06 December 2010

Live Life Positively

Last January I left the United States on my transatlantic voyage. Packed amid my clothes and pictures were an assortment of well wishes from various individuals. The phrase “this experience will be such a positive one for you” inhabiting space on nearly every card. On any other day, embarking on any other adventure, to any other location I would have overlooked the word positive. It would have been just that, a word in the middle of a sentence. Instead the eight letters seemed to leap off of the page and hold tight to my heart as if they were a tangible thing.

Sitting aboard the airplane headed for South Africa I kept thinking about the AIDS Respite Center where I would be volunteering for the next year and each of my patients whose status was positive. Until then my use of the world positive had typically been in the affirmative. How could I now be embarking on a journey that I hoped would ultimately be a positive experience when that same word was being used to describe someone fighting for their life?

A year later, as I pack my bags and prepare to say goodbye to my beloved South Africa I can whole heartedly say that the word positive has been powerfully redefined in my vocabulary. It is no longer only something that expresses the affirmative, nor is it only something negative, but rather a word that encompasses both optimism and faith.

My patients, who have become my dear friends, are HIV positive and although many wear the duress of their disease in lines on their faces an impressive veneer of resiliency encases them. Their unfathomable needs are masked by their strong faith, passion for life and infectious love for one another and for God. Watching their commitment to faith and dedication to life even during their most painful of days has encouraged my own faith in God.

An HIV positive status will always be heartbreaking, but through my patients I have learned to see the silver lining. Amidst the heartache and struggle there lays an important lesson in being told you are positive, finding a way to live positively.

-Thandiwe lived positively by openly discussing her strong faith and accepting Gods plan.

-By encouraging her community to get tested one of my co-workers is currently living positively.

-Delisile, a strong beacon of hope, lives positively by ensuring that faith, love and laughter flow freely.

-Mlungisi, with his bright smile and big hugs lived positively by embracing me in friendship and support.

-By spreading awareness through her school, Nokuphiwa a beautiful 14 year old lived positively until the day that God called her home.

Somewhere deep inside me still aches when I hear that another individual is admitted to the Unit or when I sit with someone as they take their last breath. However through it all I have learned to rejoice in knowing that someone’s status may be HIV positive, but God is on their side encouraging them to live positively.

I am leaving South Africa understanding what it is to really feel love, to hold hope so close to the heart, to see the face of God in the friends I have met and to know that He is encouraging each of us, regardless of our status to live positively.