She Smiled

She hung her head in shame and would not look at me when I spoke to her. Still, I called her by her name and spoke gently to her. 

"Lucie, may I take a picture of your eyes, just so I can send it to a doctor?" 

She nodded with a soft "oui," and I caught a glimpse of her bloody, crusted, watery eyes. No wonder she didn't want to look at me. She must have been in terrible pain. 

When you don't have access to health care or the ressources to pay for it, something as simple as a little eye infection can suddenly turn for the worse. Little Lucie, an elementary school student just three weeks ago, suddenly had a conjunctivitis severe enough to be considered an emergency. The plaques forming over her eyes could cost her her sight. Tears rolled down her face continually, but she didn't make a sound. She wasn't crying; she just couldn't help the constant lacrimation. To me, those tears didn't just come from her eyes but from her heart.

I left her courtyard feeling totally despaired. "She's afraid of becoming blind," Delphine said. "It's one of the dagara's worst fears." An elementary school child should be thinking about what to eat for lunch, what to wear to school, who to play with in the neighborhood, and what to ask for their birthday. But here, that's not the reality. Kids are thinking about where their next meal will come from and how to pay to go to school. They aren't afraid of the dark or monsters under their beds; they are afraid of starving, losing their family to illness or disease, and becoming blind. 

"It's like this every time," I told the American couple who were with me for the home visit. "Every case starts this way. Hopeless. Terribly sad. No smiles." 

"But I promise that I will do something about it until I see the first smile. That's always my goal - I just want to make them smile. I want to make Lucie smile." 

Over the course of the next few weeks, I arranged and paid for 6 different doctor visits with three different doctors in two different cities. I paid for taxis, transport, hotels, meals, and multiple rounds of various treatments and medications. At the end of it all, they decided she needed a surgery, but they said they couldn't do it. "Her eye is already perforated. If we operate, the whole eye will collapse and be ruined." So they sent Lucy back home and said there was nothing they could do. 

Feeling like a failure, I knew I had to do two things. I had to not give up but rather keep searching for another solution. And I had to go visit Lucie. 

I had a speech prepared about how sorry I was that things didn't turn out the way we wanted. About how we still have hope and I'm going to keep trying to find a way to save her eyes. About how brave I think she is. About how we have to put our hope in God even when times are tough. 

I guess I prepared that speech for myself because she sure didn't need it. 

As soon as we entered the courtyard, a young girl came bouncing in with benches for us to sit on. She was smiling and practically chuckling with delight. I did a double take. Was that Lucie? 

Sure enough! She didn't even look like the same person. The infection in her eyes was completely gone, and I could tell she felt a million times better. Her family couldn't stop thanking me, and they served us a special meal of leaf sauce that they had just prepared.

Lucie sat right across from me, and she kept glancing at me and smiling when her gaze caught mine. 

That smile. 

"Did you see it?" I asked the same American couple who came back with me again for this second home visit. "She smiled." 

Lucie still has a perforated eye. She still needs some kind of help or intervention. She can barely see long distances, and certainly not well enough to read or go back to school. She still has a severe sensitivity to light. That's why I'm still not quitting. And that's what I told her. 

I handed her a hand-written verse from Romans 15:13. "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." 

We praised God together for the healing she has already received and for the hope that we still have in what is yet to be done. 

And she smiled.