What were some of the best times of your life?
Were they travel adventures? Romance? Successes? The birth of children?
Do any of those best times involve layers of sweat and grime, cold showers, and sleeping on hard floors in a community room with 25 other people?
Mine do.
Each summer, our Church sent a group of teenagers and adults to various communities to do mission work for a week. Our mission was to repair, rebuild, and otherwise make safe the homes of people who could not afford to pay.
For those weeks, we slept in sleeping bags on the floor of some generous host Church. We ate whatever was graciously provided by local organizations. We showered sparsely and often in cold water.
These were some of the best weeks of my life.
At the end of each day, I was hot, grimy, and spent. The evening shower was always the best shower I’d ever had. And laying my head on that pillow on the hard floor produced sound and restful sleep. Satisfaction to the very depths of my soul.
This trip to Richmond in the late 90s was my first taste. The very first time I was fortunate enough to accompany this group of people just trying to make some difference, if even just a small one, in another’s life.
I gained so much perspective on these trips about so many things, but I could never have predicted the perspective-altering moment of seeing that gun out of context.
