Open My Eyes, Lord

Every once and awhile, there comes a moment that makes you stop in your tracks.  A moment that makes you realize how little you know or how much you’ve taken for granted.  A moment that changes the way you see things:

The other day, I was arranging the jumbled, dirty, all-out-of-sorts storage room in the school.  I love to clean, and organizing is fun for me, so I was happy to have the job.  I danced around to Taylor Swift as I sorted through the materials.

                I thought I was being over-carefully “mission-minded” regarding our resources: 

I saved half-used notebooks with scribbled-on covers because there were blank pages; 

I saved partially-destroyed textbooks because there was some readable material inside; 

I saved every filthy waterlogged box because we can use the cardboard…  You get the idea. 

And I had to fight the urge to throw away all of these things that took away from the look of perfection I was striving to create.  I was sure that what I trashed was truly useless garbage. But what happened next has brought serious reflection on my mission here:

***

I brought the garbage outside and told the kids to take whatever they wanted and burn the rest.  When I gave them free reign on the trash can, you would have thought I just told a bunch of 10 year olds I was taking them to Disney World for a month.  I can’t describe their jubilation.  At first I smiled at their simple, almost silly, happiness.  But as I watched them whip through the contents of the bin, checking for hidden treasures, my emotion started to shift.  They shouted with delight as they found what their stupid, careless teacher had discarded: half of a broken crayon, a tiny piece of chalk, a string, the insert to a pen, a bead, part of a balloon, etc. 

There were also some gems too good to be true that (in all their honesty and goodwill) they brought back to me saying, “Sister, this one’s good.”  An alphabet book had to be put back on the shelf, which devastated the child who had found and fought for it.  I took a calendar back before realizing it was from 2012, and when I returned it to the boy, he literally jumped for joy and screamed at the top of his lungs before racing off to show anyone/everyone.  This was a child whose family could not afford him even one new shirt for Christmas.  That old calendar is probably the biggest ‘gift’ he’ll get all year

***

As I looked around at the faces of children in a state of ecstasy over a trash bin, I suddenly found myself intensely saddened. “This is the face of true poverty," I thought to myself.  “It’s not necessarily the grim, despondent expression on a person staring into the lens of a UNICEF camera.  It’s in the over-elation of these children, right here, right now.”  Tears stung my eyes as I stared at my kids proudly holding up their prizes.  I felt a wave of guilt.  I had danced around to cheerful music as I dumped the “useless” items into a pile of things to be burned.  I was happy to get rid of these things.  I had wanted to get rid of so much more.  All of a sudden, I felt disrespectful.  And ignorant.  And a slew of other things I've had trouble sifting through in the days since.

Later, I thought of something I had written down at orientation (in red ink no less) as something to be constantly aware of: “Social analysis: what is really going on here and why?”  I realized that a) I don’t know, and b) I haven’t even really been paying close attention.  Talk about a challenging recognition.

I have always said that what I want most in life is to Understand.  And coming to South Sudan has been the biggest step I've ever taken in that endeavor.  I want God to open my eyes, I mean really open my eyes, to the realities of life here.  But at the same time, I am afraid of what I will see.