Beautiful Feet: When You Can't Breathe

They say smells gently waft to your nose, ticking your senses and awakening your inward desire to not only smell more of the deliciousness, but to become consumed with it. What they don't describe is how a smell can hit you so hard that it seemingly knocks the breath right out of you, leaving you gasping for fresh air and unable to find relief. I remember the sensation all too well as my 14-year-old self sat on a bus on my first time in a foreign country. When I had exited my first plane ride the day before, I had noticed that Ecuador had a scent of its own, not a bad one, just a distinctive, different one. But this....this was a horrid smell. This smell made me want to cover my nose and curl up into a ball to try to protect myself. This smell made me yearn for home, where the worst smell I had encountered was walking into the bathroom after my brother had just exited.

Our bus pulled into a trash dump and opened its doors. And while I thought that the smell couldn't possibly get any worse, I was very, very wrong. It was about to get much, much worse. We gathered our bags of soap and small toys and exited the only familiar, safe thing in the area. And though our leaders had tried to prepare us for what we were about to experience, there are not adequate words to explain the heart-wrenching scene that we beheld.

Stepping off of the bus, we were instantly overtaken by a mixture of body odor and rotting food. The dust from the street was stirred up by a breeze that seemed to intensify the hot, sticky smell that clung to the back of my throat and entered every orifice possible. I tried to smile and use my minimal spanish vocabulary to greet the people who came out of make-shift houses, eyeing these newcomers. They quietly clung together, unsure of the white-skinned strangers who had just rudely trampled through their front yards in our tennis shoes that cost more than their entire life's possessions. It was in the next few moments, as my eyes feasted on the scene around me, that I was choked less and less by the smell of decay and more and more by the sight of despair. It was in those moments that I changed forever.

We were there to present the gospel through a play, which was more or less a ways of street evangelism. We set up to perform and people cautiously came out to see what the ruckus was all about. Afterwards, we attempted to engage with the people. There were men giving cat-calls and little boys and girls who wanted nothing more than to run their fingers through my hair. I tried to be gracious as several filthy children flocked to me to not just see, but to handle my golden locks. "Don't worry about lice," I tried to remind myself as I forced a smile. "People are what's important here, not me." Kids tried to play soccer with a piece of trash that they had balled up, but it only lasted a few kicks before it would unravel and they would tire of balling it back up. I handed out some soap and toys to the kids around me. One little boy was wearing pants that were several sizes too big for him, held up by nothing other than a wrapper from a plastic water bottle. I was invited into his "home", which was simply trash piled high on each side and a piece of plastic to make a roof and keep the birds out. Water was so scarce that when a truck drove by the water the street to keep the dust down, a man ran behind to collect some for his family. After all, a little more dust in the air is a fair trade to keep a family alive.

It wasn't long before we traipsed back inside the bus, full of grime and dirt and heavy hearts. As I washed my hair from the luxury of running water in our hotel, I shuddered at the thought that something was probably making its new home somewhere in my scalp. And I held back tears. Instead of lice clinging to my head, the images from the day clung fast. They anchored themselves in my brain and worked their way to my heart, changing my very make-up. I knew I wanted to do more than simply present a play and give people soap. I knew that I NEEDED to do more.

But I left Ecuador a few days later, as scheduled, and returned to my home in suburban America. I was greeted by people who were so happy to have me back, but had no idea what I had experienced....and I had no idea how to explain it. I tried, only to be met with a few "uh-huhs" and then an inevitable change of the subject. My experiences made people uncomfortable. I made people uncomfortable. To be perfectly honest, I made myself uncomfortable. I was processing everything I had experienced and seen to the extent that my 14-year old mind could, but it was full of confusion. It seemed as though I was back at the trash dump, grasping for air and being suffocated by the intensity of what I had seen. What more could I be doing? I knew that street evangelism wasn't my thing. I wanted something deeper. But what changes could I make? How could I help people, not only in a physical sense, but in a deeper spiritual sense? I longed to make some changes in my life to be the hands and feet of Jesus, but I was unsure of how. Unfortunately, my passion seemed to frustrate people, as I was not good at effectively expressing what was going on in my heart, and so I quit talking about it and life slowly went on, more or less, as usual.

That is, until about eight months later...