Go to the jungle!

O how grateful I am for those closest to me who have listened to the persistent rantings of my failed expectations and inability to control my life! I remember one such conversation I had with my medical mentor, a second father, if you will, who is an orthopedic surgeon. I told him everything that was happening in my life and my persistent confusion that it was not really going to plan. He listened so graciously through my tears and cracking voice. When I had finished, he simply said, "Come to Peru." It was an invitation to come reset my expectations by challenging my assumptions and shifting my perspective.

In Pucallpa, Peru, the last big city of civilization before the Amazon River turns wild into the jungle, there is a hospital where orthopedic teams travel several times a year to perform life-altering surgeries through a ministry called Scalpel at the Cross. This population has incredibly unusual injuries, since machetes and Mototaxis (a taxi cab seat in a cart on two wheels attached to the front half of a motorcycle - pictured below) are less common in the United States. However, these injuries also needed to be fixed in the jungle with limited resources. My past trips had always been life-giving to me, so the invitation was an easy yes. Two months later, I was off to the jungle!

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The first day we walked into the hospital, there were lines of people sitting in chairs waiting. They had been sitting there for hours already. Knowing that we would be seeing and selecting cases to work on, the Peruvians had walked, bused, biked, flatbed truck-ed, or climbed aboard whatever transportation they could find to make it to that hospital to be evaluated. The hopeful patients lined either side of the hallway. I saw joints locked in inhuman positions, some with feet that had never worked, arms that hadn't moved correctly in years, and tumors they had watched growing without any clarity of what was going on in their own bodies or access to a solution. And yet, they sat patiently, their hope radiating in quiet smiles and calm gazes.

One by one, we saw each of them, giving names to their ailments and deciding if we could provide a reasonable solution. Then we scheduled those we could for surgery. Regrouping at the bunk house that night, the team plotted out surgical plans for each of them. We sifted through the medical parts we had with us. Who could fit which knee or which hip, which surgeon could perform that surgery, which person would need a prosthetic, what surgeries needed the singular ventilator we had available to us versus the ability to operate with a spinal block alone. And sadly, who would we have to schedule for a future trip - hoping that when we returned with different parts or different surgeons - they would have a more successful outcome. And lastly, who would we have to return home with only our prayers. After this planning process, the real work began. I was just an ER nurse now thrown into the operating room - but here in the jungle, willing hands are able hands. I would be taught to scrub, to run, to calculate doses of antibiotics, to help harvest skin grafts. Whatever was needed, I would become.

Unlike American surgeries, which predominantly occur on unconscious patients, happily drifting off to sleep before the first knife cut and waking up in post-op areas to family and ice chips, here in the jungle, when possible, our patients underwent surgery fully awake. If a surgery could be performed with local anesthetics, it would be. That allowed for resources to be saved for more critical patients and eliminated potential for hospitalizations or intubations that would be costly and risky for the patients. And so, our team began to reconstruct feet, reconfigure legs, remove bullets, and give new knees to patients who were mostly awake and talking to us.

I remember one patient whose leg surgery was particularly gruesome. We will call him Victor. He laid awake, numbed and paralyzed by the medicine injected into his spine. He had broken his leg in a Moto taxi. In Peru, care is paid for before it is rendered. After his first surgery, the metal bracket in his leg began to bend. But he could not afford a second surgery. Instead, he allowed his bones to grow back together just as they lay. Each step he took, his own weight bent the metal bracket further. Now his leg curved into almost a C-shape resulting in a left leg so much shorter than the right, he walked on the tip toes of his left foot. The bones had grown incredibly strong because of the wobbling gait and this man’s demands to continue walking in spite of the apparent dysfunction. The surgeon wrestled to straighten bones that had grown so poorly for over a decade. But Victor laid perfectly still on the table, beaming a hopeful smile that we were going to restore his leg to him. His right arm lay straight out to the anesthesiologist allowing the IV medicines to infuse. His left arm lay straight out to me allowing the blood pressure cuff to cycle and cords lay flat. A blue drape suspended 12 inches up on a metal bar over his chest separating him from the surgeons chiseling away at his lower leg.

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I ran in and out of the operating room finding different parts and handing them to the surgical team. Every time I entered, Victor tipped his head back to watch me as he lay in his perfectly still T position. He would nod and smile, as if to encourage me that it was going well and I was doing a good job. Then, during one particularly strenuous part of the surgery, the surgeon pounded the new metal rod down into the center of the bone in his open leg. As the metal hammer clanked on the rod, the blood splattered over the drapes and onto Victor's face. Instantly terrified, I rushed to wipe the blood from his forehead and nose. Yet, he did not even flinch. Instead, once more, he nodded at me and smiled to reassure me that I was okay. He was completely unfazed. This prompted unquenchable laughter for me, and he joined in! O the pen and paper would fail to capture each of the people I met that week. Yet each of them persistently challenged me with this singular truth. Would I have found equal joy in my circumstances if the outcome was so unclear?

Each person that week entrusted their futures to complete strangers. Many of them even allowing surgeons to attempt rare procedures and creative solutions because they had lived so long with broken bones and untreated diseases traditional medicine didn't have great answers for them. But their secret to joy wasn't because they expected this miracle surgery to fix all their life problems. They had already decided they were going to be okay surgery, healing, or none. And they were grateful for the opportunity to have an option. 

That week, I turned the page of a new chapter for me. I mourned the expectations for my life that had gone unmet. There are versions of my life that won't be any more. As I have reached my 30's single, I realize I will never be a young mom, who raises my children with my siblings’ kids, replicating cousin adventures that were my precious childhood memories. I haven't owned a home where I rocked around my own Christmas trees and hosted holiday dinners. My backyard of my rented studio basement still doesn't have a hot tub and a waterfall. And maybe, these dreams may still happen, but my 20s and young 30s are over. I have had to lay some of the dreams from that version of my life down. I have come to peace with that. But I have also learned to rejoice in unexpected versions of my life - new joys that were born in places I didn’t plan and adventures I did not write. But first, I had to let go of happiness, the thing created and destroyed in circumstances, and instead, choose joy. Joy is unwavering because it is laid in a sure foundation that I am well no matter what happens.  I had to take a moment to grieve that some of those things felt like loss. And when I did, I then began to truly enjoy the adventures that God has led me in that I had never dreamed of - things like a jungle adventures in Peru!

Now sometimes after pain or loss it is possible to think that the secret to happiness or contentment is just not having any expectations: not caring, not trying, not hoping - for it is easier to not be upset when you never had a dream at all. Like when you tell all your friends that you don’t celebrate birthdays, and you wish no one would buy you a present. Then when the day comes and passes without note, you shrug and say, “See? This went exactly according to plan. I didn’t want to receive any accolades of affection today. In fact, it is certainly preferable for no one to acknowledge my existence because they would merely be reminding me that I’m closer to death than to birth. And that is unacceptable.”

However, if you do not hope, if you do not dream, if you do not ask what is possible; you will never dare to be Victor. You will never climb upon the table. You will limp with a shortened leg and wonder why everyone is running while you are falling. You will instead settle for a risk-free life. And in the gray, brown world of your living room, surrounded with your Netflix, and settled between your couch cushions entertained with your IG reels, there you will lose all opportunity for any dream at all. Because in that drab world, there will be no real life. You will have exchanged dreams, for fantasies. And they will be so hallow.

So, to dream is to risk failure, and to not dream is to risk the death of joy. How then can we dream in a world when dreams are often shattered mostly by people and things far outside of our control? Like sweet Victor, who looked up at me, smiling though his own blood splattered his face, at complete peace with the outcome, even if it wasn't the one he hoped for, we must learn to love sitting on the Rock, Jesus Christ, and watching the storm. The Father who loves us and knows us more than we know ourself, will hold us as swirling waves pound down on us, And that, my friend, frees us to laugh when the blood splatters on our face because we know the outcome is secure. Only then can the outcome of my circumstances neither create nor destroy my joy. I do not practice this with perfection, but when you no longer need an outcome to establish your identity or joy, it is so much easier to fully embrace the adventure of the journey itself. So I have been learning to dream big dreams, and ask God to morph them as He wills. I now enjoy the stories He writes over mine that are often so much fuller and more daring than my little mind imagined.

One of my favorite movie scenes is from The Incredibles. There is a scene where the neighborhood boy is on his bike in Mr. Incredibles’ driveway. Annoyed by his presence, Mr. Incredible looks at him and says, "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!" and the little boy responds, “I don’t know. Something amazing to happen.” But unlike Mr. Incredible, who responds in frustration and anger, my God responds with, “Cool. Watch this.” And then He does amazing things.

So, friend, you're not alone. If all your expectations are unmet, and you're no longer sure where the path is taking you, to quote Casting Crowns, “your world isn't falling apart. It's falling into place.” If you're willing to release the things you are clinging to, there's an adventure waiting to happen. Will you trust the Master Surgeon to do what you're not sure is possible? Are you willing to lay down your pain, your broken bones, the misery you know, the just ok to maybe have something truly good? It’s possible. He's doing it for me. He will do it for you. So my friend, let's let go and let God go wild.

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