Receiving our Reality with Joy

Paa Puu is a beauty who lives alone in a one-room shack, which is adjacent to a chicken coop and rests on wooden boards just inches above the polluted canal water that runs all through our neighborhood. About a year ago, when our community first met her, she was at a low point, spiraling downward into depression and alcoholism. She said she felt very alone, ugly, and unloveable.

To see her today-- well-groomed, always smiling, volunteering at a neighborhood organization serving the disabled, spending time with the friends she's made there-- is to see the power of the Resurrection bursting forth in a single human life. She carries herself with real dignity and has an admirable sense of honesty about her story. She's one of my favorite people we visit, because she is always so genuinely happy to see us and interested in how we're doing. She's one of the people here who makes me feel most welcome, wanted, and loved. 

Marie and MoMai pose with Paa Puu and some of the baskets she makes (out of drinking straws!) and sells.

In the last several months, she has had an almost constant pain in her hip. Some days, she has found it agonizingly painful to move at all. A couple months ago, she had surgery on her hip and had to stay at the hospital for a week. Like any friends would do, Erika and I found out which hospital she was at and hopped in a taxi to go visit her. When we got to her bed, she was so surprised. "What are you doing here?!" "Paa Puu, we came to see you. We miss you!!" The smile on her face was incredible. Ear to ear. "You're the only ones who came to visit me." True to form, she had made friends with three of the other women in her room, and gladly shared them with us. A lovely afternoon.

Her house is in direct sunlight, so it becomes an oven in the heat of the day and never cools down to a very bearable temperature. I honestly don't know how she sleeps there. Hers is a good face to picture and offer up when I'm bemoaning my own struggles to sleep in the oppressive heat. Like everything else, though, Paa Puu takes it in stride and with a sense of humor. We'll often find her sitting in a patch of shade somewhere in the neighborhood. "I just found this spot. It gets a better breeze than the last one!"

Because of her hip problems, she has been unable to work for the last 3 months-- up until she was able to start again last week. When Marie took a group of high school volunteers to go visit her, all were astounded by her oppenness and honesty as she told them: "Right now, all I have is 26 baht" (enough to buy one very small meal) "...but that is enough for today." Between help from friends and neighborhood charities, she knew she'd be ok until tomorrow. Paa Puu is teaching me how to receive in poverty of spirit-- to accept the reality in front of me with trust and true gratitude. Not to deny the reality of the suffering, but to take it in stride, a day at a time. To choose joy.