WALK IN MY SHOES

PAGE ONE

     I worked at a homeless mission for a couple of years.  I worked in the Development Office and helped to raise money for the place and the homeless men that sought help there.  I found that I had a special place in my heart for the big fat guys that would show up.  I can call them big fat guys because I am a big fat guy myself.

     It was always a challenge finding clothes for the big fat guys.  Much tougher than you might think.  You see, most big fat guys wear their clothes until they wear out, regardless of their position in life.  That is because comfortable and acceptably stylish big fat guy clothing is hard to find and tends to be pricey.  So, when big fat guys find clothes that they can wear, they don’t just wear them, they wear them out.

     The same thing goes for big fat guys’ shoes too.  Big fat guys put shoes to the test. Even the best shoes don't tend to last long when it comes to big fat guys.  That being the case, we seldom got donations to address the needs of my big fat brothers.  I was always on the lookout, though, and would get a little crafty at times to get the big fat guys what they needed.  I could never get them what they wanted, it seemed, but I could usually find a way to get them what they needed.  Until one afternoon, when I was able to help one big fat guy get what he wanted and find what he needed.

     So did I.

     My office was usually dark.  One reason that I kept it dark was that I did a lot of work on computers and it was easier to see the screen when the lights were dim.  The other reason is that I don’t like people interrupting me, and if the lights were off, people were less likely to come into my office and bother me.  I relied on the light coming in from my doorway to give me the light that I needed, to look like I was working, while I was usually on the internet keeping updated on the latest sports news.

     That is exactly what I was doing one afternoon when all of a sudden it got dark.  I looked up at the door to my office and saw a giant pair of sweatpants, a giant sweat shirt, and half of a face blocking my light.  That is not something that you see every day.  Even in a homeless shelter.  Before I could think of anything to say, the half of a face started talking to me.  It said, “Are you Mr. Tony? 

 

     I said, “Yes I am.  You can call me Tony.  What can I do for you?”  

     “Some people told me that I should come see you because you might be able to help me.”  

     “What do you need?” I asked him.

     “Shoes,” he said.

     I looked at his feet and the first thing I noticed was that they were the biggest feet I had ever seen in my life.  The second thing I noticed was that this brother was wearing not one pair, but two pairs of shoes on his big fat guy feet.  He had two pairs of different shoes that he had cut up, spliced into one giant shoe for each foot, and then taped back together with packing tape and duct tape to make one pair of shoes that would fit.

Holy cow!

(Check back tomorrow for page 2 of Walk In My Shoes)

PAGE TWO

(continued from Page One)

     I asked him to come in and sit down.  He ducked under the doorway, hobbled over to a chair and sat down.  I was amazed that he was able to fit in the chair and that it held him.  It did creak a little bit though.  He looked rough.  Right off the street for a few days, and withdrawal from whatever he was hooked on had already started to kick in.  He was hurting.

     He told me that his feet were hurting him so badly that he could hardly walk.  They had blisters and sores all over them.  His shoes made his back hurt too.  He had been wearing them for months.  He started to say something else but then he started to cry.  And I watched.  I watched this 6’10, 400 something pound shell of a man with two pairs of shoes on his one pair of feet cry.

     He told me a lot about himself.  I told him a lot about me.  The only difference between me and this man were some inches and some pounds and our names really.  He learned that I had walked in his shoes, or at least one pair of his two pairs of shoes, before.  I asked him what size his feet were.  He told me size seventeen triple E, but that eighteens would work too and he could squeeze into sixteens for sure.  I told him that I had no idea how to get shoes that big.  But I would try.

    I asked him if he prayed.  He said prayer never seemed to work for him because he really didn’t know how to pray.  He could never remember the prayers he was taught.  I said, “Right now, you and I are going to pray for shoes, because unless some professional football player walks in here and puts them on my desk, I have no idea how to get them for you.  And since you don’t know how to pray you can just repeat after me.”

      And that is what we did. 

     “Dear God, I need your help.  I think I need a pair of shoes.  If I really do need a pair of shoes can you help me find them? Amen."  

     “That’s it?” he asked.  

      I said, “Yep, that’s it. Now let’s see what happens.”  

     He got up, shook my hand and hobbled out with his two pairs of shoes on one pair of feet and a little shot of hope that he did not have when he walked in.

     Now it was my turn.  I sat down in my chair.  My eyes started leaking a little.  I felt his pain and despair.  I had known that once.  I had been at a point where I had hoped only for hope before.  I had no idea what to do.  I needed help.  I try to practice what I preach, so I prayed.    

   

     “God, it’s Tony again.  Listen, I am out on a limb here and I got nothing to stand on.  I will be needing your help with this one if that is possible.  Amen.”   

      That is how I pray these days.  I pray like that because it works for me.

     Then I started thinking, despite the fact that when I think, trouble seems to ensue pretty quickly.  I was thinking of a plea to the shoe companies or calling some big fat guy stores and seeing if they had any size seventeen triple E’s gathering dust. I was halfway through another potential big fat guys shoe scheme when my phone started ringing.  I couldn’t answer it because I had to find this big fat guy some shoes, but I hate a ringing phone.  So I picked it up just to stop it from ringing.  I am insane like that sometimes.  Especially when I am thinking.

(Check back tomorrow for the Last Page of Walk In My Shoes)

THE LAST PAGE

(The Last Page in a Three Page Series)

     “Tony Young, Development Office, How can I help you?”  

     That was how I answered the phone that day.  Not in my pathetic voice, though.  I used my Bob Barker/Drew Carey hybrid voice. It is a good thing to have that voice in the bank when you have to answer the phone and be happy about it when you are not.  

     “Hi Tony.  My name is Sue.  I am involved in a women’s group and we have just been given a voucher from "Superduperwellknown" Shoes for twenty pairs of shoes.  Do any of your guys need shoes?”

     The smile that spread across my faced almost wrapped completely around my head.  I know prayer works, but holy cow that was fast.  I told Sue that we always needed shoes.  Then Sue asked the most amazing question I may have ever heard. She said, “Great! What sizes would you like?”  The smile that wrapped around my head went around for another lap and I told her, “Four size nines, five size tens, five size elevens, five size twelves, and, um, one size seventeen triple E would be great.”  

     Sue didn’t miss a beat.  

     She said, “Great! That won’t be a problem.  Except I won’t be able to get a pair of size seventeen triple E.”

     That fast, the smile unwrapped from my around my head.  I told Sue that we sure could use the shoes she offered and we began making arrangements for her to get the shoes and deliver them to the homeless mission.  Before she hung up though she said, “Tony I have to ask, do you really need a pair of size seventeen triple E’s?”   

     I told Sue about the big fat guy that walked into my office.  I told her that I was a big fat guy too.  I told her some of the things that he and I talked about.  I told her that I had no idea where I was going to find shoes for him but that I believed in prayer and that I just knew that I would find them.

     I asked her if she knew of anyone that I could call at "Superduperwellknown" Shoes.  

     “No, I don’t,” Sue said, “But my husband works with a lot of big fat guys, let me see if he may be able to help.”  

     I had to ask the next question.  “What does your husband do?” I asked.  

     “Oh, he’s a coach for a professional football team,” Sue said. “He coaches the big fat guys.”  I could hear the smile in her voice when she said that.  I don’t know if Sue could hear my jaw hit my desk.  I thanked her and she said she would be by the following Tuesday to drop off the shoes.

     Bringing brand new shoes, in brand new shoe boxes, into an urban homeless shelter is something that needs to be handled delicately.  I do not handle delicate things well, which is exactly why I opted for deception.  I know something about deception.  All good deception calls for a plan.  The plan was for Sue to call me when she was on her way.  I would meet her outside, halfway down the block, load the boxes of shoes into black trash bags and bring them into the homeless mission and up to my office.

     It would have worked perfectly too if I had told Sue about the plan.  To be honest, I did not even remember that I had forgotten to tell Sue about the plan until I looked out of the window of my office that Tuesday and saw a woman parking a beautiful SUV with the backseat full of "Superduperwellknown" Shoe boxes.  Big fat guys are not normally known to move very fast.  That is because we are saving our fast moves for the times when we may need those most.  This qualified as one of those times.  I don’t think I could have gotten down the three flights of stairs faster had I jumped out of the window.

     I reached Sue and the SUV just as she opened the door.  I introduced myself and explained to her that it would be best for her, me and all of humanity if we put those boxes into the black bags that I had in my hand.  She laughed and that is what we did.  I grabbed the bags and she grabbed her giant soccer mom bag and we went upstairs to my office.  She helped me unload the boxes from the bags of deception and stack them on my desk.  Each box had a size label on them and I noticed that none was larger than a twelve.  Somehow that did not seem to matter.

     We sat down and we talked.  Though we had never met, we talked for over an hour.  That was one of the best conversations that I have ever had in my life.  We talked about me and we talked about her and we talked about the homeless mission and we talked about faith and we talked about hope.  We talked about wants and needs and the difference between the two.  Then we had that silence that comes when people don’t have anything more to talk about.  Most times it is uncomfortable, but for some reason this time it was not.

     She reached into her giant soccer mom bag and pulled out two boxes.  She walked over and set the boxes on my desk and put her hand on them.  Sue said, “I couldn’t get the exact size but these should work.  There is a condition, though.  The big fat guy that gave them to me asked me not to tell anyone where they came from. So don’t even ask.”  I just nodded my head because I knew what was inside those boxes.  I opened them and saw two brand new pairs of top of the line cross training professional grade size seventeen double E athletic shoes.  I pulled out a pair and set them on my desk.  They were huge and they were beautiful.

     On the inside of the heel of each shoe were two numbers.  Those two numbers told me who the shoes came from.  I saw Sue see me see that.  She said, “Like I said, the big fat guy asked me not to tell anyone where they came from.  That means you too.”  So I can’t tell you who the big fat guy was who gave up his shoes for a big fat guy that needed shoes.  But if I could, it would completely blow your mind because it is just perfectly perfect.  I asked Sue if she wanted to give these shoes to the guy that needed them so badly.  She told me that I should do that.

     The big fat guy with two pairs of shoes on his one pair of feet had made it a habit of stopping by my office twice a day, sometimes more, to see if I had heard anything about shoes for his giant aching feet.  And every time I told him to keep praying. And every time he said he would.  That afternoon, when he stopped by, I asked the big fat guy with two pairs of shoes on his one pair of feet, if he thought that prayer works.  He said, “I dunno.”  

     I handed him the two boxes. 

     “Prayer works,” I said.  He started opening the boxes slowly.  He knew what was inside.  And I watched.

     Again, I watched a 6’10” 400 pound man cry.  And it was beautiful.  What he found inside that box was not just shoes.  What he found in that box was hope. What he found was that, with a little bit of hope and a whole lot of prayer, we might get what we want, we always get what we need, and sometimes we get both.  He found both in that box.

     So did I.

     That is all.

The Aftershock

Before Sue left that day, she told me that she talked to some of the big fat guys she knew on that professional football team and that they were putting together bags of big fat guy clothes for my big fat homeless brothers. She said she would bring them down. She did.

Deception being a specialty of mine, I used a black sharpee to change the numbers on the heels of the shoes to a number that was not used by that professional sport team that year. I never told big fat guy with two pairs of shoes on his one pair of feet who sent those shoes.

To this day, the big fat guys, the tall skinny guys, the short guys, and some of the coaches from that professional football team continue to support that homeless shelter. That homeless shelter practices a highly successful spiritual recovery program for homeless men and men suffering from the disease of addiction. They plan to open a homeless shelter for women based on those same spiritual principles.

The big fat guy with two pairs of shoes on his one pair of feet did well for awhile. Addiction is a brutal disease though. He left the program before completing it. I never found out why and thought of him often. I prayed for him especially all these years. Last week, on my way home from work, stopped at a stoplight in the city, I saw a big fat guy getting off of a bus ten feet away from me. It was him. I looked at him and he looked at me. He looked great. I rolled my window down and said, “You good?” He smiled and said, “No sir, I am great!” The light changed and I had to move on. I smiled and waved. Before I drove off he yelled, “Mr. Tony,” pointed to his shoes, and said, “Prayer works!” That is all.

I have changed the names of the people I mention and the quotes are as close as I can remember them. The only name that remains unchanged is my own. The shoes size has been changed as well. Everything else in this story actually happened.

That is all.