a story of humility...

i was talking to my roommate. we sat side by side on my bed and discussed our different dreams of purpose and future.
she, dedicated to the poor of spirit...
and i, to the poor of the world...

i remember.
i remember sitting in front of a woman. she was loosely dressed in a dirt stained rose colored sari. her eyes were beady and moist. her nose sunken in. her hands clubbed and broken with stumps meant for fingers and wounds crusted over. her dark hair matted and pulled back. her tiny frame with wrinkles melting on the edges of her cloth, her smile lost in the ones on her face. and tears. tears glistened on her cheeks. she knelt before me.
i wept.

i didn't know how to change the things i saw. the overgrown houses with broken boards and mats laid out for beds. a dozen people fit into a room the size of mine. at least one mat of each room was occupied by someone immobile and unaware. people gathered their only possessions of dirty pots and pictures of family around and underneath a cot, if they had one. some places stank of urine.... one man: Balam. i still see him rocking. moaning. "always in pain" says a leper behind us. "if you help one man, please help him." i wanted magic to pour out from heaven and touch this man. i wanted hope to flood out. i wanted healing to drown these broken people. these people ostracized from their families, exempt from joining the rest of the world....
i wept.
and that monster of a woman...
she wiped my tears with her disfigured paw.
she wiped them. smiled the brightest smile. and through her disfigured mouth and another's voice she told me:
"i thank God for becoming a leper. because if i had never gotten leprosy i would never have known him..."

and here i sit...in unconditional love from family, in health and wealth....and sometimes i have trouble praising the Lord.

i realize...i am helpless. i am a tool. a beloved tool.

i want to be where the lepers are. where the unwanted are. where the forgotten are. will i ever know God like they do?