Trash Picker
Imagine this for a second… You wake up in the morning and you put on the same dirty clothes as yesterday. Next, you put on gloves on your hands and a mask over your face, and begin to make your way to your job, along with hundreds of other people. You breathe in the smoke of burning rubbage as you desperately search, picking through piles for recyclables. Day and night you scavage for reusable things among the waste of others. This is your life; People call you a trash picker.
About a week and a half ago my team visited the trash dump outside the city of Trujillo, Peru. When we arrived I scanned the area and it seemed like such a surreal place. Piles and piles of trash were all over, and hundreds of people young and old were searching through all the garbage. Generations of families work at the dump for a lifetime; most people call this job a generational curse.
My team was there handing out fruit to the workers when I saw a woman in a red sweater and immediately knew I had to go talk with her. After a few minutes she started opening up to me and telling me her life story. She’s worked at the garbage dump as a trash picker for over nine years. Her husband left her and their four kids, and the cry of her heart is to do anything she can to give her kids a good life. We continued in conversation and tears started streaming down her face. She told me she doesn’t understand why she is stuck doing this job to support her family. Her worst fear is that she won’t be a good mom. Without her children she said she wouldn’t even want to live, doing what she does everyday. My heart broke for this woman who so desperately needed to know that she is so valued and loved by God the father. I was blessed to be able to pray with her. I couldn’t think of the words to say, but I prayed so hard that God would encourage her and that she would feel his deep unending love for her.
Love. Love is something that God has been teaching me more about this whole month in Peru: His love for us, how he loves us, how he calls us to love others, and what that looks like. This is the song that has been on my heart: Give me your eyes for just one second, give me your eyes so I can see everything that I keep missing, give me your love for humaniy.
That day at the garbage dump I saw those people through the eyes of Jesus and my heart broke, desperate to show them the love he has for them. He knows them by name, he knows where they are and what they are doing, and he knows every hair on their heads. God showed me his love for humanity that day; for a split second I saw the woman in the red sweater through his eyes. Even though she feels like her life is meaningless sometimes, she is such a beautiful creation and I am confident that God will show her is love. She will forever be in my prayers.
