In Her Shoes

By Kathy

A few weeks ago, a dear Haitian friend arrived at our house and told me a story of a recent tap-tap (a form of public transportation) ride he had.  He and some other Haitians were standing along the edge of the road, awaiting a tap-tap.  One came along, with 2 vacant seats in the back, a driver, and one passenger in the front.  Normally, that would mean two additional riders could board in back, and one more in front.  The situation was a little different this time though because the passenger in the front was a “blan” (a white person, usually a foreigner).  Two of the Haitians who were waiting quickly sat down in the two vacant seats in the back.  Then the remaining Haitians, including my friend, hesitated.  What if the blan paid the driver extra to sit in front?  What if the driver would be angry if they also sat in front?  What if the blan would be angry, or treat them as if they were inferior?  My friend said he thought to himself “I’m a human.  She’s a human.  We are no different.  I can sit in front!”  So he did.  I asked how it turned out.  He said “She was cool”.  This launched a long conversation between the two of us.  I asked him if would have sat there before he had known any blan personally.  “Probably not”, he admitted.  But, he pointed out, “we (him and the blan in the tap-tap) are no different”.

I told him I agreed in part, but in other ways, we are all very different.  For example, him and me.  Yes, we are both human.  But he was raised in Haiti, I was raised in the U.S.;  he comes from an area depressed financially, I come from relative privilege; he is black, I am white; he is single, I am married; he is young, I am, well, not so young; he is male, I am female.  From there, the conversation moved to the universal, worldwide enigma that men and women have very different ways and we are very confusing to one another!  We both agreed in the end, though, that although there are ways we humans are very much alike, we can never completely know and understand another person’s perspective and experience.

Mark and I recently were in a remote village as part of a medical team, seeing patients from the church and community.  My job at one point was taking blood pressures, one after another.  I tried to connect with each patient with my somewhat broken Kreyòl, asking about how their day was going or about their family.  After greeting one woman in her 50s, I began taking her blood pressure.  As I looked down past the blood pressure cuff, I saw her shoes.  My shoes.  She had on a pair of shoes identical to ones I own.  Black, quilted patterned with patent leather accents and a small metal “Easy Spirit” medallion, covered in dust that had accumulated as she walked the great distance to come to the clinic that day.  My mom-in-law had purchased a pair of shoes identical to hers, and when I saw my mom-in-law’s new shoes, I had commented how much I liked them.  In my mom-in-law’s typical modus operandi, she went out and bought me a pair to match hers, as an act of love.  I thought about how my shoes had carried me to shopping malls and restaurants, and how my mom-in-law’s shoes had carried her to her weekly hair appointment and to visit friends.  Then I thought about how this lady’s shoes had carried her to the village market to buy her fresh produce and raw meat, and to the stream to collect her water.  I thought about how all three pairs of shoes had carried us each to our own churches on Sundays.  I thought about each of we moms raised our babies, loved our husbands, and worried about our grown kids, as moms all do.  I thought about how we are just the same, and yet we each have such a unique story to tell. 

And I thought about the body of Christ.  1 Cor 12:12, 25-26 says we are all parts of the body of Christ.  We are different, yet united.  One is an eye, the other is an ear.  We each are here on this earth with a different story, with different gifts and talents, but with the same need for love and acceptance.  And Christ is the one who unites us all, who loves without limit, who celebrates our differences for the unique ways that they can come together to better the body.

Let us love as Christ did, unconditionally, knowing we can never completely understand another person’s walk, but knowing that loving one another and celebrating our differences is what it looks like to be in His image.