Grangrene Joy

He's the brightest light in the little circle gathered around his hospital bed.  His voice is strong and positive.  His smile is wide and involves every muscle of his scarred and weathered face.  He repeats his praise for a God who loves him and his hope for all good things that are ahead.

He has gangrene.

Both feet.

Can't walk.

One of the expected but still surprising gifts of this prolonged stay at Hot Springs Church, and particularly with a focus on pastoral ministry this time, has been the opportunity to know better some of the deeply faithful people who make up this simple community of faith.  Yoot is one of them. 

Tall for a Thai, his presence is not easily missed, and not just because of his size.  He's probably one of the most positive people I know, rivaling Highview's own Colin Chandler who himself has quite a reputation for always being able to see what God's up to, and rejoicing in that.  Whatever Colin has, Yoot's got it too.  He's full of gratitude for his ability to walk, a part of his story that had him at one time bedridden and told he would never move on his own again.  He still has a slow, stiff gait, but his faith that God has spared him, and his joy in every step is obvious.  Often as not, he'll express his delight in life through song; original compositions that have an odd but intriguing mix of Western country and Thai nasal wail (the latter of which I am growing to appreciate more and more; we won't comment on the former.). 

It's his former difficulties that have led to the gangrene now, however.  Poor circulation, shoes that were too small, and a job that requires standing for lengths of time in the heat, all contributed to an infection that was left untreated and quickly escalated.  When he arrived to the hospital he was told that had we waited one more day, amputation would have been certain. 

Both feet.

Suradet asks if we can see.  With enthusiasm Yoot pulls off the blanket that had been covering his feet.  I fight to maintain my composure.  His feet are charcoal black with patches that are covered in gauze to hold back the oozing.  The skin is dull and lifeless.  One section is deeply cracked and rough and looks as if it would crumble off at the slightest touch.  He continues chatting enthusiastically, pointing at various locations to indicate where the infection started, how it spread, how badly curled in his toes were when he first got here. 

Some of the girls that have come for the visit have had to leave the room.  Later they will tell me that the sight of his feet didn't disgust them as much as it frightened them.  They live in a world where these things happen to people they know.  And they know the doctors can't always do anything about it.  They worry that one day such feet might dangle lifeless at the ends of their own legs.   I realize that in my entire life I have never worried about getting gangrene.

I ask Yoot if he feels pain.  He responds with a shout of delight.  "Yes!  There's pain!  And I'm glad for the pain.  It means the medicine is working!  It means life is coming back to my feet!"

Even before Yupa translates, I understand him.  And for a second I am held still in a holy moment.  Because it occurs to me that I am sitting at the end of the bed of someone who understands far more about life, about how it all actually works, than I might ever will. 

I am feeling pain myself that day.  Mom has gone, and I wasn't there, and I am still working out in my own soul what that meant and what God was thinking when He worked out that particular part of my story.  Her story. 

I have felt pain before, of course I have.  Anyone living 58 years and counting will have experienced pain.  And we never like it.  We seek to avoid it, alleviate it, as much and as fast as possible.  Who likes pain?  Who is glad for the pain?

Yoot is.  And he has taught me this night.  This simple man with a job that has him standing in the heat for a good part of the day in shoes too tight and legs and circulation already weakened by pain he's known before.  This joyful man who has so much life and light and joy and gratitude for every day, every stay, that it overrides the gruesome condition of his feet right now, and fills the room and spills over to the other 11 people in the beds around him.  Spills out and fills up the little group who's come to encourage him, but have been encouraged instead.  Challenged instead.  Taught and perhaps even rebuked, instead, although that would never have been his intention.  No, he's way too gringjai for that.

He's taught me though.  Pain means life.  Yes it does.  If you never feel pain, you're probably dead.  And it's in the living of life that we embrace the pain with the joy and know that life is flowing through our beings.  

We pray.  He's covered up his feet again, but over top of the blanket I gently lay my hands on the decaying flesh beneath.  And I pray.  It's woefully inadequate, and not because my Thai is still so limited.  But because my soul is humbled, and I realize that I don't even know how to pray in the presence of such greatness. 

Last Sunday surprise!

We'll visit again.  And it won't seem like there's been any progress.  But then, on the night of the village Christmas party, he'll show up unexpectedly.....walking.  I'll see his wife Pok first, and give her a hug and ask her how Yoot is doing.  And she'll smile and point to the other end of the table where I see him standing.  My surprise and joy will make me forget how a woman my age is supposed to behave in public in Thailand.  I'll shout and run over and - almost hug him.  But then I remember and wai and say about 52 "Thank you God!"s.  And he'll be smiling.  Whole-faced.  And saying that God has helped him once again, and don't we serve such an amazing God.

We do.

And soon enough I will feel more pain.  I will now take myself away from a people I have let ruin my heart.  I already know it will hurt.  Because it does every single time.  This time, after three months, I don't know what it might be like.  I don't want to think about it.  Not yet anyways.

But when the pain comes, I'll remember Yoot.   I'll remember that it means there is life and love and these are good, good gifts, and there's no loving and being loved without pain.  No life, without the stuff that makes us realize what life is, and how this whole thing works.