Tomorrow is Not Today
“I can’t stand it. Please help me. I only want to die!”
After not hearing from her for more than a year, L appeared on our bus in La Terminal accompanied by our friends, the Oblate Sisters, an order of nuns who work solely with sex workers. Her face was swollen, eyes were barely focused, body was shaking, voice was strained and desperate. We had known L previously to be estranged from her family, in and out of homelessness, mostly illiterate, depressed and suicidal. And now she had also been caught up in substance abuse. She sat with us for a while in a distressingly awful mess. So heartbreaking.
It turned out she just wanted some of those antidepressants (prescribed by one of our doctors from a medical team) that had helped her a while ago. She had only just started some treatment when we lost contact with her. This is a life where disappearing happens a lot, and we were left trying to figure out if she was working elsewhere or dead. Those are the usual choices. No one had any news until this day. We were so grateful to see her again…But how to help?!
Guatemala has few resources for people in crisis. There isn’t money, training or government resources. So most people who need intervention just don’t get it. Like so many other places in the developing world, this is a survive-or-die culture.
But our little Tamar’s Hope team got busy, making calls and searching out favours. A survivors’ organization agreed to see L, and they were able to prescribe her some temporary meds to help her endure the horrors of alcohol withdrawal. We found a rehab organization willing to take her, but they only accept intake on Sundays. This was Wednesday, and she had to show up sober. That night, there was nowhere for her to go, so we begged her, through the haze of semi-consciousness, not to take another drink. She had to be sober in the morning. Had to be.
Our Karina headed out at dawn to travel across the city to find L. Nothing in me really believed she’d find her, let alone clear-headed. We’d left her with her sex worker friends…at a bar. What were the chances? But there she was, sober, standing and able to communicate. It was pretty miraculous. Her friends, of course, had tried to persuade her to drink, but she’d refused.
Thursday was a flurry of paperwork, visiting different offices and organizations, trying to find any available help for this dear woman. She agreed to anything we asked of her. Except food. That she still couldn’t manage. By the end of Thursday, we’d found a residential organization that would take her in. Glorious. But she needed papers, and she needed to be dry. We couldn’t take the risk of leaving her at the bar for a second night, so our Delmi took her to her humble home, bathed her, washed her clothes and loved on her all night long. We have the best team!
On the Friday, she could speak. She could smile, and for the first time in I don’t know how long, she ate. Not much, but she ate, and that’s a big deal. Shawn and Karina drove her all over the city, getting her new ID documents and organizing her life. By the afternoon, L was sitting in the reception area of a rehab ministry, being welcomed to live there with them for a year. It was incredible! So for now, L is safe, housed, and surrounded by people who know exactly what she’s going through.
Oh, and just let me brag on our Karina for a moment! She never stops amazing us with her wisdom, kindness and extraordinary sacrificial heart. My favourite verse of scripture is Luke 7:47 – “She who has been forgiven much, loves much.” Karina lives this every moment of every day, and our ladies reap the amazing benefits of her endless well of mercy. Without her, I don’t know that we would have found the help for L that she so desperately needed. Karina spent a few days with a weeping, drunken, suicidal “sister,” and by the time they hugged goodbye, L was wondering out loud if she could, like Karina, become a nurse one day!
