11/15/10

Here are some wooden shoes that one of my students brought in last week while we were studying the Pilgrims being in Holland. His family is originally from there so he had the "real stuff!"

I decided to try them on to see how they felt. They looked so smooth on the outside!

I found out very quickly that they were hard, rough, and too small.

I tried to walk in them and found out just how hard it was to walk in wooden shoes! It wasn't comfortable at all.

The bottoms were still slick even though you can see they have been used a great deal.

As I had them on my feet I couldn't help but think of times I wished I was "walking in someone else's shoes."

Have you ever had those moments where you think someone else's life is such a piece of cake or they had everything going good and your life just wasn't what you had thought? Kind of like looking at the outside of these wooden shoes.... everything looks so smooth.

As I put my feet in those shoes.... shoes that I think the child's grandmother or great grandmother had worn... I was reminded that while that person felt comfortable in the grooves and shape of those shoes, they surely didn't feel comfortable on me. In fact, they were downright painful because of the fact they were too small and the carving of the wood against the bottom of my feet hurt.

We may see other people's *things* or lives and want what they have.

We may wish we could just walk in their shoes.

But I don't think we always know the real path those shoes have gone and if we were to really walk in that person's shoes we would find out just how blessed we really are.

We all have our own struggles; we all have our own pains. They are meant for us to grow us into what the Lord wants us to be. Sometimes those struggles do not appear on the outside... kind of like those wooden shoes that showed only smoothness on the outer parts. On the inside that person may be struggling so much that their path is very difficult to walk like I felt on the inside of those wooden shoes.

It brought to my mind the old saying don't judge someone until you have walked a mile in his shoes.

As I slipped back on my Birkenstocks that are formed for MY feet I was so thankful to have my feet back into my own shoes. It took a while for me to break in my Birkenstocks when I first got them and make them mold to my feet. Now.... they are just right.

So.... what can we learn from this?

Don't ever judge someone else's life and think it is perfect or without pain and suffering. You never know what would happen if you knew what was INSIDE to see what is really happening.

Be thankful for where the Lord is taking you with your own shoes.