New Shoes

A couple of weeks ago, I was mentoring my men’s group at a homeless shelter. As soon as I arrived, I realized that I had forgotten to change out of my worn out, yet very comfortable at-home shoes. I was embarrassed, hoping that no one would notice.

Half-way through the session, one of the guys mentioned that my shoes looked awfully raggedy. I had no defense. He continued dressing me down. After a bit, he got up and told me that this could not be, and that he was going to take care of it. I was not thrilled with the unwanted attention, but by now he had most of the group on his side. I had lost control of things. I was left sitting alone and I heard they guys rummaging around in an adjacent room. I then realized what was happening, and that it was out of my hands. I acquiesced, requesting the Air Jordans. Sure enough, within a couple minutes, in came the Jordans. Unfortunately, size 14 was not going to work. Back the crew went, returning with a nice looking pair of sandals. Mr. Stephen knelt down in front of me, just like they did at the old time shoe store when I was a kid. He slowly untied the old, and gently fitted the new. With great care, he adjusted the straps and asked how they felt. Truth be told, they were pretty great. I figured that I could show my gratitude by enthusiastically pitching the old pair in the garbage. With my fashion disaster out of the way, we were able to get the meeting back on track.

Nonetheless, I was flummoxed, and unable to focus on what I was doing. While at first, I thought it was a good thing, the more I tossed it around in my mind, the worse I felt. How could I take shoes from a homeless shelter? Certainly, there was someone who was more deserving of these than me.

As soon as I wrapped up the meeting, I called the shelter’s volunteer coordinator and confessed to my error in judgement. Her response was clear: “Don’t you see, they appreciate you coming out and talking to them, giving them your time, in their space?” She went on, guessing that although they wanted to do something for you, they had limited means. I thought some more, and it sort of made sense: they could fix my problem by stealing me a pair of shoes.

Maybe I am giving myself too much credit, but as I thought about it some more, it made me cry a little. True enough, this may have been someone taking advantage of an unlocked storage room. Or it could have been an authentic display of human gratitude.
I am hopeful for the latter. Either way, I wore the new shoes to last night’s meeting.