This year we have spent a lot of time sleeping on crowded, hard places,
but this month I have a double bed all to myself. I sleep right in the
middle of it with three pillows, two blankets, and my duck. I share a
bathroom that has hot water with only one other person, and at night I
can sit in the middle of my really big bed and watch Conan.
The
other night my entire team was in my room watching television. (We
thought catching up on pop culture would be helpful to our reentry
process.) While I was happy watching Family Guy in Spanish, I was the
only one in the room laughing and we ended up watching “American Idol
Gives Back.”
Before I left home for the World Race, I would
watch shows that featured starving kids in poverty all over the world,
and I would usually get a little angry. I felt like the “big man”
behind the television was trying to play on my emotions, so that I
could give him money. I didn´t want to be played, so I hardened my
heart and pretended like the world really wasn´t that bad. But this
time when I watched the “sad stories” on American Idol I thought, yep that is pretty much how the world works. Or worse, I would think those people don’t have it too bad. In fact, they have it better than they think, they don´t even know what true poverty is.
At one point in the show, Billy Ray Cyrus visited a family that had a real house, and he said something like that is the worse living situation I have ever seen. I thought, but someone else in the room vocalized, ¨Wow Billy Ray, you don´t get out much.”
Then I thought, “Wow, Elizabeth, you are a little judgmental.”
I
am not trying to justify my judgmental thought, but here is the thing.
I have learned and seen that money doesn´t make people happy. Some of
the happiest people in the whole world have what most Americans would
consider nothing.
I´m not OK sitting back and watching people
starve, but there is a certain amount of poverty that doesn´t bother me
any more. The world in my eyes no longer looks like the world I use to
see in America. By American standards, the majority of the world lives
in poverty, and this is just a way of life.
Truthfully, I am a
little bit nervous about going back to the clutter of America. I think
I prefer only having a weeks worth of clothes. It has never been so
easy to get dressed in the morning, I just wear whatever is the most
clean.
I don´t need an entire closet. Having an entire closet of clothes, but having “nothing to wear.” is stressful.
I
don´t feel like I have roughed it this year, I have always had
everything I need. This is true even though I have only a fifth or less
of what I had back at home.
A couple months ago, I started to
realize this shift in my thinking. I asked one of my teammates, “What
is wrong with me, am I not compassionate? I don´t break for the poverty
of these people. It doesn´t bother me that they don´t have a home like
the one I have at home. In fact I could live like them ,and be fine”
And my teammate said, “Elizabeth, maybe you should just pray that the Lord would break you for the poverty of their spirits.”
So here is the thing.
1. As far as material possessions go, by the common man´s standard around the world, I have grown up like royalty.
2.
This isn´t a bad thing. In fact, This is a gift because while most
people are stuck in the same neighborhood that grew up in, I have the
ability to go to the nations and give.
3. There is a downside to
this gift, I can be tempted to use this gift on my own selfish desires.
I can be tempted to find fulfillment in life in this gift, and I can be
tempted to convince other people to try fulfillment in my gift.
4.
Because this gift doesn´t define who I am or bring me happiness in of
itself, I can live without it, and I am OK with other people living
without it.
5. When I get away from all the noise and clutter, I find that it really still is all about the heart of a man.
I
feel like my thoughts on issues like poverty are messy, inconsistent,
hypocritical, and I am sure that even though I say that I would go
anywhere and do anything, I would cry if I ended up living under a
plastic tarp for the rest of my life asking literally for my daily
bread. But the Lord is faithful provider, and when we follow Him,
nothing else matters.
