There is always something to be written

I can't say much about it now. A writer itches to write life and stories — to the dismay at times of others. I had a writing teacher say there were things she could not write — not until after her mother had died. In an Ivan Doig novel, a husband asks his wife, “Do you want to hear about it — or write about it?”

Too true. Writers can see something, hear something, know something — and almost simultaneously start figuring out how to write it. It's our brain's default setting. I sometimes get told, ”Don't write about this.” I have to respect that — all the while staging an inner protest, “But this should be written!”

In this case what I can't write — for security reasons — is a detailed account of our youngest child flying to Antakya (Antioch of the Bible's book of Acts), Turkey last Friday — after learning two days earlier she was leaving. She is giving nursing care to suffering earthquake (and other) patients — bringing her RN skills to a Samaritan's Purse field hospital. The local 1,100-bed hospital is too damaged to occupy. Turkey — predominantly Muslim — in its extremity has allowed this Christian medical outreach.

Last fall our daughter traveled cross-country to take crisis training with Samaritan's Purse — which goes wherever emergencies arise — caring for the sick and injured and displaced. She thought she would be called to help in Ukraine. Instead, the ground shook in Turkey.

Friday's flight itinerary took her from her home on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula to Anchorage and on to Seattle, where she waited a few hours for her international connection. I told her, “I'll treasure your nearness.” Three hundred — and a few — miles seemed next door after pinpointing her ultimate destination on the map.

The patients she encounters in Turkey are going to benefit from her care. She is knowledgeable, level-headed, a quick thinker, courageous, and compassionate. I haven't heard a thing since Friday — and don't expect to be hearing. I can only assume she arrived.

That's an odd feeling in this day of “keeping in touch.” Even for someone like me who grew up with phone-on-a-wall technology — and if you weren't home when it rang, too bad. One thing I know — many of us are not world travelers, but our prayers travel the world.

I hope I will be able to write more of our daughter's story in time. Right now — amid the rawness of the earthquake's devastation — grief is its own impenetrable mound of rubble in the lives of the Turkish people. No one is going to move that anytime soon. Samaritan's Purse and their field hospital staff are there to keep it from piling higher.

There's an emphasis on love this week with Valentine's Day. Our English word for love stretches wide as the sea — covering shallow and deep depths — high and low tides. This year that sea — for me — has spread to a new shore.

Our girl is in Turkey to bring all the tenderness and kindness and comfort and healing that she can. It's a deep love in a hurting place. Always something that should be written.