Love Until it Hurts

Right now, we’re trying to find a box of office supplies that includes an important piece of our printer.  After days of searching through moving boxes and storage items, it still hasn’t turned up. Frustrating.  Aggravating. Disappointing. Take your pick.  The printer won’t do something we need it to do without this particular tray.

   In the process of that search, I came across this gift given Reni by the Sisters of Charity when he left his orphanage.  I wanted to share it on the blog long ago but never got around to it. This week, the fifteen year anniversary of Mother Teresa’s death, seems appropriate.

In the entry of the Elbasan Orphanage, July 2010

  The first gift were these.  I remember that most of the older children had these charms/pendants tied on their wrists with strings.  Reni never wore one - perhaps he was too young and would have chewed on it?

To me, what was the most special gift though, was the relic (their words); a gift of a fabric swatch from Mother Teresa’s robe.  Yes.  Really. 

Okay, it is quite tiny and protected by lamination, but I’m taking their word for it since she only passed away fifteen years ago.  I feel like I’m holding a piece of history from one of the most significant (and probably most humble) figures of the 20^th century (who also happens to be ethnic-Albanian).

While I always held a deep respect for Mother Teresa, it was meeting the Sisters of Charity who carry on her work that I truly understood the power of her example, as lived through them.  They are the ones who care for those whom society casts off.  Like their work in India, in Albania they also have homes for the physically and mentally disabled, the youngest and oldest in society, the most vulnerable. Out of their home in Elbasan we saw them help the gypsy mother and the prostitute mother with childcare and medical care and food for their children. The buzzer at the gate would ring throughout the day with someone needing assistance and no one was turned away.

It was because of this reputation that our Reni and other children like him came into their care.  The State knew that if they had a child with special medical needs that would require more help than the ‘typical’ child, the Sisters of Charity would welcome that child into their care with love and joy (yes, joy!  I can still hear their laughter echoing down the halls of that green and white building). 

The Sisters LIVE it out that everyone, no matter their age or ‘usefulness’ is created in the image of God and thus bears inherent value.  We saw them minister to a special baby girl named Lucia who suffered from chronic pneumonia (from aspirating on food because she had a cleft lip and palate). A gaping hole marked the center of her face, covered with skin tags. Inappropriately wide-set eyes (one covered in a tumor) completed her appearance on a head which seemed oversized for her tiny, emaciated body.  It was almost more than I could bear to look at during the first days of our visits.  Nothing in her appearance would draw you to her, yet the Sisters treated her with great love and brought her back from the brink of death, successfully finding her the medical care she would need outside of the borders of Albania.

Lucia is just one of many other children in their care with conditions that would hurt your heart. I can barely talk about the Sisters without being profoundly moved.  They truly treat everyone as if they were serving Jesus himself.  Snotty faces, horrible smells, contagious illnesses and all. There is something about love and compassion expressed so purely and genuinely that is moving and life-changing.  I know it changed me.  And isn’t that how we should live?  So that when others see us, they see Jesus and long to know him too?

On the reverse side of the card bearing the tiny swatch of Mother Teresa’s robe it reads:

“Do not be afraid to love until it hurts, for that is how Jesus loved.”  -- Mother Teresa

May we all endeavor to do the same.

Often refusing to have their photo taken, they conceded on the afternoon of Reni's departure.  It is a special gift.  We love all these ladies!