There is an underweight little girl with matted patches of hair growing on her 4-year-old head that bears my name. She’s dark skinned and beautiful, like her unwed, teenage mother; but her foul mouth and distrusting eyes definitely come from her dad. And from both her parents she probably inherited her predisposition to drug addiction.

When I see little Ashley, I start to ache. I stare at the barren wasteland of her little life and wonder how we received the same name but dramatically different circumstances when we came into this world. I never know what to do with the immensity of unmet need that she carries with her, and so I just default to sweeping her up into my arms and holding on tight. She never fails to respond, her frail body making my arms feel very strong and wholesome as they wrap around her.

Today I was in Capricorn with Beth Rapha, handing out soup. Ashley walked by with her aunt Maya and apparently another grandmother than the other two I’ve known all this time. She stood out in the devastation that is Capricorn: she definitely wasn’t a drug addict (she was healthy), and she definitely wasn’t a Christian (she had just come from Friday prayers at the mosque). Her daughter, also healthy and also Muslim, had her right breast hanging out of her abaya, nursing a baby on her hip.

I heard my name across the road in the shrill shouting distinctive of a little girl! Everyone in Capricorn says my name the same, adding a syllable to it: “Ess-uh-lee”. I heard it, and knew from whom it came…my little namesake. I rushed over to see her and swept her up as I usually do, her sweet head falling comfortably onto my left shoulder in a matter of moments. If I didn’t know better, I’d put money on her being my own flesh and blood. Her aunt Penny is much the same to my heart; I love this family so dearly.

As I held her there, easily carrying her lightweight frame down the road while chatting with her family, I noticed something. I could literally feel little Ashley’s lungs rattling around in her chest as she breathed. She hadn’t been running or exerting much energy. This was just the normal state of her youthful lungs: infected, probably from a cold she caught as a baby and never shed. All over again, I started to ache. Everything in me hoped my grip on her body would somehow suck all the pain and suffering out of her and into myself. I just can’t take it much longer.

What do you do when a tiny baby girl given your name is barely alive…body, soul and spirit? When you can feel her lungs fighting for breath against the mucous slowly suffocating her? When you know she’d hold on to you forever if you’d let her…

Even as these moments bring a helplessness and a pain to my awareness that I can’t really make sense of, they are what keep me in this country. God allows me to hold baby Ashley for 2 minutes a week and I call it a fair trade…even if he asks for America, comfort, Starbucks, Target, 1519 Lipscomb Drive, and oftentimes my sanity in return.

Comments

  1. StacieJuly 3, 2011 at 5:29 PM

    It's so hard to see children suffer. Especially when you have such a special bond with them. I am sorry you have to deal with that and feel so helpless. (Although when I had to deal with that, I was working in a hospital- and still felt helpless.) Glad you can know that you are right where you need to be..... ♥ you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJuly 7, 2011 at 1:49 PM

    you are a beautiful writer.

    i want to visit you this year. and i want you to visit me too :P

    emma

    ReplyDelete
  3. LizJuly 18, 2011 at 7:56 PM

    We carry them just long enough to take them to Jesus. And then we rest them there. At his feet. We take them to Jesus and we trust him with them. That is what we can do. And it is powerful.

    If we try to carry them under our own strength we will falter and break under the weight. We are not strong enough to carry the pain and brokenness of the ones we love or humanity. But Jesus is. And he gives us the strength to carry those he has given us a heart for just long enough to get them back to him.

    Abide. Rest in his love. It is out of rest that we find strength for it all.

    ReplyDelete

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