A lady was ushered into my OPD.She was in her early forties and she was in her pits.Wearing a woollen cap and covered with a thick woollen shawl ,her face was an absolute blank.Her husband came along and put it in so many words that she was depressed.I sat with her to talk through her mood.She was well educated,a Bsc and expressive.She started wailing as she poured out her pain.
She had lost her nineteen year old son just six months ago,one of the twins of the four children she had.Closest to her,working with her in the school,literally walking in his mother’s shadow and one fine day had overstayed in the school compound to work on some files and was found late that evening in the same posture, lifeless.He was brought to the hospital where doctor found no external evidence of the cause of death.
Henceforth the family life had literally become hell.One of the children always had to keep a watch on the mother who refused to come out from her son’s room,stopped going to school and the daughter who had been pursuing her studies in Bangalore had to cut short her course and had got a transfer nearer home where she could commute from home everyday.
I sat with her humbled,only too aware, that I would never be able to understand her pain…and yet I tried with what little experience I had to share in her struggle.I shared the Word,instructed her to read the psalms for the starter,keep a diary…do something uplifting in memory of her son..she herself suggested adopting an orphan.I prayed a simple prayer only too aware of my inadequacy.
The second lady who was ushered in for counselling to my OPD today was another lady who had presented with somatisation.She was from the hills,uneducated..she had lost her only son too,all of twenty three years……in the Kargill war.She started weeping as soon as the son was mentioned and I found myself weeping with her …….she started talking…it has been ten years since she lost her son on that fateful day and everytime the other boys who have grown with her son from the village come home from the army she thinks to herself that her son would have been one of them had he been alive.
I find it difficult to get through to the hill people because of the language barrier.I could only catch her hand and thank her for her sacrifice and the life of her brave son because of whom we are safe……Although the cause for which he died was questionably a man-made agenda,a lie but I guess the lord looks at the heart , it struck me and I continued to talk to her about a similar sacrifice made in the hills of Golgotha,2000 years ago…for my salvation and hers.She gave me a blank look ,we prayed together.
I felt absolutely inadequate again but knowing from my past experience,it is when I am inadequate that the Lord does His perfect work unhampered.
She had lost her nineteen year old son just six months ago,one of the twins of the four children she had.Closest to her,working with her in the school,literally walking in his mother’s shadow and one fine day had overstayed in the school compound to work on some files and was found late that evening in the same posture, lifeless.He was brought to the hospital where doctor found no external evidence of the cause of death.
Henceforth the family life had literally become hell.One of the children always had to keep a watch on the mother who refused to come out from her son’s room,stopped going to school and the daughter who had been pursuing her studies in Bangalore had to cut short her course and had got a transfer nearer home where she could commute from home everyday.
I sat with her humbled,only too aware, that I would never be able to understand her pain…and yet I tried with what little experience I had to share in her struggle.I shared the Word,instructed her to read the psalms for the starter,keep a diary…do something uplifting in memory of her son..she herself suggested adopting an orphan.I prayed a simple prayer only too aware of my inadequacy.
The second lady who was ushered in for counselling to my OPD today was another lady who had presented with somatisation.She was from the hills,uneducated..she had lost her only son too,all of twenty three years……in the Kargill war.She started weeping as soon as the son was mentioned and I found myself weeping with her …….she started talking…it has been ten years since she lost her son on that fateful day and everytime the other boys who have grown with her son from the village come home from the army she thinks to herself that her son would have been one of them had he been alive.
I find it difficult to get through to the hill people because of the language barrier.I could only catch her hand and thank her for her sacrifice and the life of her brave son because of whom we are safe……Although the cause for which he died was questionably a man-made agenda,a lie but I guess the lord looks at the heart , it struck me and I continued to talk to her about a similar sacrifice made in the hills of Golgotha,2000 years ago…for my salvation and hers.She gave me a blank look ,we prayed together.
I felt absolutely inadequate again but knowing from my past experience,it is when I am inadequate that the Lord does His perfect work unhampered.
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