Making Room

About this time last December, I stood scratching my head and staring at the jumble of suitcases, gift boxes, duffel bags, and grocery sacks piled in the driveway behind our old Pontiac. Judging from the amount of luggage, you would think that a crew of 10 was going to explore uncharted lands, but no--it was just my husband and me, going three states over to visit our parents for a week at Christmas. "How are we going to fit all this stuff in the trunk?" I asked my husband. He shrugged and said, "We'll make room." Lo and behold, we did.

Eleven months later, in a tropical Caribbean November, I was sitting on a low, blue bench on the inpatient ward at Grace Children's Hospital in Haiti. I had a child on each knee and another one perched on the bench beside me, studiously trying to figure out how my watchband unclasped. Looking up (while surreptitiously keeping one hand on my watch), I saw John Hill, a long-time International Child Care board member and father of two, happily buried under a mountain of kids, all patients on the ward. As they scrambled to arrange themselves for a picture, John made sure that everyone's face could be seen. There was always room to squeeze in one more eager smile.

Seeing him herding all the kids at Grace into the photo reminded me of something John Snavley had said over the summer, as we asked him to reflect on his childhood memories of Grace Children's Hospital. As the youngest son of ICC's founders, John was the same age as many of the patients in the fledgling hospital his parents, Jim and Virginia Snavley, had established in 1967.

Speaking of his parents' compassion for every child who came through the doors at Grace, John wrote, "A doctor pointed out that the Snavleys were taking in too many children with advanced TB. 'One advanced case such as this,' he said, "will take up a bed for 6 months and still cannot be saved. With this same bed, in the same amount of time, you can save TWO children in the early stages of TB.' This was true, and it was hard, but good, advice. Yet somehow they could always put one more bed somewhere and no one was ever turned away. We lived upstairs, above the hospital, and I remember Mom and Dad putting a little baby in our bathtub with pillows, bedding and an IV."

Now it is December once again, and this weekend, my husband and I will attempt to wrangle our earthly possessions into the back of a Pontiac and head west. But the memory from less than a month ago of holding a little girl and feeling her chest rattle against mine with every breath is still fresh in my mind. Pushing through the mental noise of TV ads for diamond necklaces and new cars covered in spray-on snow and a red velvet bow are the images of a frail baby in the bathtub at Grace 40 years ago, and another baby, born in a barn 2000 years ago, wrapped in scraps of cloth, and sung to sleep by the sounds of cattle and sheep.

There was no room for Jesus in Bethlehem, and it's just as hard for us to make room for him today. So often, the voice of common sense--smart people like doctors, parents, ourselves, even--tells us we can't make room for the difficult things in life. The trunk is overflowing. Our hands are full. The hospital is out of beds. There is no room at the inn. Everything is full.

But God makes room. What seems impossible somehow fits; where we had given up all hope, a little bit of light makes its way inside. In the trunk of a Pontiac, in the arms of a father, in a bathtub in Haiti, in a stable in Bethlehem--God always makes room for one more.

Some days I feel like I'm filled beyond capacity. I think if I hear one more story of pain and loss, or meet one more child who was abandoned to a life of uncertainty, I will lose it. And some days, I do. I get overwhelmed by the enormity of Haiti's poverty, the challenges of one particular family in ICC's programs that I've grown close to, or even just the differences in our cultures that complicate the task of working alongside my colleagues on the island. To put it bluntly, I get tired of caring.

It's on those days that God breaks me open to make room for more compassion. Does it hurt? You bet. Do I struggle through it? Always. Would I wish it on someone else? Absolutely--because there is nothing more humbling or more gracious than being freed of my selfish fears and worries to take in more of Christ's spirit of love.

I have a strange new favorite Christmas hymn this year. I never thought of this Charles Wesley classic as "Christmasy" until some friends of ours used lines from it in their handmade Christmas cards the past few years.

Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven to earth come down;
Fix in us thy humble dwelling,
All thy faithful mercies crown!
Jesus, thou art all compassion,
Pure, unbounded love thou art.
Visit us with thy salvation;
Enter every trembling heart.

May God make room for the Christ child, and all the world's children, in your heart this Christmas.

~Alison Kern, ICCUSA Staff Member