{by Kristen from We are THAT Family}

When I sat in his closet-sized home in the middle of Africa, I couldn’t take my eyes off the pathetic interior or ignore the dripping rain on my head.

I tried not to imagine the “community toilet” he shared with neighbors adjoined by paper-thin walls or how far he walked each way to school everyday, in the dark, both ways.

The peace on his face was undeniable and the light that radiated from his eyes filled the dark room of his orphan-led home.

I didn’t understand how he could be so content with so little. And I couldn’t stop the question, “Why are you so happy? Why aren’t you afraid?”

He looked at me as if I’d missed it entirely and said, “Because I have Jesus.”

He didn’t say anything else. It was a heavy statement. It was enough.

He was right, I had missed it. Entirely.

I equate Jesus to comfort and blessings. And when I sat in a hovel, a young boy called home, void of every comfort, I was envious of his contentment.

I returned to a lifestyle with every blessing, only wanting more.

I add Jesus like salt and pepper to a tasteless dish.

He isn’t the main course, just an extra on the side.

Jesus isn’t enough for me.

{Originally Published on Ali’s African Adventures}

To “The Poor” : An apology, for I have been blind.

I have always come to you with my heart full of your suffering. I came with my guilt, all so carefully amassed over the years as I sat at my table and despised the abundance in front of me, knowing that you were going hungry. The eyes of your children, liquid black windows to souls I thought were haunted, haunted my dreams when I saw them from my sleep.

I thought it was right to come with my arms full of things, shirts and stickers and little plastic cups with handles. When I saw your need from across the ocean, my soul was stirred to bring you something to fill the void in your lives. I brought shoes to cover feet accustomed to feeling the warmth of the earth beneath their soles, cartoon character band-aids to cover wounds as deep as time.

I have always seen myself through what I thought were your eyes. I was a ministering angel, there to bless the masses, and your faces and stories swirled and mixed in my mind as I moved among you, touching and greeting and unseeing. If you asked me now to share your stories, I wouldn’t meet your eyes as I searched to call out your names.

What must you have thought? Each of you with your history, your life as real to you as the breath catching in my own throat. I came with my whiteness and I held your hands as you spent your time with me, and then you walked away and I couldn’t remember your mother’s name. I worked beside you to hand out medicines in villages filled with your own people, stood shoulder to shoulder with you as we prayed against the passing of your sisters and brothers. But you have never seen the inside of my house and I have never asked to see yours. We have shared life and death but not our tables.

I have been so blind. I saw you as one. You were “the poor” to me, a myriad of people neatly packaged between a set of quotation marks, bundled together and taken as a whole. Instead of Kukenga and Gift and Greg and Isaac and Nyakamwengo, I saw you all as a shifting crowd of humanity, as one vast story of heartbreak and pain. I have been so blind.

{Originally published on Natty’s Spanking Blog.}

My senior year of college I was invited to be part of a national student delegation to the country of Kuwait. A week or so before I received that invitation, I found out I had been accepted to graduate school at Georgetown University with a full tuition scholarship. As our delegation was meeting in Washington DC for a week of briefings before heading to Kuwait, I went a few days earlier to visit the place I assumed I would be spending the next several years of my life.

The waiting room for my graduate program was lined with cherrywood paneling and upholstered in arabesque print. I remember worrying that my wet, squishy tennis shoes would somehow dirty the place after walking in from the April rain. I stayed the night with a recent alum from my hole-in-the-wall state university, but the next day headed to a posh DC hotel where we student delegates were to stay during the Washington leg of our journey.

It was the first time I’d ever hailed a cab. And I was surprised when a guy in a uniform picked up my suitcase as I checked in. I’d never been to a hotel with a bell hop before. The nicest place I’d ever stayed before that was at a Red Lion with a bunch of girls from my church youth group when we attended a winter youth festival. The bell hop led me to the room, opened the door, set my luggage on a rack, opened the curtains, and then stood at the door awkwardly for a few seconds. Was I supposed to tip him? Or was that just something they did on television but not in real life? The bell hop had mercy on me and left quickly. I felt terribly out of place in this new, fancy world I’d found myself in. And I tell you the truth, dear reader, I broke out into tears as I sat on the immaculate bed.

That is how I feel when I read most erotica.

{Originally posted at Flowerdust.net}

Her name is Anne.

She has fallen victim to some bad curry.

Or maybe it was the pizza.

Either way.

She wears no makeup today.

She doesn’t fix her hair.

Her eyes are red because she’s been crying.

And her bed has been one of her two closest friends.

(I’ll let you guess what her other friend has been).