Un dia a trabajo. A day at work.

A visitor to Transitions recently confided in me:
“In my journey I have always encountered wisdom and deep grace by my proximity to suffering BUT also by the undoing of it. In and through Transitions you will inhabit the undoing of suffering and by proximity you will discover your deepest humanity and if you pause for a moment and lean into the silence, recognize within you the power of God.”

Today was a day where I recognized both my proximity to suffering and also realized how Transitions works to undo it, and how I, personally, hope to help.

Last week we planned to make a trip to Guatemala City to buy some Thanksgiving necessities. After lunch today, Alex, Edgar (the boss of the Transitions casa), and myself hopped into the Transitions van, ready to embark on a search for pumpkin pie fixings. Just as we were about to leave, a very short young man, my age, came up to our office, walking completely with the help of crutches.

Before I realized what was going on, he was in the car with us, and we were on our way to la capital.

A theme of my stay here, and I think every foreigner’s time here, is that I’m never exactly sure what is going on. It wasn’t until we brought this young man see our doctor friend at a private hospital, that I realized how much we were helping him. As he was getting x-rays, Alex shared that Transitions has been a friend of this boy since he was 4. He left his home at dawn this morning, and traveled to Transitions, hoping for a little help—a rod, that had been put in his leg years ago, had become extraordinarily painful.

Because my experience with people with disabilities has been mostly through sports, I’ve had the tendency to focus on the awesome parts of having a disability, rather than why it stinks. You gotta admit wheelchair basketball is a pretty bad-ass sport.

But today, sitting in the doctor’s office, with Alex and Edgar, and this boy, hearing the doctor tell him that his bones will only get worse, and he’ll one day have to use a wheelchair…I saw in his face how much he was suffering. And although, we left the hospital with good news (our doctor friend is going to take the rod out of his leg for free) my new friend was distracted with thoughts of how his future would look.

Then we went to the Guatemalan version of Costco. Scratch that: it is exactly Costco, same products, same food court, same food samples in the aisles; it’s just called Price Right, not Costco. Our friend rode in our shopping cart and we tried to cheer him up. I joked about how many pies I would make him with the humongous can of pumpkin pie mix we found. And we ate pizza together after shopping.


But Guatemalan Costco, while very exciting (especially for a gringa preparing for Thanksgiving), still can’t cure how hard it is to have a disability.

There were so many times today where I couldn’t help but smile and/or laugh—working with my friends at work in the morning, our jokes in the car, the doctor’s willingness to help, deciding to buy the biggest Turkey offered in Guatemala. But there were also times today that I wanted to cry. What was moving about my day today, is that these two feelings went hand-in-hand.