give back

I wanted to let you all know that you can now donate to Imagination’s fund through Paypal. This option is available on our website under the section “Who I’d like to meet”. Your gift will go towards our friend Imagination, and our hope is we will also have resources saved to give to many more women like Imagination, who may have addictions or other blocks along the way that must be brought down before their freedom is reached.

hope begins with a mustard seed

Six weeks have come and gone since I said goodbye to the brothers and sisters I came to know and love in Kolkata. Six weeks of being “home,” and realizing home is more about the people with which we live and love than it is a concrete structure in a geographical location - and one can have more than one home.

I have taken the past 6 months of my life and hidden it deep within my heart. I thought it would be easier to begin anew if I detached myself from the old. Speaking of my time in Kolkata is never easy. I find my sentences broken, my thoughts scrambled. It is hard to convey my emotions.

Still there are moments I treasure -

• Drinking cha with ladies in Sonagachi… they graciously open the doors to their rooms for us and share the most heart-wrenching stories about how they came to be here.
• Watching a woman go from her deathbed in a Missionaries of Charity home to dancing. Laughing with her as she shares her joy with me.
• Helping five new ladies step timidly into freedom and join Sari Bari.
• Hearing of six Sari Bari women becoming new creatures in Christ.
• Celebrating with these beautiful women and their families.
• Playing a small role in assisting two young boys who live in Sonagachi get a better education elsewhere.
• Praying with ex-go-go dancers in Patpong. Watching them as they bravely enter the bars they escaped for the love of rescuing girls much like themselves.
• Learning how to care for Imagination, our broken friend on the street. Walking with her as she recovers physically and spiritually. Being able to play a part in her addiction recovery.
• Living with and loving a family who, much like me, came to Kolkata to enter into community with the poorest of the poor. They spend their lives loving on street children and teaching their toddler son to do the same.

I am grateful to have had a small part in the stories of all these beautiful people, and today I remember that that even if I never set foot in Kolkata again, my part in their stories does not have to be over. I am reminded by my responsibility to my dear friend Imagination. Imagination has weighed heavily on the hearts of my teammates and I. We want to continue to fight for her freedom as she finishes up the final three months of her rehab treatment and transitions to working at Sari Bari and living away from her friends on the street (those that feed her alcohol and hopelessness.)

Imagination is special to me. I met her the day Beth, Sheila and I admitted her into the hospital. Her feet had been run over by a taxi weeks prior. While my teammates had been redressing her wounds daily, they were still heavily infected from the weeks before we found her living on the sidewalk of a main street near Sonagachi.

I remember helping her into a rickshaw, while more than a dozen people on the sidewalk stopped to stare at the three white girls helping a homeless women who could not walk. I remember carrying her up the stairs at our friends business within Songachi, giving her soap and shampoo to shower and new clothes to change into. I remember the taxi ride to the hospital and sitting with her in the admittance room… getting queasy when the doctors looked at her wounds and throwing up later. Before that time I had no idea open wounds made me nauseous, and after that time I was forever nicknamed by her as “the girl that threw up at the hospital.”

She gave all of us silly nicknames and she opened up and blossomed during the three weeks she spent at the hospital. She was in an open room with eight other women, and she became friends with all of them. She shared photos we brought in to have her look at with the whole room. I painted her fingernails and she tried to teach my friends and I Bengali script.

I had the opportunity to say goodbye to Imagination the day before I left Kolkata. It was visitors day at the rehab and four of us picked up some fruit and mishtis (sweets) to bring her and the other ladies at the home. She was walking on her own again, and smiling from ear to ear. She was one of the only ladies at the rehab home who was literate, and so the ladies often asked her to read from a Bengali Bible. She bragged about how she had become the house cook, because it gave her something to do besides for watching television. She hated watching the television there, and so she spent her time cooking or reading magazines or the Bible.

I am writing this and sharing bits and pieces of all the stories I have about this beautiful lady because she still needs our help in fighting for her freedom. I am going to be praying and fasting for her on Thursday, and my prayer is that you might take some time this week to seek out God on behalf of Imagination and the countless other women who have roadblocks keeping them from entering into freedom. The cause is not lost for these ladies. I have hope for Imagination, and I pray you might as well.

If you are interested in finding out more about how you can be a part of Imagination’s story, let me know. I’d love to share more with you. Also, you can visit the myspace page one of my teammates created for Imagination and her cause.

where I am

It’s been almost 2 weeks since I left my home in Kolkata, this is my first attempt at conveying my thoughts.  Being back with family is good, but also challenging.  I think it can be easier to serve the poor in India than it is to serve my family.  I want to place my family before myself and love the way I loved in Kolkata, but they know my history and they’ve seen me at my worst.  If I’m having a bad day, it’s easy to retreat back into my old self and try to manipulate them into serving me.  It seemed easier to “suck it up” and love through putting someone else above myself when I was having a bad day in Kolkata.

I feel unsettled.  More unsettled than ever.  For the first time in my life, I don’t know what is next.  I don’t know what God has for me or where my place is anymore.  All I know is I can’t go back to the places where I once was.  These places don’t fit anymore.

I hurt for Kolkata and the things I left behind.  I see myself wanting to fall back into the habit of keeping myself distracted in order to push the pain away.  I want to be doing something productive.  I need to be doing something productive, yet I also need to allow myself to ache.  I can hear my friend Josh saying, feel the pain, don’t bandaid it.  I’m trying.

I’ve found little things help.  Listening to music that was played over and over in Kolkata.  Driving my car on an empty road.  Laying outside under a tree, watching the clouds roll by.  Sitting with a friend, sipping a cup of coffee.  Dreaming.

My heart aches, my mind wanders, and I wonder why I am here.  Still I trust in his plan.  It is better than mine.

I’m moving back to my old blog.  Contact me if you want the address.

2 days remain

I’m two days away from leaving Kolkata, halfway through saying my goodbyes, and broke. I am nervous about finding a job. I have heavy thoughts but a deeper sense of purpose. Peace and an anticipation of reunion. A readiness to put love into action in new ways.

It is strange to think I have one day left in Kaligaht. Especially sad because lately I’ve really found my niche in washing dishes and helping lead group exercises. I could stay longer but I know it is time to go.

Today I treated myself to an afternoon of beauty (or rather pain, beauty is pain.) My eyebrows have been threaded, my legs have been waxed and my feet have been scrubbed. The result is me feeling pretty good… especially about clean feet.

love begins at home

I can never forget the experience I had in visiting a home where they kept all these old parents of sons and daughters who had just put them into an institution and forgotten them-maybe. I saw that in that home these old people had everything-good food, comfortable place, television, everything, but everyone was looking toward the door. And I did not see a single one with a smile on the face. I turned to Sister and I asked: “Why do these people who have every comfort here, why are they all looking toward the door? Why are they not smiling?”

I am so used to seeing the smiles on our people, even the dying ones smile. And Sister said: “This is the way it is nearly everyday. They are expecting, they are hoping that a son or daughter will come to visit them. They are hurt because they are forgotten.” And see, this neglect to love brings spiritual poverty. Maybe in our own family we have somebody who is feeling lonely, who is feeling sick, who is feeling worried. Are we there? Are we willing to give until it hurts in order to be with our families, or do we put our own interests first? These are the questions we must ask ourselves, especially as we begin this year of the family. We must remember that love begins at home.

– Excerpt of a speech by Mother Teresa