Be a Heart, Nothing But a Heart: Be Present

It´s 7am and my first day of rest in three weeks. Yesterday I was so exhausted that I yelled unrationally at the kids in the school house. On the bus I was trying to figure out why I am SO exhausted. Sure, I didn´t get to leave the Fazenda in a while, but I get enough sleep at night and at night we relax while eating dinner. But then I realized: my life here asks me to be present in every moment. We dont have computers or television to escape from reality. I dont have a cell phone to receive text messages and leave the people I´m with. (It is really liberating not to be checking my cell phone all the time to see which boy messaged me or not...). But so many times I didn´t have to be present. I remember so many dinners in my older years with my family that I was only thinking about what I would do after with my friends. But here, from the moment I wake up until the moment I am actually asleep, I am asked to be present. What a beautiful lesson for me, but so exhausting. Yesterday Sunny put it well. Imagine just for one day not to have a computer, a tv, a cell phone, billboards, magazines. This is my life 98 percent of the time. My stimulation level has been reduced greatly.

Yesterday I went on an apostolate to Lar Vida. It is a home for 100 handicapped children. I couldn´t believe how clean and well kept this place was. I wanted to retreat back into the car, but I kept praying for God to use my hands and my eyes and my heart. I feel unable to express this place in words. I have come up with a little joke that opens up all kids--whether Im in a neighborhood on visits or in the Fazenda. You tell them they have something on their head. They put their hand on their head to check and then you tickle them. So here I am doing this with 15 year olds and they are LOVING it. However, I broke the boundary of personal space completely. Soon I had 5 kids laying on me, kissing my arm, hugging me, touching my hair, and tickling me in places that just aren´t ticklish. So to stop this, what did I do? I began to sing. One woman was talking about making a chocolate cake. I asked her her name and she told me chocolate. So we sang about chocolate cake and peanuts. I don´t know WHAT was in me, but they all sat on the benches and we sang horribly some song about chocolate cake and peanuts. We were all laughing and laughing. I later told Sunny that I didnt know what got into me and she said, Erica, you´re always like that in the Fazenda.

We visited a room with the children who cant leave the bed. Well that became even harder. But somethign beautiful filled me. I felt filled with a spirit. I visited each bed and often times they wouldnt look at me, but I looked at them with the eyes of God, those loving loving eyes. And slowly they would look at me. Some would smile or laugh or start looking more deeply into my eyes. Some would reach up to grab my finger or play with my rosary. One boy grabbed one hand. Held it for 5 minutes, then pushed himself up to grab my other hand. I could feel his body trembling as it was hard work to support himself. And there we sat, holding hands. One boy had a gigantic tumor on the side of his head, as big as his head. Some didnt have legs and others I just couldn´t figure out their problem. The older children were much harder for me, but I decided to get past my discomfort and see them as God sees them.