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Author: Jon

Standing There

A Jon Post

It seems like I’ve been “doing something” for a while now. Layne and I have been pretty busy over the last couple months and I’ve felt like I’ve lost some of my time for something else. Something very African and very much a part of what Layne and I try to do in our ministry.

Just standing there.

It’s funny, but as an American, I have learned that it is not an acceptable part of my culture to be around people or next to someone and just stand there. We have to be doing something, we have to be talking about something, we must have a purpose. Being here I’ve learned that those things don’t necessarily translate to the culture I’m in now.

As I’ve rushed around doing something on a nearly continuous basis (or at least felt like I have) for the last couple months, I’ve missed some opportunities to stop…

And just stand there.

I don’t honestly know who coined the phrase “Don’t just stand there, do something!” but whoever it was I don’t think they have ever been next to a man dying on a bed who has not had a face to smile at him for 6 months. I don’t think they’ve ever sat beside a mother whose son has just lost his 2-year battle with a sickness that rotted flesh from bone and ripped breath from lungs. That phrase really makes no sense in such a context.

When faced with such powerlessness… I think one of the most encouraging suggestions is:

“Don’t just do something, stand there!”

Just stand there. Just hold a hand. Just weep with them. Don’t say anything, don’t try to fix what cannot be mended with words or service… just stand there.

A tragically troubled man, who served God and loved people named Henri Nouwen once said,

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not healing, not curing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”

I miss those times.

I don’t want to forget that Christ can be found, Christ can be known, Christ can be seen…

By just standing there.

 

So I Carried Him

A Jon Post

I was going to write about having a mission team here with us and the activities we’ve been doing. But Thursday something happened that I haven’t been able to get off my heart or out of my memory.

Carrying Tomé on a Good Day

Carrying Tomé on a Good Day

Tomé, dear sweet Tomé, had his last 5-day chemo treatment this last week. He has been here at the hospital for a year and a half now, getting this 5-day chemo every 3 weeks, for 84 weeks. Every vein in his hand, wrist, forearm and upper arm, even in both feet, has been used many, many times.  Like any other chemo course, by day 4 his body was haggard and broken by the poison dripping into it.
He had been receiving his treatment into his left foot for the first three days of treatment. One of the side effects of his treatment is that he has to urinate often and painfully. With a chemo drip in your foot, walking to a bathroom 30 yards away is not an easy task.
By this day, his foot had become swollen and painful and the chemo was no longer flowing into his shrunken vein. The nurses needed to move the needle.
Countless times they poked him, wrists, arms, even in his head… finally they found a vein in his other foot.
He was crying uncontrollably when I found him in the treatment room, gauze taped to his head, arms and left foot to cover oozing needle marks. The nurse told him he was done and could go back to his room.

So I carried him.

Crying in my arms, his weak grasp wrapped around me for balance, we made it back to his bed. At 11-years-old he’s just old enough to be ashamed of his tears when he’s in pain. This day he didn’t even make an attempt to stop them. He just leaned against me and wept softly at the pain of his final treatment.
Mustering courage he told me he had to go to the bathroom.

So I carried him.

I don’t consider myself a strong guy, but there was little that would have unsteadied my step or shaken my grip around his frail body as I made my way down that hallway to the bathroom, opened the door to the dirty stall, and knelt with him to get him close enough to the toilet.
Painful moments later, we were making our way back to his bed. I laid him down as gently as I could and covered him in his little blanket. There he lay, quivering in pain, wishing and waiting just to make it through the next day and a half.
Alice and Paula (another dear lady who comes to bless the children there), brought some milk, cookies and candy to try to help get his mind off of the pain he was in.
He closed his eyes, grimaced and tightly gripped my hand and Alice’s hand as a nurse pushed a shot into his IV in his foot.
There I sat. I knew Tomé had no words or strength to look to the Lord or ask Him to come sit in bed with him. I knew Tomé didn’t know how to approach the Lord or come before Jesus on his own.

So I carried him.

I poured out my heart to Jesus Christ, praying desperate prayers from desperate lips. No crowd around me or Tomé could keep me from carrying this suffering boy and laying him before Jesus’ feet.

So I carried him.

 

He Never Left

A Jon Post

His Splendor

His Splendor

Wave after wave charges toward sand dunes piled two hundred feet high. The unmitigated fury of the ocean is resisted by walls of sand solemnly holding their heads high against the fray.  Thousands of years of the anger of the sea are met by the thousands of years of the tranquil defiance of those dunes. Here lies the coast of Mozambique; beauty hidden away, not by secrets or jealousy, but merely by world-wide ignorance of what is watched over safely by a land most have forgotten. I myself have simply stumbled upon it. I read no guidebook, followed no GPS coordinates, heard no “if-you-do-nothing-else-you-must-see-this”.  I have stumbled upon this treasure guarded only by the distance between here and there. Here, laid up for countless years, the richness of God’s splendor is displayed in the thunderous applause of the waves and the regal silence of the dunes. Here is Mozambique.

Many may think God left this continent long ago. After reading, seeing, and hearing of countless wars, famines, diseases, many lose hope.

But I think there is depth that so many choose not to see.

God’s been here the whole time.

He is in the smile of Tomé. He is in the hug of Maninha. He is in the shyness of Emilia’s greeting.

He is in the touch my wife offers to a lonely soul. He is in the time I spend sitting next to a tired friend, who waits for treatment to end.

God has always been here.

Not just since Layne and I started doing what we’ve been doing for a year now. For one year, we’ve been doing this with the energy of God that so powerfully works in us.

But for generation upon generation, there has been God calling out, pursuing the lost sheep, offering mercy where only judgment is deserved. We, the ransomed of God, will never know how dreadful deep were the wounds that scored His hands and heart, ere He claimed us for His own.

Here is Mozambique.

Here the Father pursues, has pursued and will pursue His own.


Joy in the Morning

I know it’s a relatively cliché thing to write about the little lessons about the Lord that I’m learning from being a father but that’s what you get this week. You’ve got to give me a little grace here, she’s my firstborn and I haven’t done it yet. So here we go.

I’m going to tell you two stories. One about a 15-year-old named Nelson and one about 3-month-old named Anaya.

Nelson came to the hospital about 5 months ago. He was quiet, reluctant to talk about his life, reluctant to come sit outside with me, and mostly just sat on his hospital bed waiting for the next treatment. He rarely smiled and stayed to himself. I visited him among many others and after a few visits he became a bit more friendly but still stayed quiet, still stayed sitting on his bed. Nearly every time I approached him he would offer only a blank look, eyes that spoke only of pain and loneliness and a weak handshake. I left the hospital many times wishing I had been able to connect with him better, draw him out of his suffering and see him smile when he saw me coming.

Anaya was born almost 3 months ago and for the first 2 months and 3 weeks she occasionally smiled but more often, like any newborn, she expressed herself by screaming or soft crying (MUCH worse than the screaming for a parent). She didn’t like being left alone, didn’t like going to bed, and pouted often even though she couldn’t communicate to me why she was so frustrated. I would put her to bed and whisper my prayers over her, speak my love over her and hope that she stopped crying soon. It rends my heart every time.

Something changed.

For Nelson it was about 2 months ago.

For Anaya it was just last week.

They started smiling when they saw me coming. At last they were able to express the immediate retreat of the loneliness that surrounds when they are left in their beds. Though it rips my heart to pieces to leave this child alone in a bed, I cannot express how much breath fills my lungs when I approach Anaya first thing in the morning or Nelson early in an afternoon, and see a huge smile.

Now I cannot wait to go see my daughter in the morning, to pick her up, see her eyes squint nearly closed, her lips curl out and up, her hands joyously bat the air and hear a squeal of joy to be reunited with her daddy.
And now I cannot wait to walk up to the hospital, catch a glimpse of Nelson looking out the window and hear a loud “Tio Jon!” escape from his lips, feel his arms drape over my shoulders as embraces me from behind and see his laughing smile dance across his face.

Today, loneliness lost. Today love won. Today, a child found a reason to smile. Today I was honored to represent Christ to a lonely child.

Though the sorrow may have lasted for the night the joy came in the morning.

 

Encouraged

A Jon Post

As I was trying to decide what to write this week I started reading back over the last year and a half worth of blogs we’ve put up here. I read some of the hard times in our lives, times of death, of sickness, of pain, mixed with joyous moments in our lives, times of birth, of life, of smiles. In all of those times, in all of these “blogs”, in all of our crying out in triumph, defeat, life and death… you are there with us.

When we wrote of our tears, you cried with us. You encouraged us. You stirred us on to love and good deeds. You breathed words of life and comfort when we needed them.

When we wrote of our fun, you laughed with us. You told us of the great things the Lord has done for us.

In all of these times, of laughter, mourning, dancing, weeping, life, death, health, sickness, smiles, tears… you were… you are there with us.

Your encouragement means so much to us. Simple comments on simple blogs, mean something to us.

You are as much a part of this as we are. You are.

We love you guys.