the Shape of love.

One often has the loftiest ideals about medicine.

And so, off I went with my team, with my White coat and stethoscope, a bagpack filled with medical supplies and a head helium-filled with lofty ideals, to a small village in China, full of vigour and enthusiasm, ready to rough it out, to put my two cents worth into a disaster-stricken area which pierced my heart.

The interminably long ride on the road took us through the polluted city and dusty town, before it turned into neverending plains which gleamed like emerald in the glow of the morning sun. But as the green carpet unfolded gloriously beneath the sunshine, it soon unrolled into grey dust, brown debri and black rubble. Where houses once stood, only broken bricks lay; Where there once was glory and pride, only a picture of shame stood; Where there once had been homes, families and lives, now only stood rubble, remnants and regrets.

For miles and miles, stretched the bleak picture of collapsed houses.

As our eyes took in the extent of the devastation, a poignant silence filled the van, broken only by the monotonous engine sound and the faraway songs sung by children, building to a crescendo. Right there, in the middle of the ghost-town, high-pitched voices pierced the cool air, ringing high into the skies. Piles of debri ran for miles and miles, the flattened landscape interrupted only by a tree here and there.

I will never forget that sight.

Children, precious children, who had just lost their homes, parents and possessions, were singing happy children tunes and nationalistic songs underneath a huge makeshift tent. It was chilling, almost, to hear their clapping and songs of gusto fill the air amidst the dreary landscape of utter devastation.

It was not that they were too young to understand the magnitude of what had happened. I remember the little boy who hung his head low and became silent when I asked him if his family was all right, nodding his head only after an indeliberate pause, as if recollecting what might have been. We had given out new schoolbags to the children, individually packed with new pencil cases and jotter books, but they looked stunned, merely.

And as I watched the crowd of villagers gathering round to see the Singaporean doctor from our team, and lining up so I could take down their medical complaints on a proper form, I wondered if they had not more illnesses in their minds, and wounds in their hearts than the physical ailments they complained of.

Most of the patients were very, very old. In their seventies or eighties and still working hard on their farms, many of them recollected the unmistakable shakings of the disaster which hit them more than a month ago. “There was a huge sound… as loud as a bomb blast… and everything was shaking… Bricks started falling and I ran down from the mountains…”

Most of the elderly who hobbled in from fields faraway came with aches and pains, caused by trauma from bricks which had fallen on them during the earthquake. Others complained of arthritic knees due to the harsh environment, and still more came with eczematous skin caused by bacteria released from the disrupted soil. Little children came with fungal infections and hygiene problems, made worse by the disrupted water supply and the ill living conditions. “Our government just bought us a lot of tents and packets of uncooked noodles… But we have no hot water, and our spring water is contaminated… So we eat biscuits all day… We get by…”

It is not that they do not understand the concept of hygiene. The villagers used to keep themselves clean with the fresh supply of spring water from the mountains. A friend on our team shared with me her poignant moment, “I was wiping the hands and feet of a little village boy with an antiseptic wipe, and he kept asking me, ‘ Wei shen me cha bu diao? (Why can’t this be rubbed away?)” His feet were blotchy with eczema, and had accumulated so much dirt since the earthquake that it frustrated him so very much.

We are told to ask the villagers to share their feelings with us and to recount the traumatic incident, so as to lessen their risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorders. An old, frail lady with a shawl, straw hat and walking stick tells me in tears, “ I can neither eat nor sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I feel the earth shaking… it’s like the earthquake happening all over again. I’m so afraid all the time… It’s a nightmare… ” Tears stream down her cheeks as she recounts her story in her dialect, and I am somewhat thankful that I am unable to understand her fully. “Let me die,” she says, “I’m so old, I’m past my time… where is my grand-daughter… let me die…”

A mainland Chinese student volunteering as an interpreter and myself comfort the old lady as best as we can. We tell her how miraculous it was that she survived, how angels had been watching over her, bringing doctors to see her, too. She puts her hands up in prayer and breaks into a grateful smile, “Yes yes, thank you, thank you for coming all the way here! … Thank you so much… I’m so lucky… Did you know, my 94 year-old mother was dug out from beneath the rubble… and she survived too!”

They all came with different burdens. But their comparatively minor ailments of aches, pains and bad skin belied their deeper wounds within. There was no medication for the pain which gnawed at them most.

All at once, all that loftiness and seeming nobility evaporated into thin air. I hadn’t realised how much pride I had stored in the hidden chambers of my heart, thinking I could serve, help and heal the needy, thinking I could alleviate their pain and suffering to a greater extent than others because of my medical background, thinking I had far more reason to be there than others who were not trained medically.

How my own discovered pride shamed me.

All at once my helplessness, frailty and smallness smashed into my face like a ton of bricks. As I watched the medication we had brought being given out, and the supply dwindle, I realised how in fact, none of their physical ailments would ever be fully treated. This was temporary pain relief, and it would last them a month or so at most.

30 days of pain relief. That was all.

All at once, my shame covered me like a black cloak, as I saw how precious each and every act of love was, whether it came in the form of medical aid or not. Wiping the little children’s hands and feet, teaching them folksongs and games, talking to the elderly and bringing them comfort, teaching the teachers there how to wash their hands… each act of love was just as important, if not more important than the potentially self-righteous, pompous task of diagnosing illnesses and dispensing medication.

All my team members had held our medical personnel in high esteem. Yet, all this while, I hadn’t realised the pride of my own heart, of putting our team’s medical personnel on a pedestal- myself included. All it took was Reality to bring me down to earth again.

All at once, my dispensability struck me like a frostbite, and a profound sense of uselessness, shame and repentence overwhelmed me.

I don’t deny the relevance of medical aid, especially in the acute phase of recovery. But in cases like these, one must realise that medication will eventually run out, and the thing which impacts the lives of others the most is the love which flows and touches their hearts. They won’t remember what medication it was that you gave them, but they’ll remember how you travelled that far just to see them and give them encouragement. There will always be a neverending queue of patients, but there is only so many we can see a day, after which we have to turn the rest away. And sometimes, we just have to be humble enough to admit that all we really are, are a drop in the ocean- there is so little we can do.

Yet, therein lies the tension. That we do so little, but it is the plus-sized love put into the little done which has the power to change, touch, impact.

One village child teared as his dirty hands were being wiped by a friend on our team; I remember the old lady bowing down repeatedly to thank us for coming; A 20 year-old student from the mainland told us how encouraged he was, “ I came here to the village all the way from the city to teach these kids since their school collapsed- but you have come all the way from overseas. How can I not be encouraged?”

He looked like there were tears in his eyes.

That night during our team sharing, I shared with everyone my encounter with God, and His revelation to me- how sorry I was for those subconsious thoughts of pride, how humbled I was by everybody else’s humility and what I had learnt, and how certain I was now of the importance of every act of love, whether it took the form of medical help or not.

God had taught me how it was not what we could offer that impressed Him, but the state of our heart, the amount of love which flowed out from it- no matter what it was that we could offer.

That night, a team-mate shared with everybody how thankful he was for that revelation, because of how utterly useless he had been feeling during the whole trip, simply because all he had been doing was clipping the filthy nails of little children.

A pregnant silence filled the room.

He was a grown, married man with 2 children, earning a five-figure salary for a multi-national company, who had taken special leave from work so he could come, together with his wife, to clip the filthy nails of little children of a remote village.

Oh, the Shape of humility.

All at once, it dawned upon us all- how limited we are in our own human strength. For all our good intentions, we are who we are- human beings.

There is so little, yet so much we can offer in the little we can.

It is not how much we can actually do for others, but how much love we actually put into the little which we do that makes the difference in the lives of others.

Love in dispensing medication.

Love in listening to their Stories.

And Love, oh heart-tugging, mind-boggling, mountain-moving Love…

thousands of miles away from home, in a remote village hours away from the main city, squatting by a makeshift tent on a dusty ground, clipping the dirty nails of little children.

Oh, the Shape of humble Love.