Beauty in the Broken.

This week one of the mornings I was helping another team pick up trash. Not just your everyday “picking up trash” Let me explain… In Nicaragua there is trash EVERYWHERE. On the sidewalk, on the streets, in yards. Everywhere.  Here, where I live, they dump it all into one big pile in the yard. & By everything, I really mean EVERYTHING. Rotting food from the last week, wrappers, and garbage from the bathrooms. Over a week of mildewing, being rained on, and then baked from the boiling hot sun. This pile of rotting trash gets… interesting, and has the most putrid smell ever imaginable. Covered with large maggots, and poop. It is honestly disgusting.  What I got to do with all this trash was; pick it up with my hands, and shovel it all into a truck to be driven and thrown away at the “dump.”

People live at the dump. They LIVE there. I could barely stand handling it for just one morning without throwing up. Yet that is where people spend their daily lives. That is where they eat. That is where they sleep. I wish I could say that is not true. And, I try to block that out of my mind that people are born into that, however…it is the truth, and a sad reality. When we arrive at the dump, one of the guys who live there hops on our truck right away to help unload all of our garbage onto the Earth floor, now covered in human trash.  This takes about 10 minutes. He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t ask for money. He just does it.  & how many times have I complained in my own life, or at my own job because it wasn’t how I wanted it to be? & There he is- doing the worst job unimaginable, not complaining, and working harder than any person I have ever seen.
So much beauty is in that perseverance of that man, and in his hard work. You would never notice that by just one look at his filthy clothes, and poor  living conditions.

This week I also was blessed beyond belief to attend a small church in the barrios of Leon that my small group found out about.  When looking from the outside all you might see is a small halfway built “building” made of sticks, and a tarp for a roof.  The humidity is soaking your clothes, turning your nice hairdo you did earlier that morning, and pretty outfit into what looks like you just walked out of a shower. The music frequently skips, and there is sure enough someone speaking on a microphone, when it is not necessary because there are only a maximum of 5 squished together rows of people. It could also be raining and there is more than likely babies crying. In the United States our churches never fit into our ideals. There is always something wrong, or needs to be fixed. Yet at this small church in the barrios, I felt God’s presence much more so there than ever.  All the things that would seem to be needing change, never fazed me. I felt so much love there. God’s love covered and was intertwined all throughout that church and the people there.
You’d never guess just by looking on the outside– that a  broken down  made-of-sticks building , you could find such beautiful people, full of joy. That you could feel more love there in these strangers, than you could feel in the most closest of friends. 

& That brings me back to something we learn as children, “don’t judge a book by its cover.” However, being an adult, and being around many adults- very few seem to have that mindset. How because someone is beautiful, rich, or popular- we’d treat them like a million bucks, as to how we’d treat a homeless man on the street, with nothing to offer. It’s like if your favorite celebrity, and a homeless man walked into your home. Would you treat them differently, or would you treat and look at them as equals, as the same?

Like that trash dump, we as humans are so ugly. So full of sin, jealousy, selfishness, and greed. However, God looks beyond that. He looks to sees us as pure, and beautiful. The same way we should look at others. I want to see others the same way God looks at us. Through His eyes. He sees past the exterior. He looks at our hearts. The fact that God can bring out good from any situation is something I truly believe, and put my faith in.  That beneath so much brokenness, you can find something beautiful about a person, or a situation.  It all comes down to the perspective on how you look at things.

 “Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up.”

I have learned to have so much compassion for people, and I am daily working on not comparing myself to others, or to judge others as well. I can absent-mindedly do it, because it is in my human nature, but it is an ugly thing. In the bible it says, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Matthew 7:1-2
We do not know what other people have had to walk through. You cannot tell what a person has been through, by looks alone. Instead of looking down on someone because they do not have all the things we do, we instead should look at that as an opportunity. An opportunity to help someone who is less fortunate than ourselves.  It is an opportunity to stop, and to realize all that we are blessed with.

I turn 20 today! I am blessed beyond belief. Blessed to reach this age, and have to many experiences, and opportunities in my life that made me who I am and that has lead me to where I am at now. There is no place I would rather be on my birthday, than here.