She was an Ordinary Girl...

This story is the product of a recent writing assignment. Although it is fiction, it is true.

 

She was an ordinary, extraordinary girl. While her friends were giggling about cute boys and hairstyles, she was wrestling over whether she’d be willing to accept a call to celibacy and thinking about matters of mortality and eternity. She was a thinker, a doer, a strong-willed, independent, compassionate sort of girl. Her bucket list was firm in her head. One item only: Change the world.  But this journey was not one that could be planned with maps and itineraries. A cartographer had never charted a route between ordinary and world-changer.

 She required more of herself than anyone else would have asked of her. The world was brimming with people to meet, skills to learn, hope to give, experiences to have, and emotions to feel. She faced it with open mind, heart, and arms. Her mind was ready to absorb skills and information. Her heart was for those who had nothing, and she was willing to give anything and everything for them. Her arms wanted to surround the hurting and offer strength.

They balked when she told them her plan.  The family, friends, teachers, and co-workers expected so much from the intelligent girl. A politician maybe, or an architect. A doctor if she wanted more meaningful work. Her potential, they said. She had so much of it, and it would be wasted.

But the long night at the bedside of the laboring woman had made it all clear. The squall of the baby in the seconds after birth became fingers that wrapped around her heart. She was in the grip of birth’s wonder. A bit of research in the days following made clear to her what she needed to know. The world needed midwives.

At the outset of the adventure, she pictured a book filled with happy endings. Newborn babies swaddled in the arms of beaming mothers. Empowered women living up to the feminist ideals of being in control their births and their bodies. Education that gave women value and the knowledge they needed to bear healthy babies.  Her training did little to change that perspective. Somehow, she wanted more. She was tired of catering to the ‘build-a-birth’ mentality. Her heart longed to offer care to women who had none, rather than to classify as yet another birth alternative.

This time there were varied reactions. Shock, horror, fear, excitement, respect, dismay… even hurt. The people who loved the girl were not all willing to let her go. They did not understand. But she had a world to change. She purchased a plane ticket and sold her belongings. Her noble intentions and idealistic goals kept her strong through the goodbyes. The other side of the world was calling her home.

It was not what the girl had envisioned. Instead of empowering and being empowered, she learned about helplessness. Sometimes supplies were not there or women arrived too late. Sometimes there were desperate battles waged for a first gasping breath. Other times, it seemed as though it were better if a little one did not tarry long. The thought was at once horrifying and liberating to the girl. Death was real, and it visited when no woman watched for it.

One day she learned how easy it could be to die. How a woman’s life could pour out behind her baby in a pool of red.  Sometimes love was not enough to persuade life to stay. Or maybe there was nothing to stay for. She came to understand the combined beauty and sorrow that was death, and the reality called giving one’s life for another.

At times there were beaming mothers and swaddled babies. Just as often there were tear-stained faces and empty arms. Very rarely did two parents welcome a child. Sometimes there were no waiting arms for those swaddled babies.  Birth could not be controlled. Bodies could, but often not by the women they belonged to. And sometimes she gave everything she had, yet it still wasn’t enough.

There were new things learned in this new home. The girl learned what fear really was. She learned about little boys who carried big guns. About men who did not value life. She came to understand phrases like ‘run for your life’ and ‘scared to death’. And that some things are worse than dying.

For the first time she experienced real hunger. The kind of desperate hunger that makes a woman sell herself… or her child. She heard cries that would only cease with food or death… whichever came first.  In this new context her needs diminished even as her possessions did.

She also learned about breathtaking things called hope and survival. Humility and love. Things she thought she understood before. About real life and really living. She learned how to be happy even when she was sad. Her book was no longer filled with happy endings, yet it was filled with happiness. 

For the first time she came to understand humanity. It was ugly. It was beautiful. It was tender tears over the loss of a life, yet mass executions with no discernible hesitation. Saving a life, and taking a life with the same pair of hands. Loyalty so strong it caused treachery, and love so powerful it taught hatred. She understood that a good person is an oxymoron. 

Change the world. It had been her goal. For some, she did change the world. But something significant happened to the girl on her great adventure. Something she had not anticipated. She had gone out to change the world, and somewhere along that journey the world changed her.