by Ray Norman
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
As I sat there in the comforting darkness of the airplane, trying to examine my tattered heart, I felt the selfish temptation to lock it away, somewhere safe, someplace where life is “normal.” But I knew that somewhere deeper still, I wanted to love. I wanted to be able to find the strength, the will, to rise above the turmoil of my emotions and still be a vessel through which the love that had so deeply touched me could flow freely to those I encountered. And I did not want my circumstances, weaknesses, and faltering—with which I now wrestled and which came from this feeling of rejection—to encumber its flow.
I had laid my life on the altar years before when I chose this path. I had considered myself “dead,” yet “alive to God in Christ” (Rom. 6:11). How many times in recent years had I reaffirmed those remarkable words of Paul to the Galatians, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). For some years I sincerely think I had come to terms with my willingness to give my life for my Savior and for those he had given his life for. In those lonely hours during the flight to Paris, I began to understand that rejection for caring can sometimes be more painful than the prospect of death. It was not the fear or pain of near death, or simply the rejection for being a westerner in a foreign land or for being an American that was so painful, but the pain of rejection from a people I had come to love.
In the days and weeks ahead, I was to encounter so many well-intentioned people who, as they heard of the events, would say some variation of, “That man tried to kill you and your daughter! Surely you must feel anger. Don’t risk being in denial. Feelings of outrage and anger are a normal response for anyone who has been through such an experience, and you need to process those feelings for your own well-being and restoration.”
But anger for the attempt on our lives was not the feeling that rumbled around inside and distressed me. It was a simple yet deep, raw feeling of hurt. My vulnerability meant nothing to the assailant, and he had rejected (knowingly or unknowingly) my love for him and his people. Surely Jesus’ physical death on the cross was agonizing beyond what I am able to comprehend, but I became more aware of the deep and profound pain of being forsaken and rejected. This was the real trauma I carried in my soul in the days that followed.
6
WHAT NOW?
My soul is in deep anguish.
How long, LORD, how long?
(PSALM 6:3)
OUR PLANE LANDED AT CHARLES DE GAULLE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT on the outskirts of Paris in the early dawn hours. My family and I had passed through this airport countless times in recent years, and the sights and smells of that place brought a comforting sense of familiarity and a reassurance to my jangled nerves that we were far from the trauma and confusion we had left behind us. After all other passengers had disembarked, Hannah and I were taken from the plane to a waiting ambulance, and this time I was allowed to accompany my daughter. Our passports were quickly processed at an exit gate by an immigration official.
Soon Hannah and I, along with the two doctors who had traveled with us, were speeding through the early morning traffic with the siren blaring. A half hour later we turned into the entrance of the Necker Children’s Hospital in central Paris, and a short time after that Hannah was settled into her own private room. She offered a groggy, warm good-bye to the two doctors after they had finished signing paperwork. (Unknown to me, Hannah had developed a crush on the young and handsome French doctor from Dakar; this did not make the good-bye any easier.)
There was the normal flurry of activity around Hannah as her vital signs were checked, new IVs were put in place, and new X-rays were taken of her chest. A short time later her new doctors came to assess her wounds. After they confirmed that her condition was stable, Hannah began to settle comfortably into her new surroundings—although she was dismayed when told she could not have any solid food until the next morning, following her scheduled surgery.
Having slept under sedation for most of the night flight, she was now alert, smiling at everyone and clearly reveling in all the attention she was receiving. It is not every day that a ten-year-old girl is flown in from a remote part of the world with a gunshot wound to her chest, and on the hospital ward Hannah was clearly both a curiosity and the object of everyone’s sympathy.
I, on the other hand, was beginning to falter. I had just passed a second night since the shooting with only intermittent snatches of sleep. Now that Hannah was in safe hands in one of the best children’s hospitals in France, I felt the flow of adrenaline that had kept me going begin to ebb. As I sat in the corner of the room watching the whirl of activity around Hannah, I realized that I could finally let go. I did not have to be in charge anymore. Hannah was going to be all right, and I no longer, at least for the moment, had to be a strong person for her sake. I felt my body and emotions begin to crash. On several occasions I felt the room spin. My wounded arm ached, and I was hungry. I looked longingly at the hospital bed Hannah was in. I needed to lie down, pull the sheets over my head, and have the opportunity to cry and grieve all that had happened. Most of all, I need consolation and comfort.
Our World Vision staff in Dakar had thoughtfully called my wife and given her details of where we were to be taken in Paris. The morning we arrived at the children’s hospital, Hélène had taken the early train from Calais in northern France, and I knew she would eventually be making her way through morning metro traffic to join us.
Just as my emotional systems started to fail around midmorning, to my delight and relief, Hélène walked into the small room. I jumped from my seat to greet her, but she made a beeline for Hannah’s bedside with barely a glance at me. I moved to her side and waited while she hugged and caught up with Hannah. Some minutes later she looked up at me and without a hug, a kiss, or a touch, asked, “Well, how are you doing?”
Holding my throbbing arm, I gazed at her through my blood-shot eyes, stunned by what felt was a callous greeting after all I had been through. Her evident unwillingness or inability to show affection to me in such time of need hurt deeply. I wanted more than anything at that moment to be held in her arms and to be told that I was loved. I was wrestling deeply with feeling that I had betrayed my wife’s trust and not protected our daughter after Hélène had so emphatically warned me a few days prior of the danger she sensed. I mumbled a reply that I was doing okay, and she immediately turned her attention once again to Hannah. I shuffled back to my seat in the corner, feeling like the most dejected and incompetent husband and father in the world.
What I failed to adequately appreciate in that moment was that Hélène, though not wounded physically, was experiencing her own deep pain and trauma—emotional and psychological wounds that I would later learn ran as deep, or deeper, than my own. Hélène, at that moment, had needed me to hold her in my arms. She needed my shoulder to cry on. But sadly, neither of us was emotionally available for the other; we spent the rest of the day seeing to Hannah’s needs, yet in uncomfortable misery, each trying to stay out of the other’s fragile world.
Later in the day Hélène noticed that while Hannah’s wounds and bandages had been seen to, my arm had continued to drain and my bandage was long overdue for a change. Hannah, though, was the official patient. I was scheduled to see a nerve specialist the next day, but at thi
s time no arrangements had been made for my arm. This presented an awkward situation when Hélène asked the nurses if they could also change my bandage, as there were obvious issues of liability and protocol since I was not an official patient. In the end the nursing staff provided us with needed bandages and instruction. Together, Hélène and I cleaned and bandaged my wounds. While Hélène could not cope with my emotional needs, and I was somewhat oblivious to hers, she doted over my wounded arm—and that was sufficient attention and consolation for the time.
While Hannah napped, Hélène and I ate a sandwich in the hospital café. We each danced delicately around the other’s sensitivities and raw nerves. My mind and heart were already making forays into the future. What next? What do we do once this situation is behind us? But Hélène, true to her heart as a mother, could only think as far as, What now? What is best for our family and children today? We agreed that while Hannah was getting medical treatment, we needed to begin devoting our attention to paving a path for her emotional and spiritual recovery. We agreed that we should engage her as much as possible in the events of the past two days and that we should gently encourage her to articulate and externalize her feelings and perceptions. We decided that after lunch I should find the nearest librairie-papeterie (bookstore) and buy her a notebook and coloring pencils so she could begin to journal her experiences in both words and pictures.
As I was dropping Hélène off at Hannah’s room before searching the streets of Paris for a notebook, a familiar face appeared in the room. Unknown to us, World Vision’s international president at the time, Dean Hirsch, had placed a call the day before from his office in Los Angeles to Charles Clayton, the CEO of World Vision, United Kingdom, and had asked him to catch the first plane out of London for Paris to be with us. I stood in stunned silence as he strode up and warmly greeted me, Hélène, and Hannah and explained that our World Vision colleagues around the world did not want us to feel left alone in this time of need. It was all I could do to hold back the tears and maintain my composure.
Hélène and I were deeply touched by the forethought of Dean Hirsch and this incredibly generous act of kindness on Charles’s part. After spending some time with Hannah, Charles offered to accompany me on my search for a notebook, as he too thought it was “a jolly good idea” to help Hannah begin working through her experiences and feelings. Charles was a godsend, and for the next couple of hours, we walked the streets of the Paris’s fifteenth arrondissement, sipped coffee at a street café, and perused a librairie-papeterie for a notebook and colored pencils. I finally had someone to whom I could pour out my heart. Charles not only understood the heart of a father and husband, but he was also a brother in Christ who understood my throbbing concern for those we had left behind: our World Vision staff and especially the children and poor communities we served. Charles patiently heard my story, asked gentle questions, and offered occasional wise counsel, but most of all he encouraged me. His presence that afternoon and the next morning was like a balm in Gilead for both Hélène and me.
Hélène and I were given a small guest room across the hospital courtyard so that we could be near Hannah, and we both collapsed in bed early that evening with little said between us. The next morning Hannah was scheduled for surgery to remove loose tissue and close up her wounds. Not long after she was taken to the operating room, Charles arrived with some piping hot French croissants. The three of us enjoyed them, along with coffee and tea in the hospital café; then we shared a brief prayer together and said our good-byes to Charles, who had a morning plane to catch.
Hélène’s cousin Emily then took me to have my arm checked for nerve damage at another medical facility on the other side of Paris. Emily, a seasoned business woman living in Paris, had taken the day off to come and assist us, and the drive across Paris—including the negotiation of four lanes of madly circling traffic around Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe—was nearly as hair-raising as anything I had experienced in the last few days. The experience was soon repeated after I was given a good report on my arm and we returned to the Necker Hospital via the same treacherous route by which we had come.
Hannah returned from surgery at the end of the morning, and when she had recovered from her anesthesia in the early afternoon, she was given a meal. For the rest of her stay, she enjoyed a steady stream of delights she did not often get in Mauritania—fresh ice cream, yogurt, and delicate French pastries—which the hospital staff lavished on her. After her lunch that day we received another refreshing surprise. A kind man with a dark complexion knocked on the door of Hannah’s room and shyly introduced himself as Amrita’s brother. Shortly thereafter a Russian woman with a thick accent, accompanied by one of her grown children, showed up and introduced herself as the mother of Suleymane Kouyate (the husband of my World Vision colleague in Dakar, Estelle Kouyate). All three of these individuals had traveled far and selflessly that day to be an encouragement to us. They lavished gifts of flowers, chocolates, and stuffed animals on Hannah, who was absolutely thrilled with the attention.
We were now well over the limit of allowed visitors for this tightly run hospital, but the staff turned a blind eye to the veritable party that soon ensued. And as the laughter, prayers, and tears filled the once-lonely hospital room, I gave thanks to God for the remarkable presence of caring followers of Jesus from seemingly “every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9)—as the blood that flowed through the veins of those there included Russian, Malian, Sri Lankan, French, and American. Hélène was beginning to feel better with the presence of others who also had ties to Mauritania and World Vision in distant lands. For the first time since our meeting the day before, she gazed across the room at me and, with a warm, reassuring smile, mouthed the words, “It is going to be all right.” And I took it to mean, “In spite of all I am going through, I do love you.”
Since her arrival in Paris, Hannah had asked several times if she would get to see the Eiffel Tower. Later that night, as I was pacing the hallways and praying, I came to a window at the end of a long corridor and to my astonishment there, only a few blocks away and lit with hundreds of blazing spotlights, was the Eiffel Tower, filling the window with all its glittering wonder.
Hannah had not been allowed to leave her room since being admitted to the hospital, but late the next evening, a day after her surgery, I found a wheelchair and came to Hannah’s bedside, telling her I had a surprise. After gingerly placing her in the chair and attaching her IV bag, I discretely rolled her down the darkened hallways to the window, whispering to her to close her eyes as we approached. When she opened them a few moments later, I watched with tears in my eyes as Hannah’s lingering gaze reflected the wonder of the scene before her. At that moment I saw once again in my daughter’s eyes the zest and wonder for life that had always been characteristic of her. And I felt deeply assured that her love of life and adventure was still intact, and that all would be well with her in the days and weeks that were to follow.
Three days later Hannah’s wounds had healed sufficiently, and she was discharged from the hospital with the understanding that we would take her to Calais where she could recover for at least another ten days before any further travel. We took the train to Calais, had a warm and tearful greeting with Hélène’s mother at the train station, and checked into a hotel a few blocks from Hélène’s parents. World Vision had arranged for us to stay in this hotel rather than lodge with Hélène’s parents in their small, two-bedroom flat. This would give us some needed solitude as a family to work through the many issues at hand. The days quickly fell into a routine of long talks between Hélène and me over coffee and tea in the morning while Hannah slept in; bandage changes for Hannah and me in the afternoon, which Hélène and her nurse-mother oversaw; and dinner with her parents, after which we strolled the few blocks back to our hotel.
Northern France at this time of year is often cold, with slate-gray skies and a constant drizzle blowing off the North Sea and the strait of Dover. Not long after the initial
warm welcome by Hélène’s family, we soon found our spirits mirroring the dreary weather around us. We felt all alone in that small hotel room—wounded, emotionally overextended, and separated from all that had been familiar in our daily routine of the last few years. We did not know where or how to begin picking up the pieces of our recently shattered lives. The ensuing days were challenging and desolate as we wrestled with the conflicting directions of our feelings, our hearts, and God’s call on our lives, as well as a confusing mixture of advice and questions that came at us daily from all corners of the world by phone and letters. We faced a myriad of difficult questions and choices. What was best for Hélène and the children? Do we return to Mauritania? Is it safe? What about the World Vision program and our long-term commitment to the poor we served? Were the members of the expatriate staff in Mauritania, for whom I was responsible, safe? Should we keep the office open? There was part of us that thought, This is madness! Just gather your children, go home, and lead a normal, sensible life! But then God’s call on our lives would begin tugging, and time and again, I found myself wondering and then asking Hélène, “After all the years of preparation and service to the poor in the name of Christ, is this really the end?”
While Hannah was in the hospital, people had tried to give us our space, but soon after arriving in Calais, I found myself on the phone regularly with our World Vision office in Dakar; my supervisor, Dan Ole Shani; my own staff in Mauritania; and with other friends and associates from around the world. Myles Harrison was doing a heroic job of holding things down in Mauritania during my absence—namely keeping our program going while trying to maintain a handle on the uncertain security situation—and this was a huge relief to me. But the unspoken question that seeped in between the lines in all of these conversations was, What do you intend to do? At first no one would venture to articulate the question directly, but it was understandably the question on everyone’s mind.
