How do I show you love?

I like to show love through service. Darren and I sometimes run into trouble because we both like to show love through service. We often play out scenes where we are both trying to nudge the other away from the sink in an effort to be the one to do the dishes. Unlike many couples who fight over trying to get the other spouse to do the dishes, we fight over the right to GET to do the dishes. Two servants married to each other can be fun and comedic. The same can be said for two servant sisters.

Clarisse and I found ourselves in a very interesting predicament while in Gaza performing a nutritional survey. It is important to remember that Clarisse is six years older than me, thus in Central African culture it is my duty to show her respect, more respect than I would show to a younger sibling. Besides the respect she is owed, I also love her as a sister and friend so want to show her love and respect.

In Gaza we stayed at the EEB health clinic, where we performed the survey and treated the most severe cases of malnutrition. The nurse who runs the clinic is one of Clarisse and I’s cousin, and he was our host for the four days we were in Gaza. There is an empty, four room house where we were housed and ate our meals, courtesy of the fine cooking of our cousin’s wife. Clarisse helped our cousin arrange the rooms and she made sure we had a room together so we could have maximum sister time. We each had a single bed to sleep on, basically four legs with a thin sheet of plywood on top to put a foam mattress on. In our case, there was only one mattress between six of us. Our cousin decided to give the mattress to me, as, in their culture, I am this cousin’s older sister and he wanted to show me love and respect.

When Clarisse and I went in to get ready for bed I took one look at the sleeping arrangements and an instant stubbornness rose up inside of me. I was determined that Clarisse should have the honour and privilege of sleeping on the mattress. Clarisse is, like me, equally stubborn and she was also bound and determined that I was to sleep on the mattress, plus it was the wish of our cousin, so for her the matter was settled. I placed my sleeping sheet on the plywood bed and Clarisse instantly removed it and put it on the mattress bed, at which point I snatched it back onto the wooden bed. We went back and forth like this with the rest of the team laughing at us from outside the window. I decided a compromise was in order. I proposed that we take turns sleeping on the mattress, that way we could both show each other how much we loved the other. I knew we would be there three nights so to maximize Clarisse’s sleeping time on the mattress I insisted that she take the first night. She relented and I am sure that she had the better night’s sleep; mind you, she did have the worst place in the car while I had a much less cramped seat so she certainly deserved and needed a good night’s sleep.

The third night was the trickiest night of the bargain. I went to bed early, taking my turn on the plywood bed. I had just fallen asleep when Clarisse walked in, saw the mattress on her bed and abruptly woke me up to tell me to change beds. I told her that it was my turn on the plywood bed but she did not agree. She said that tonight I was to listen to her, my big sister! I said, “but it is only fair, I slept on the mattress the night before, it was her turn”. Not good enough apparently. I refused to move so she refused to lie on the mattress. She laid out a wrap (like a wrap around skirt) on the cement floor in the corner and insisted that if I didn’t sleep on the mattress she would sleep on the floor all night. I continued to refuse and said that if she didn’t take the mattress I would sleep on the floor next to her. At this point we were starting to laugh at the utter ridiculousness of it all, and it only got worse as I got out of bed and laid down on the floor next to her. We were each trying to convince the other to take the mattress and in the meantime we were rolling on our sides laughing.

It reminded me of when my sister and I fought over a toy and since we couldn’t agree to both play with it in peace, our parents would take it away saying, “if you can’t agree to play together with it, no one will play with it”. Thinking of this gave me the solution to Clarisse and I’s problem. Isac, the Swedish doctor had come up with us and he did not have a mattress to sleep on. He had yet to go to bed, so I proposed that since we couldn’t agree we should give the mattress to Isac. We snuck into Isac’s room, stripped his plywood bed, put the mattress on top and covered it up with his things. Clarisse and I crawled onto our plywood beds giggling and waiting for Isac to come in. When he got onto his bed he started laughing and we told him that he had become the solution to our problem.

In the end we showed each other love by both having a rather uncomfortable sleep on top of a sheet of plywood and I think we both went to bed happy for not giving in. We will be laughing over the incident for years to come.