The Mirror

{Ike and Beti in her hauskuk, scraping coconuts}

There are moments in our lives that we can look back on and see that they were defining. And there are precious few times that we know in the moment that a pardigm has shifted.

 My trip to the garden in Songum was a shift in paradigm for me.

i don't want to tell you about pulling weeds or planting bananas with a bushknife. It was while resting in the shade on a limbum mat that i decided to give everything i have to the people of Papua New Guinea.

My friend Beti and i and a few other women had just finished eating. All of the children were playing in the bush a little ways up the trail. Evie had just finished nursing and was digging around in Beti's bilum. i was talking and laughing with Beti while she nursed her little one. Slowly, one at a time, Evie removed  Beti's treasures from the bilum and examined them. She first pulled out a medium sized kitchen knife which was quickly and carefully removed from her grip. Then she pulled out a single playing card with a picture of an asian woman on the back. then a piece of string and a broken crayon. Beti would talk to Evie and tell her all about whatever it was she had found. i stopped watching them and was just looking around finding it hard to believe i was really sitting here, part of villiage life in PNG. i was lost in my own thoughts when i realized Evie had a small piece of glass in her hand. i started to reach to grab it and throw it into the bush and tell her, "no! yucky!" when i realized what was going on. Evie was nestled in Beti's lap with her bilum. Beti was showing Evie how to hold this tiny piece of what i now realized was mirror, up to her face to see her reflection. Beti said with pride "See! it's a mirror...that's your face! you're a pretty girl...i see my hair, my eye....do you like my mirror?.."

i sat in amazement that this tiny piece of broken mirror, no bigger than a quarter was my friend's greatest treasure. it was the only way she knew what she looked like. and i thought of how it's like us and God. how we are not able to see how magnificent and beautifully beyond description He is. and how our greatest treasures are really just rubbish...

i knew in that  moment that everything i had with me would stay in Songum, with these wonderful content people. if and when i go back to america it will be with nothing but a smile on my face and big LOVE in my heart...

~tiffany