Beads in the sand

Okay, so I think now is a good time for me, in this blog, to start telling my first story about a specific event. Because that's what this is for, anyway. To share personal experiences. If you have any of your own, please feel free to contact me.

Every once in a while in life you have a moment that just slaps you in the face and tells you to wake up. All you can say in reply is, "Oh." Because, as it turns out, the world isn't really exactly as you thought it was. You learn something new.

I had a moment like that (or two, depending on how you count it) on the first night of my extended stay in July, 2006. It was my first time down in over half a year, and also my longest stay to date. Needless to say, on that first day, I was completely stoked. I went to sleep and prepared for an exciting day.

I woke up the next morning with over sixty bug bites. That's right, it's not a typo. 60. In one night.

It completely caught me completely by surprise. Now, for those of you who are accustomed to getting sixty bug bites every night, forgive me for sounding un-hardcore. But understand that this had never happened to me before. I had slept over at CHS multiple times before, and never had I had this problem. In fact, I never received more than five or so bites an entire trip before.

My poor body was unprepared, so the sheer number of bites hit me hard. They were everwhere -- on my arms, my legs, my back, my neck...Chances are there were many that I didn't even discover.

At first, it was mainly a trivial surprise. "Haha, guys. Look, I gota bunch of bites." We laughed it over among ourselves and went along with the day. But then, the bites started swelling and becoming irritated. Pretty soon, moving around became a inconvenience.

That day was a Sunday, so the whole orphanage, including the kids, packed up and headed to Church. Our group was to perform a skit, which we heavily rehearsed. I played the main role, so I did my best to weather out the incessant bites (which were growing worse by the minute). In the skit, many points, I had to express an emotion of pain. A lot of it wasn't acting.

Finally, the church let the kids out into a Sunday School type of thing. By then, the pain had grown even worse, and the swelling was rampant. We were asked to re-performed the skit for the kids.

This time, when the skit called for me to fall onto the floor in emotional agony, I literally did fall on the floor, and the emotional agony was accompanied by a searing pain that ripped across my body. By now it had become so bad that I could hardly move.

Yet, as I lay on the floor trying to recover from the fall, I saw out of the corner of my eyes a little five-year-old girl sitting in the front row. She seemed shocked that I had fallen, and had started to stand up to try to help lift me up, thinking that I was truly in pain and needed help (as my character did).

(Brisa, age 5)

It touched me that she would care so much (I had remembered her from my trips previous...her name was Brisa). But...the fall was a part in the skit. I managed a quick smile to her, to tell her that I was okay. She looked confused at first, but then smiled back and returned to her seat.

The rest of the skit finished without incident, and my group started preparing the activity they had planned for today: Putting together alphabet beads onto bracelets to spell out names of the kids. By now, however, the pain from the bites had gotten so bad that I could hardly move without triggering a wave of pain. I wanted to help out -- after all, wasn't that the reason I came down in the first place? -- but it soon became all too clear that I couldn't. Instead, I retired, ashamed, to sit outside of the church steps, facing the dusty roads of Tijuana.

I don't know how long I waited out there, on the porch steps of the two-room church, alone and struggling to deal with the pain. It could have been as little as fifteen minutes, or as much as an hour. However, to me, it was an eternity. I tried to find a comfortable position, but nothing would ease the pain. My water bottle ran dry before I even realized it, and my throat ached for water. The sun beat down mercilessly on me, and the only noise was that of the occasional passing car. The sand and dust of the Tijuana roads provided no comfort.

Why was I even here?, I thought to myself. Was it because I wanted to help out? Some job of that I'd done so far. Was it to fulfill a nagging conscience? If so, what would that gain me in the end? Just to be a burden?

I waited and listened for an answer, from God or otherwise. None came.

And then, I felt a tap in my shoulder. I braced the pain and then turned around.

Staring right back at me was Brisa, the girl who had stood up to help me during the skit. I was speechless...but she simply smiled, and all of the pain seemed to go away. She took hold of my hand and put something in it.

I looked down. In my hands was a dusty bracelet and there, spelled out in beads, was my name (no doubt made by someone from my group). But the thing that caught me by surprise was what came after my name: two heart-shaped beads.


...and that was it. It was my answer. Beads in the sands of life.




(if you have any experiences from CHS or Mexico that you would like to share, or just want to voice your opinion, please feel free to leave a comment or E-mail me)