On risk

We’re on pox watch here, awaiting the arrival of round three in the Great Chicken Pox Epidemic of 2013. In a lot of ways, it’s the perfect way to end a year that has challenged the notion that we are to “give thanks in all circumstances.” We’ve seen death, flood, and sickness these past few months. The only things left are… well, I’m not going to say. Because frankly I’d just rather not.

Last Man Girl Standing in the pox face off is, remarkably, Birdie. Somehow, her allergy-challenged immune system is holding strong, warding off the virus that has an impressive 90% infection rate. I admit that at this point we’re all beginning to wish she’d just get it already. I mean, seriously? The girl has a 90% chance of coming down with it. Let’s just do this thing and move on, people.

I waited years for my kids to catch the “wild” chicken pox, having eschewed the vaccination in favor of natural immunity. Like many others, I’m fairly skeptical of the public health system’s recommendations in terms of their effect on personal health. I get why it’s in the best interest of a general population to pursue herd immunity. However, I’m not charged with overseeing the general population; my goal is to manage (in asmuch as I am capable) the general health of the individual members of my family. With that in mind, we follow a selective, delayed schedule that makes sense for our family and its unique needs– like traveling to developing nations, and all the health risks that entails.

One of the biggest concerns voiced over our move to Nepal– by believers and nonbelievers alike– has centered on this issue of health and risk.

What if you get pregnant?

What if you have an accident?

What if one of the kids get sick?

What if you need a hospital?

What about routine care?

Until just a few months ago, I answered with the standard line every Christian knows is The Right Answer: “God’s in charge. If it’s His will, so be it.” And I believed it. I believed it with my whole heart. Or at least, I thought I did.

Then came the sickening, heart wrenching moment when I held my screaming baby son’s naked, struggling thigh through the immobilizer as his tiny body was strapped to the board that would take his bloodied, swollen head into the belly of the CT scanner. It had taken us less than five minutes to drive our wailing baby from the four short stairs he had so simply– so accidentally, so randomly, so innocently— fallen down to the ER of a great hospital. With twenty minutes of the event, he had been examined, and was undergoing an expensive, state-of-the-art diagnostic procedure to rule out the horrors that clouded every reasonable thought in our minds.

 

 

The hospital was close. It was clean. They spoke English. They had equipment at their disposal. They were blessedly, amazingly fast and thorough.

And despite all this, as I sang “Amazing Grace” again and again to my inconsolable Simon, my heart cried out. “Where were you? Why did this happen? Are you going to make this o.k.? Please, please, Lord– make him o.k.!” 

He was, of course. A few hours later and the three of us were home. Shaken, tear-streaked, but home. In the wee hours of that impossibly long night, as Christopher and I both kept a protective hand resting on the sweet infant in the bed between us, I realized that the risk I thought I knew, the risk I had assumed, was far more real and threatening and potentially close than I had ever imagined.

It took me weeks to wrestle with the loss of innocence that settled in my heart. Suddenly, the truth of that one, trusting statement was not nearly as comforting or clear as it had once been.

“God’s in charge.”  Which means that I am not.

“If it’s His will, so be it.”  As if it could be any other way.

Nowadays, when asked if I understand the risks we are taking in packing up our family and moving to Kathmandu, I say yes with a deeper understanding of that truth. I say yes in fear and trembling. I say yes and I mean it.

Because the greater truth is this: I cannot put my trust in hospitals or doctors or vaccines or an infrastructure that gives me and my loved ones access to the best the world has to offer. God is in charge. And yes, He is good, all the time. But He is the same God who was good to John as Salome danced for his head before Herod. He is the same God who was good as Nate Saint met the Aucas who would butcher him even as he brought them the Gospel. If it is His will, so be it.

We all live in the shadow of risk. But risk alone is not enough– should not be enough– to dissuade us from following God’s call, wherever it leads. Our call is to Nepal. What are you being asked to risk?
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