Fall in Love with Those in Need :: Day 4

If you’ve been around Triple Braided for a few months you know that this past November I went to Burkina Faso, West Africa.  Believe it or not it’s been almost three months, and I still haven’t finished writing about my trip.  I know that sounds a little excessive – three months – to write about a ten day trip.  But that’s how much is in my heart about what I witnessed.  Writing about Burkina is not an easy feat because when I sit down at the computer all of those feelings, emotions, and memories come rushing out like a tidal wave that can’t be stopped – usually all down my face.  By the time I stop the drenching, then think, and finally write hours have gone by.  So I’m telling my story slowing.

But I mention it here because I fell in love in Burkina Faso.  It was a quiet love, a love that comes over you in a way that you don’t know it will and are afraid it won’t ever again.  It’s a love that is different.  It’s a love that is outside of yourself.

One afternoon I was sitting outside with my friend Imelda painting her fingernails.  We sat on concrete blocks that were being used to build a wall around the boys’ school.  As I painted her nails I glanced down and noticed her feet.  She was wearing flip-flops, and as expected in a country with little grass or concrete her feet were filthy from the dirt and dust.

Looking at her feet I had this intense desire to get down on my knees and kneel at them to paint her toenails.  I didn’t know how I would get them clean enough to paint, but that didn’t matter.  I just wanted them to be pretty too.

I asked her if I could paint her toenails and she adamantly said no.  Conscious of possibly offending her or disregarding a custom from her culture I didn’t proceed.  I just continued to paint her fingernails.

Never before, however, have I ever felt the desire to kneel on a dirt ground to touch, hold, clean, and paint someone’s feet.  But in that moment nothing else mattered but that teenage girl – that teenage girl in need.

This Valentine’s Day I encourage you to Fall in Love with Someone in Need, and there are so many ways to do so.  Serving in your community by making Valentine cards for children or the elderly.  Serving other single women in need at a women’s shelter or a pregnancy center.  Or even serving someone in need in your family or a friend.

My life, my wants, my needs became really, really small in Burkina Faso.  I am not trying to tell you that now I am healed from selfishness.  But I can attest to this – not a day goes by that I do not think of Imelda.  And not a time goes by that I do not thank God in the midst of pitching-a-fit.