting us to take her baby when it was born too as they just didn’t know how they’d be able to bring up children if they were unable to work. 

God gently reminded me that he’s exactly where he has always been and always will be. He’s right in the middle of the mess –over the course of the next few days we saw him working through the person that gave money towards Ritas care, he’s showing himself through the team at Jordan House that have committed to feed Ritas family every day while she’s at the hospital with her mum and baby sister. He uses the generosity of those on the other side of the world to provide for us to be here to show Ritas family someone cares and will advocate on her behalf. He’s evident in the nurse that took pity on her and went out of her way to make sure she got her scan done quickly through another department instead of waiting in line all day. His love shines through as our social worker sits with mums looking at ways we can support them to keep their children, and as the church takes food parcels to those that have empty pots - and through it all we see God ministering his peace, joy and hope to worried mothers hearts.

We are reminded again and again that God is never absent from our pain or the suffering we see around us. His heart is probably breaking even more than ours. No matter how we feel. Sometimes we just have to trust God no matter what situations we face and understand that we’re not going to have all the answers this side of heaven, and that’s ok. So instead of asking “where is God?” maybe we should be asking “where does God want me in all the mess?”  

I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 15v13