September 29th, 2014 was the grand opening of the
little store I had been working on for AIM (www.agapewebsite.org). Practically
nothing went right during the day. I remember arriving at the store earlier
than normal to finish inventory and start staging the appearance of all of our
items. Within 10 minutes I was in tears. It had rained heavily the night
before, which caused the store to flood. Water had gotten between our wood
floors and the tile underneath, causing the floors to bow upwards. If you stepped in the right spots, you would
sink a bit.
Then one of the staff said she was going to be late due to
not feeling well.
The street kids filtered in and out throughout the day. They
were invited to the party, boy were they keenly aware of when it was, and certainly
could not contain their excitement. Quite honestly, they were driving me crazy.
A couple of the girls saw a dead man in the river (we are across the street
from the river) and were then panicking in the store about ghosts for a good
while.
Seriously guys, they were driving me crazy (not the part
about them being scared of ghosts, miraculously I had patience for them at that
time). They were trying to help me clean, but they were MOPPING the WINDOWS.
They were causing more of a mess than anything. I cannot tell you how many
times I kicked them out of the store that day because I just couldn’t deal.
They kept coming back, and my attitude kept getting worse.
I was overwhelmed. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to
change before the party, so my outfit consisted of dirty, dusty, sweaty clothes
and I was sporting a lop-sided bun and by then all my make-up had melted off.
All this build-up for months, and I looked like a disaster.
Then something caused my heart to pause. One of the street
kids shouted for my attention. “Janay, look!” I looked at her, spinning in her
torn, dirty, falling-apart black dress. Feet stained with black dirt from
walking the riverside without shoes every day.
I felt annoyed, thinking to myself ‘leave me alone, kid, I am on a
deadline.’ Then she said this:
“Janay, I wore my best dress for the party tonight!”
Crap. It’s official; I am the worst person in the world.
That moment got me thinking though. These children have all
day been eagerly awaiting the start of the party. They were so excited they
couldn’t stay away, and wanted to help as much as they could. Giving their all.
They even wore their best clothes. The significance of that night was not lost
on them. How beautiful it was to them to be invited! Even though they didn’t
have much to offer, and what they did offer was far from perfect, they offered
all they had.
Oh to be that excited about being invited to be part of
something. I am part of something way
bigger than a grand opening party for a retail store, and most of the time my
excitement pales in comparison. And
honestly, I don’t always offer all that I have, in fact, most times I don’t.
More people than I thought came to the party that night. I
was still overwhelmed and exhausted. The kids stayed the entire night and much
to my dismay were handing out wine to the adults. Perhaps a bit taboo, but they
were giving all they had until it was time to go home.
(Except at the end where they
were angry with me for not ordering enough balloons for them to let go into the
sky. There were 8 kids. I had 100 balloons. Really, kids?)
Mark 12:41-44
