Beauty

Everything I love to do is about beauty. I’m pretty sure that that’s something us humans inherited from our Father. I’ll bet He looked at all this emptiness and said to  Himself “lets see what beauty we can make out of this” (He did that, sometimes – referring to himself as “we”). I don’t have a whole lot of faith, and a good portion of the time I have a hard time getting out of bed and facing the world, with all it’s endless questions and complications and uncontrollable situations. But every once in a while I have this overwhelming, *absolutely overwhelming* desire to make something beautiful. And then I think, I must be His daughter after all.

you make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of dust.
you make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of us.
you make me new, you are making me new.

-Gungor

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moving

What I loved most about “the old place” were the windows. Huge windows which opened up unto views of rooftops and trees. Our street is lined with the big, leafy trees and adorable freshly-painted stucco houses built in the 20s. Every single one has some sort of gorgeous flowers growing in the front – a fluffy white arch of jasmine over the entry, a beautiful pink tulip tree bending under the weight of it’s enormous blooms, or even a carpet of wild lemon grass with its simple happy yellow. I loved our street. This particular day was the last day I could rightfully call it “our street”, as we tossed the last remaining dregs of “random uncategorizable stuff” into unlabeled boxes. The winter (otherwise known as “lots of rain” in these parts) had finally arrived and it was my favorite kind of weather: miserable and unpredictable and heavy. Of course, Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”  was blasting.

I was standing there, looking out the window as the clouds shifted to cover an unexpected ray of sun and it once again began to pour, and I had one of those poignant moments. You know what I’m talking about. The kind of moment you think “man, I really have to write this down” (if you happen to be of the writing sort) but you don’t know what to say about it.  So I was looking out the window, and of course the song “time” started to play. The one about how life goes so fast, and we’re all just sleeping and walking when we should be running like hell. And then, icing on the cake, Sean came up to me and hugged me, and we were both just standing there looking out the window. For the grand finale, the song reached its crescendo: it started to hail, I started to cry.

I was just thinking that the life Seany and I are making….well, it’s not perfect, but its a pretty good start. It’s that combination of recognizing that things, for that moment, for you, are really quite good, and the terror that one day it might NOT be good and it would be too late to change anything. I’ve lived with this fear for as long as I can remember – the fear of the roads untraveled, the races un-run, the mistakes made and the ones that weren’t, the overwhelming amount of what-ifs and what-thens.  I live my life half asleep because I can’t bear it, and then I have these moments of being completely alert and awake and thinking of all the time I’ve wasted. But what was crazy about this particular moment, was that I didn’t think I had wasted a whole lot of it. I thought “by the grace of God, we’ve done alright so far. I have no regrets. ”

And so, we moved, and life goes on. I like moving, because of the poignant moments and the fresh starts. Hopefully, it will just keep getting better, and maybe one day I can be fully awake all the time, and it won’t be so terrifying and overwhelming. Maybe I’ll figure out how to balance it.

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Ethiopia 3 – Day 1 in the Yetebon

Tuesday was our official first full day at Project Mercy. We were to wake up early and hit the ground running – group devotions at 7, breakfast at 7:30, starting work at about 8:30. Monday night I set my phone alarm for 6am, and we passed out no later than 9:30. Thanks to jet-lag from flying halfway around the world, Sean and I were both wide awake at 5. He got up to take some sunrise photos, and I joined him a little later. By 7am, we were standing in front of the common room, ready to go…..and that’s about the time I realized I hadn’t re-set my clock since Dubai. So we had woken up at 4am, and it was now only 6. We decided to take a walk around and watch the sunrise.

As we walked around and took photos, the thought I had on the way to the compound came back to me with a new intensity – this is an *incredible* place. It is *so beautiful*. The dirt roads, the fields of grain, the mountains….all took on an even more magical quality in the early morning light. What a treat. This feeling – of being overwhelmingly blessed to be here – has come back to me many times each day. Even now as I think about it, I am close to tears – I have no idea why God picked me to be here, in this beautiful place, with these incredible people, to witness and even be a part of what He is doing here. But I am so thankful.

And all of that happened before 7am :0)

We had our devotions, and our breakfast as a group. I was finally starting to learn everyone’s names. First on the agenda was to set up the equipment and supplies we brought in the hospital O.R. (Operating Room). I put on scrubs and followed folks around as they worked, photographing and generally having a good time. Though even then, without any patients, I felt “off” about being in a hospital O.R. There was just this feeling of it being wrong for me – an entirely non-medical person – to be in such a sacred space. Little did I know how that feeling would escalate later on.

After shooting the O.R. setup for a couple of hours, I headed back to the compound (the hospital is about 1 mile down the road). There I spent several hours photographing the other half of our group as they organized the medicine in preparation for the clinics set to start the following day.  We met for dinner and briefly talked about the events of the day.

I was so utterly exhausted – between the altitude (Project Mercy is at almost 8000 ft above sea level), the lack of sleep, the jet lag, and the neat 10 straight hours of running around with 20 pounds of camera stuff strapped to me – I was ready to pass out into my dinner. I think we actually fell asleep right afterwords – at about 8:30pm.

 

Photos I yoinked from the group blog (taken by moi).

The Tukuls We are Staying in

Morning Devotions

Dr. Fekadu, the Local Surgeon

Setting up the O.R.

Setting up the O.R.

Setting up the Pharmacy

Setting up the Pharmacy

Oh, the Kids...

Mama Siggie

My Favorite Photo Ever.

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