The room was roughly 30′ x 20′, boasting a bright orange tiled floor with a blue fish pattern imprinted throughout, stilled ceiling fans overhead and 4 rows of small, white, metal cribs with narrow walkways in between. But nothing in the room compared to the beautiful brown-skinned faces of the babies, outfitted in purple and white striped pillow case dresses who lay, sat or stood in those cribs, waiting to be loved.
This is the picture of the Home for the Sick and Dying Children, and during our week in Haiti, we served there for half a day, holding, feeding, changing, playing and loving these children the best we could.
The children’s parents are allowed to visit only a few hours a day at certain times and they must remain on the property. There is a beautiful courtyard designed for this purpose and many of them come daily and sit for hours in the hot sun or limited shade just for the chance to hold their precious, sick children.
One of the most challenging moments often happens when visiting hours end and parents/families are required to leave, all AT ONCE. If they can, parents will hand their baby to a volunteer, so they know someone will be holding them when they go. But there are often dozens of babies returned to their cribs with no one to hold them.
The day we were there, at precisely 11 a.m., the tiny room proved true to form: the parents deposited the babies in their cribs and sobbing simultaneously erupted.
It was loud and heartbreaking. I was overwhelmed.
But quickly something changed. In a minute or two the crying wasn’t just pure chaos anymore, the babies had begun to cry in UNISON!
I stood there listening, tears rolling down my face.
Many voices had become one, “Wah – Wah – Wah – Wah – Wah”, as if they were singing along to music with the sound of their sobs.
It’s the most beautiful chorus I’ve ever heard.
Since I returned from Haiti, the unison of those babies’ cries has stayed with me. It was a divine moment for me, and one I’m trying not to forget in the chaos of my First World life.
And it’s prompted a few revelations along the way about the unity of suffering:
Sometimes it helps to cry with someone else.
The devastating sound of 20+ babies crying together was somehow comforting to me. They wept together, adopting their cry to that of another. Like they were saying, I’m not alone, there’s others here too and that somehow makes it ok. And they not only shared the same trial, but others came alongside and joined in their suffering for those precious few moments in time. A privilege and opportunity we shouldn’t take lightly.
Shared suffering has a distinct beauty of its own.
We can do more in God’s power than our own.
I have a bad back…a 4-back surgeries kinda bad back. So holding multiple babies in my arms for long periods of time is never recommended. My first instinct was to think, I can only help one baby, and there’s an ocean of tears in this room! But when I cried out God made a way. Soon I was straddling 2 cribs, with a baby in my left arm, another baby holding the finger of my left hand, and a 3rd baby in the crib next to me grasping my free right hand. And with just one little, incapacitated me, 3 babies were comforted in a matter of seconds. God is big enough, especially when we are not.
Rarely have I felt so ill-equipped, but useful all at the same time.
Child in Cite Soleil – Port-au-Prince, Haiti
We will never have all the answers this side of eternity. We cannot completely take the suffering away from the babies in Haiti, from our own family or from our friends down the street. But we can find the beauty, divinity and opportunity when we unite with those in the midst of it.