“It’s not about the work,” countless people told me before we set off for our mission trip to Jamaica. “It’s all about the people, not the work you’ll be doing.”
That’s a great thought, but it’s not entirely true. For me, so far, the work is what has stood out the most.
Let me explain.
I’m not a strong person, physically. I didn’t grow up on a farm, and I work behind a computer all day.
I also have a fused spine, which limits my lifting capability to 50 lbs, prohibits my lungs from fully inflating, and more.
So what I’ve taken away from this trip so far is just how physically limited I am.
The work we’re doing here at the village has been pretty strenuous manual labor — digging and shoveling rocks into buckets, lifting and dumping said buckets of rocks, digging trenches, mixing and dumping concrete by hand — and I’ve tried to keep up.
But I can’t.
What this means is that I’ve learned a lot about myself and my physical limitations this week — or perhaps I’ve simply come to understand them better.
I wanted to fit in — even more so, I wanted to help, and do an equal share of the work. So I keep pushing myself to try and make that happen. I keep doing anything to keep from having to admit to those working so hard around me: “I am not strong.”
Or worse: “I can’t do this.”
If you’ve never faced a physical limitation, I can’t explain to you the deep sense of shame and humiliation that comes from being expected to do something quite normal — and then failing at it. Especially if other people (with normal, functional bodies) are watching.
I fully realize the irony (or is it appropriateness?) that comes from experiencing this realization in a village for the deaf. Especially in Jamaica, a country where the deaf are maligned to servitude or worse within their own families, where they face an unemployment rate of 80% and are called “dummies” by the general population.
We all suffer for our limitations, be they physical or otherwise. In feeling shamed by my own disability, I have discovered a humility I never would have in the U.S., where nothing beyond my ability is ever required of me.
I also have a greater respect and admiration not only for the hard work and strength of my mission team members, but for people who do this kind of work day in and day out throughout their entire lives.
So what I’m feeling right now is humbled, right down to my core, which is probably precisely what one should feel on a mission trip. I just hadn’t known that it would come to me in this way.
Which, when you get right down to it, is probably the point.
