Girls Like Anya

By Lisa Kue, Junior Nursing Student 

 Anya sat on a windowsill waiting outside the team room door, holding her bleeding hand away from her body and staring vacantly out a window. As I turned around the corner, her friend Yula ran to me, prodding and motioning me towards Anya with concern etched in her gentle face. As I approached Anya, I noticed that she was bleeding freely from her left hand, and upon closer inspection, I saw that she had multiple lacerations, clean cuts that scored all of her fingers. I asked Yula and Anya, “Why?” and pointed to Anya’s fingers; Anya looked away while Yula only told me that she got her fingers “caught” in a fence. However, I knew that her cuts were too clean-cut to result from a jagged wire fence. I took some baby wipes and cleaned her hand and her wounds, all the while wondering what made Anya cut herself. As I bandaged her, Anya sat in silence, alternately watching me and looking out the window. When I smiled and told her I was finished, she nodded a “thank you” and left without another word, with Yula by her side. As I sat on the windowsill by myself, I said a silent prayer for both of them, wondering what drove 15 year old Anya to repeatedly cut herself so deeply.

Two days later, I found her waiting for me again, and this time, bleeding profusely from deep, clean cuts on her right shin and foot. Anya sat with Natasha, a 14 year old girl I recognized, whose arms were covered in scars from previous wounds. This time, Natasha had cut her left wrist so deeply, she required stitches and had come to get my assistance in cleaning and bandaging her wound. While I took care of Anya’s wounds, I asked Natasha why they cut themselves; she just told me that it was “anger.” I later learned that some of the girls had been using blunt razors to hurt themsleves. Most of the time, I simply sat in disbelief and in prayer for the children I encountered. Every day was a different story, a different child, and another prayer said.  

This summer, I was blessed with the opportunity to work with orphans in Berdychiv, Ukraine. When I think back on the trip, I am reminded again and again of how blessed I was to have been able to share in the lives of 120 orphans. Anya and Natasha were just two of the dozens of girls that were cutting themselves; two of the many orphans that were experiencing so much hurt and pain, physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally; they were just two of the many orphans I saw on a daily basis that were in need of medical attention. I patched up scraped knees and elbows, bandaged cuts and swollen joints, used positioning techniques for sore teammates, and iced swollen ankles. I simply became a lap of love for the hurting. There would be times when children would simply come to me to be held, to be touched, or to cry in my arms. Children (and my teammates) would search for me if anyone was injured, ill, or simply in need of advice for a stomach ache…I was constantly on the move.

I never expected that I would be called to use what little I’ve learned to care for hurting children and fellow teammates in Ukraine, but it just goes to show how much we underestimate God’s plans for us. With this trip, I’ve realized that my heart has been truly called to care; and I now know that as a nurse, the call to care never leaves you, no matter what you do or where you go. There will always be hurting people, and as nurses, we only have to reach out our hands to find the broken. I have been encouraged to keep pressing on in my goal to become an RN, for those kids, for myself, and for the future ministries that God may put in my path. And may you be encouraged to love others as God first loved you (1 John 4:19) and to be empowered in the knowledge that you are instruments of the one true Healer.

Please continue praying for the orphans in Berdychiv, and all around the world; for all of these lost little lambs…that they would come to know Jesus as their friend and Savior.

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