Hope

“She’s my Favorite Daughter…”

If you are like me, those words probably make you a little uncomfortable.  You’re not supposed to feel that way, and if you do, you are definitely not supposed to say it.  Sitting across from an older Kenyan gentleman, I shifted uneasily in my seat.  Maybe it was the cultural divide; perhaps it was simply a challenge of translation; or maybe he meant exactly what I heard the translator say… I couldn’t be sure at that moment.  The meaning the words carried were intensely clear, though.  The young teenage girl lying in the ICU bed beside us was immeasurably important to her father, more important than his own life.  The comment was not the only reason I felt uncomfortable, though.  I was fumbling with my words, trying to tell him that there was very little we could do for his daughter.  She suffered from a condition called rheumatic heart disease, and it appeared that her disease had progressed beyond the point where we could help.  She was going to die.  The best we could hope for was to temporarily stabilize her and ease her discomfort, and even that would be very expensive.  Despite the dramatically reduced costs in a mission hospital, ICU care can be financially devastating when you make less than 500 shillings ($5) per day.  It soon became clear that he understood her extremely poor prognosis and the cost.  He chose hope.  I couldn’t blame him.  Even as I desperately tried to block the thought from entering my mind, I could still see the faces of my own precious children lying on the hospital bed beside me.  I didn’t understand at that moment, though, how deep his hope went.

Most of us in the West have forgotten, or never known, the devastating terror of rheumatic heart disease.  We know we are supposed to take strep throat seriously, but we’re not sure why.  Without a simple treatment with antibiotics, somewhere between 1 and 3 percent of people who have strep throat will develop rheumatic fever.  Many who develop rheumatic fever will subsequently develop rheumatic heart disease, and without surgery, almost all of those will die.  In my 10 years as a pediatrician in the US, I never saw a single case of rheumatic fever.  In my 6 months in Kenya, I saw at least 10 children die, and many more suffering from the cruel clutches of this terrible disease.  Thanks to the heroic efforts of a few surgeons and teams of specialists from the US, some of these kids are given new hope with lifesaving heart surgery.  Many are too sick, beyond the point where surgery is an option.  Every single one of these tragic stories is preventable.

A few hours after our first conversation, I again sat with this kind Kenyan man.  This time, fighting back tears, I had to explain to him that his daughter had died.  I didn’t know what to expect. I had seen this news crush the strongest and reduce them to a weeping pile on the floor.  As I lamely said “I’m so sorry,” his response was shocking.  With tears on his face, he looked at me and said, “Why are you sorry? You did everything you could.”  He went on to explain the depth of his hope.  He knew his precious child had trusted in the saving mercy of Jesus, the same Lord He had given his life to.  Because of this unshakeable hope he could boldly say, in defiance of the tragedy, that he knew he would see her again.  He could even rejoice that her earthly suffering had come to an end.  She was in paradise with her Lord.

The testimony of this man’s faith shook me.  It is rare that we catch a glimpse of the shining crown of glory our Lord places on His saints on this side of eternity.  My prayer for this new year is that I can live out what I know to be true, what this humble man so vividly revealed.  The lyrics of this song say it better than I even could:

No guilt in life, no fear in death—
This is the pow’r of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—
Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.

I pray the same for all of you.  If you don’t know that hope that we have in Christ, I would love to tell you more about it (please contact us!).  If you would like to partner with us as we seek to share this hope with others and work to prevent the scourge of diseases like rheumatic heart disease from devastating other families in Kenya, please consider donating to our ministry.

“so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.”   -1 Peter 4:2