free to be

With the window cracked a couple of inches, just enough to let the breeze sweep across my face, I weaved in and out of the mountain roads. Sandra McCracken and I were singing a duet loud and carefree in the car. The sunshine was warm on my face and I was relishing the fact that I get to enjoy these things while 'on the clock'.

I turned down a dusty, country road and took a quick peek at my directions. I was getting close. I saw the silver mailbox 'with the door that hangs open' and turned into a narrow gravel drive. Directly ahead of me, stood an old, white house. I looked again at my directions and felt a flutter in my stomach. The home looked as if it should be vacant. I slowed the car and put it in park. Three young kids were already out of the house and running wildly, like excited kids do, towards my car. As I turned the engine off, one little girl was already peering in my driver's side window and two other faces peered intently at me from the other side. Their little expectant faces were covered in dirt.

I got out and was immediately surrounded. They examined everything in my trunk and asked a hundred questions. They were excited and ran to the house yelling ‘the nurse is here!’ I stepped through an open door and smiled my best smile as my eyes slowly focused to the dim light. This old, tired, wilting home was nothing more than a frame. There was nothing of substance to fill it. The home was barren. The floors covered with dirt. The kid’s appeared well nourished but there was nothing in the home I could see to eat, except for a couple of bags of potatoes. They offered me what they had. I wondered if I would be so generous if the tables were turned.

The kids were happy. They talked about growing up to be nurses and doctors and the little boy dreamed out loud about growing up to be a bull rider. As I wrote my note they circled around me and tried to make sense of my scribbles. They touched my hair and played with my badge. It wasn’t unlike my experience in Africa; in fact so much about this visit took me back to that place. One of the little girls gave me a hug, and then the little boy rested his head on my side. They were hungry.

I'll never be able to articulate how it feels to stand in these homes. I'll never be able to describe how these hour long visits change our lives. Because they do--they change everything. In that home today, I was surrounded by laughter and curiousity and love, and yet I was a smile away from my tears. Not because I pitied them-which is what initially stirred within me when I pulled up to the home but because they possess treasures I do not. They were beautiful, this family hidden away in the mountains with little more than a roof as their shelter.

I drove away, my car bouncing and kicking up gravel along the driveway, with three little faces singing goodbye in my rearview mirror. Hope, personified: more beautiful then the sunshine; more refreshing then the breeze.