Red Hot Chilli Love.

It was as if I had a small glimpse of what the smoldering bowels of hell must feel like.

 

It was as if I had a glimpse of what hell must feel like.

 

I had dismissed it at first, thinking it would go away. But when it progressively intensified to a fiery, scalding burn which no water, milk, oil, alcohol or salve would relieve, and I found out that the pain would last for hours, my heart started to race.

 

Cliff’s enthusiasm for us to plant our own hot chillies, which we enjoy in our meals, enthused me to do so, soon after we had returned to Uganda. Having had African food continuously for the past 2 weeks during our mission trip to Burundi, I had prepared to surprise him with a special dinner of spaghetti bolognaise and pork chops at home, peppered with his favorite chillies. Without gloves, I had underestimated their potency.

 

Within the hour, what started off as a gentle smarting had become a swollen, burning, full-blown painful disaster on both my hands. They felt they had been set on fire, and no scrubbing with any googled online remedy brought enough relief. I was in tears, a pathetic sight to behold, with both hands dipped into a bowl of iced water for temporary relief.

 

My husband looked on. The blistering pain on both my hands seared right into his heart, as tears rolled down my cheeks from the flaring, scalding torture, exacerbated from my feelings of regret and stupidity. From preparing bowls and bowls of chilled water and milk, to getting dishwashing liquid, to detergent, to hand sanitizers to cooling gels to cooking oil, he scoured the internet, our home, and our first aid bag for effective respite. In spite of our best efforts, there was little relief, with my hands incinerating into flames each time they were removed from the iced water and milk.

 

With my hands in a bowl, he cradled my head in his hands and hugged me, knowing that at times like these, wordless comfort can do wonders. I was handicapped, unable to do anything on my own ( not even text with my fingers on my phone because of the unrelenting pain). Lovingly and quietly, he did everything he could to help- from running to the nearby clinic to get some cooling wipes, to offering to help cook, to preparing bowls of iced water and milk, to helping me to bathe because even normal-temperature water felt unbearable on my hands, to staying up late to the wee hours of the morning to comfort me because the shocking pain continued to intensify and burn even six hours after.

 

In his arms, I said ruefully, “Go to sleep and leave me alone, or you’ll be so tired in the morning.”

 

“I want to comfort you,” he said. “Doesn’t matter if I don’t sleep. Do you want me to read to you or watch a DVD while your hands soak in cold water? I’ve got more bowls of chilled water in the fridge.”

 

As the hours ticked by, he got up from bed at one-hour intervals to replace the bowl with more freshly-iced water, holding me in bed to let me know I was not up in bed alone.

 

As I looked back at our past three months in the mission field in Uganda, I realized that we have not gone to fancy restaurants, the cinema, big malls, gone on exotic vacations or bought bouquets of flowers or expensive gifts for each other. I recollected what people had said, that doing missions together so early in our marriage would only destroy it, given the many stresses and unexpected vexations of living in a developing country, on top of the stresses of adjusting to living together.

 

Our love should have fizzled off in the face of cross-cultural stresses, frustrations of living in a foreign land and a lack of the usual ways we used to surprise each other.

But as I watched him get up yet again from bed to head to the fridge, I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the husband he is, whose empathetic, self-sacrificial and gracious love has strengthened and built our marriage.

 

Here in Africa, love is not a movie and dinner date because the only cinema is too far away. It is not a surprise bouquet of flowers because there are no florists. It is not a gift from a store because we consciously live on a budget.

 

But love is seeing one’s husband do everything he can, unresentfully and lovingly, to relieve a pain he knows will not kill me because he hurts when I do; love is him seeing me continue to try to cook for him with hands on fire because I still want to surprise him with a well-deserved home-cooked meal after weeks of roughing it out, as I chuck my hands into iced water in the freezer every 5 minutes; love is waking up next to a bleary-eyed him, reminding him to take his liver transplant medication on time before his blood tests at the hospital tomorrow, only to receive a kiss and hear him say with a cheeky grin, “Thanks for reminding me, YOU are my medication.”

 

Love looks different when you’re far away from home. But it is what it is, when home is where the other is.

 

 

“Love is patient, love is kind.

It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

– 1 Cor 13:4-8