**Rated "R" for Realness**

Today has been a very rough day. To be honest, I've tried to keep myself busy hanging out with friends here, playing with children at the hospital, and going out to eat and even to a bookstore this evening, but I'm haunted by the events of this morning. No amount of activities can make the pictures leave my mind and truthfully, I'm not sure I want them to. I feel like if I start crying, I might cry for days, but it wouldn't do anyone any good.

This morning I volunteered at one of Mother Teresa's homes (there are many different ones around Kolkata). This one is called Kalighat and it was Mother Teresa's baby so to speak. It is also known as the House for the Destitute and Dying. When I walked in, I expected people to be sick. I've done clinical shifts in the ICU. I've seen sick people in various places around the world, but nothing, and I mean, NOTHING could have prepared me for this. I felt as though I had just walked into a modern day German concentration camp. There were probably about 120 people there (around 60 men and 60 women), most of whom were so weak from malnutrition that they were unable to walk and needed to be carried in and out of their beds. When carrying them, you had to be careful not to break their bones and to hold up their heads because their muscles were too weak. Many were in so much pain that they were crying continuously. It's a very weird realization that out of the 60 women I worked with today, I would be surprised if more than 3 of them ever set foot outside the doors of that building again- and that's not because they have terminal illnesses. It's because their malnutrition has reached a point of no return. It's hard to know how to process that.

At the house today me and one other volunteer were nurses, so we were asked to help the sisters do the wound dressings. I have never seen, or smelled, anything like this before. Pressure sores so deep that I was touching the tailbone or hipbone. Electrical burns. Head wounds. There were two women I will never forget. One was a new arrival at the house. She had head wounds (not sure what from) and was emaciated like all the rest. When I finished dressing her wounds, she grabbed my hand and placed it on her heart and said "thank you" in Bengali as tears streamed down her cheeks. I almost melted into a puddle on the floor. Here she was, unable to move or eat without help and she was thanking me!!!?? All I could do at that moment was pull my mask down, smile at her and touch her face, and then walk away and pray "Lord, give me strength to make it through these four hours".

Another woman was laying in her bed unable to move. She did not have one ounce of fat anywhere on her body. When we dressed her wounds, (she had 6 DEEP pressure sores- there was no way to lay her where it wasn't contributing to further skin breakdown and there were no specially designed mattresses or extra pillows to ease the pressure...) she whimpered like a small child. I asked the sister how old she was, (my co-worker and I had guessed she was in her 40s) and was sickened to hear that she was fourteen. 14 years old. My youth group girls are around that age. And she's laying in a home dying because she doesn't have enough to eat. I honestly feel ill thinking about it.

I don't know how I move forward from here. I have so much respect for people like Mother Teresa who give their lives to this kind of work. After one day, I was discouraged and my heart felt more brokenness than I have ever known. I don't ever want to go back there, but I know I have to and I will. These beautiful people are beloved of the Lord and if I can even be there to gently dress their wounds and give them dignity and love when the world has left them dying in the streets, I don't care how much it hurts. I want to do it. Christ came and experienced the suffering and hardship of the world firsthand. I was not born into the kind of poverty that afflicts multitudes around the world, but I've been born into a position where I have been given much and therefore, have the privilege to lay it down in loving the poor.

Lord Jesus, please bring your light and life to the broken and dying in this city. I cannot in any way fathom how you can hear the cries of the hungry, sick and abandoned and not return promptly to bring justice upon the earth, but I am grateful for your mercy that allows more to come to repentance. Please help me to do small things with great love. I will follow you wherever you lead, even if there are a lot of tears along the path. Be glorified. Be lifted up. In You is beauty in the midst of ashes, life in death, healing in sickness.