“Mommy, Mommy, I need to . . . .”

Small, clutching, heaving body beside me. One-a.m. darkness, sudden-wide-awake, legs swinging over the bed, one hand cupping beneath N’s mouth, another flinging aside the mosquito netting, small body held between my legs, splatter of stomach contents against the hard cement floor, liquid splashing my legs in the darkness, a little body’s misery emptying into the fullness of the quiet night.

No solar-power stored at all; I walk in the darkness to wash a face carefully in water that is not so clean, wash hair with cold water in the coldness of the night. Looking for rags in the darkness I see a dark shadow moving and find a large hairy tarantula exploring our interior floors. Gishing it, we move on; to cleaning vomitous floors in the blackness of night, heating a kettle of water for a mid-night bath and hair wash, arranging pillows and blankets to sit up with Naomi as she struggles against what has taken hold in her stomach.

Meanwhile, this long night has followed a long day: supervising and securing two houses (our current one and the one we are about to move into on-campus) and two sets of house workers plus the construction project and crew on the new house (ten more men), thinking and praying over the school, staff and students; many discussions with David about the issues at Christ School, big and small; Quinn’s episodes of explosive diahrrea; dealing with food procurement, cleaning, cooking, pasteurizing, storing; a tense team meeting filled with the stresses of various members; local boys cat-calling and stripping in front of me as I walk up the path at twilight; our dog tearing valuable clothes off the line; still more requests for money from neighbors.

And still there is hope: Over the last few months I have felt my baseline missing, felt that the source and essence of who I am, God in and around me, has been hard to feel or sense. I have felt that when hard times inevitably come, I will collapse, not held by that bottom-of-my-pyramid, my God. Yet as a wise friend reminded me, God is very much still there, and though I don’t always feel him holding me up, when I fall He will catch me. And now I can sense Him. Now I am falling. And He is catching me now and I can feel His arms, His heart, his presence sustaining me. Sometimes it’s only in the falling that we can feel Him with us.
From Watermark’s album ” The Purest Place”:

“You’ve got all suspended All things connected Nothing was forgotten Cause your love is perfect You are our healer And you know what’s broken And we’re not a mystery to you.

We will dance and You restore the wasted years You will sing Over all our coming fears We’ll stand grateful For all that has been left behind And all that goes before.”