Today, I bring to you a true story, something I actually experienced, something that is important to me. For whoever reads this and happens to not know, I went to Haiti on a missions trip with my youth group in 2017. This is a story from that trip plus my personal reflection on it. But without further ado, here is Bubbly Smiles.
Bubbly Smiles
“I am so tired,” I complained, holding my head in my hands, my arms resting on the black metal table, wishing with every part of my being that I could go back to sleep. “I think I got maybe two hours of sleep last night, at most,” I said, looking up at my close friend, 18-year-old Jonathan, sitting at the table next to me where we were eating breakfast with some of our other friends. His bluish-green eyes were not looking at me; he was staring into space, lost in his own world. “Hey,” I called, “did you hear everyone talking last night? It was like impossible to go to sleep!” I rolled my eyes in an expression of my annoyance.
He glanced down at me before staring at his croissant and responding to my complaint. “No, I went right to sleep.” I kept staring at him; my brown eyes were probably reflecting every bit of exhaustion, frustration, and now envy that I felt. My barely-awake brain subconsciously processed the fact that he had not shaved in a while, which meant we must have been overseas for a while. Later, I realized that we really had not been there for very long; it was only day four of my youth group’s mission trip to Haiti.
Eventually, I looked away from Jonathan and turned to address the others at the table—the same people who were responsible for keeping me awake most of the night. “See! Jonathan understands. He wanted to sleep too.” I dropped my heavy head with its messy black hair back into my sweaty brown hands and rubbed my stinging eyes, as if somehow hoping I could increase my energy levels by rubbing my eyes. “Just, unlike me, he actually got to sleep,” I added more quietly and hopelessly.
“Yeah, Fam, I just laid down and I was out.” He flipped his brown hair out of his eyes and went back to eating his croissant. I desperately wanted to make a snarky comment about how he was fortunate to have fallen asleep so quickly and easily; instead, I just sighed. I was not happy. Four days earlier, we had traveled to Haiti to volunteer in an orphanage and to distribute water filters to nearby communities severely lacking in the basic necessity of clean water. Most of us had huge dreams of having life-changing experiences and drastically improving the lives of the community we were ministering in; yet somehow, the heat and exhaustion were starting to take a toll on my optimistic view of the trip. Had I learned the lesson just a little bit earlier, I may have had a different attitude.
During our stay in Haiti, we resided in the house of a sweet Haitian lady who ran the orphanage in which we would be assisting. Although the small walled complex had a large yard, the foliage did very little to make up for the tiny rooms. To be fair, we were fortunate enough to have a few bed frames and plenty of mattresses, but squeezing twenty-five people into a small building is difficult no matter how many other little luxuries you have to try and compensate for it. Still, I could have slept well if it were not for one small problem in the housing structure: every wall had a gap between the top of the wall and the ceiling that was just wide enough for sound to carry and for conversations to be held. When the team discovered this interesting fact, everyone in the house, except for Jonathan and I, engaged in a nightlong yelled conversation over the walls, keeping me awake the whole night. I do not think I have ever wanted to duct tape some people’s mouths shut so much in my life.
When I woke up the next day from my minimal amount of sleep, the air was sweltering. The baseball cap I kept on my head did very little to hide the dark, wicked monstrosity that was my frizzy hair. All the boys on our trip had convenient short hair that did not get frizzy, and I was envious; I was ready to find a pair of scissors and cut off my braids. It had been a few days since I had had a shower, and my clothing was sweaty and dirty as we had no washing machine for our clothes. All resemblance to the clean, well-dressed young lady I was at home had vanished.
On this fourth day of the trip, I had to sit for an excruciatingly long time in the center of my sweaty team of night-time tormentors on that bus. We were planning on performing some skits for the children at a Christian school centered in a voodoo-practicing community. Never having met these children before, we were nervous. Nerves, sweat, and exhaustion are never a good combination. However, we got through our skits; there was no reason we would not have. The time came later that our team was to be split into two groups: one group to go outside and play with the kids and another that would stay inside to talk with the more troubled children. Sleep-deprived, dripping with sweat, and covered in maddening mosquito bites, I reluctantly volunteered to go outside and play with the children in the cruel sun. Once outside, a leader handed me a container of bubbles, simple, not very special or powerful, yet somehow magical.
Standing in the center of the group of school children, all in matching blue and white uniforms, I started blowing the bubbles. In just a few seconds, the children noticed, and their faces lit up with bright smiles, their white teeth contrasting with their dark skin like shining beacons of happiness. Some of the children chased the bubbles, trying to figure out why the bubbles were drifting away up into the sky. Others just stood there in silent awe, watching as I blew at the magical bubble wand, effortlessly creating the floating orbs of wonder. When they realized that the bubbles would pop, they quickly organized a classic children’s game: the traditional race to see who could pop the most bubbles. Then they would stand there and watch as all the hundreds of bubbles they had just popped would rain down over our heads like a miniature explosion of suds. Soon after, it developed into a standard try-to-catch-the-bubble-without-popping-it contest. Never before that moment had I seen such pure joy over the simple bubble. Jonathan had since come out of the building where he had been talking to the children and was standing to the side, observing the scene as it unfolded. I glanced over at him, making a face somewhere between a smile and a laugh, silently asking him if he was seeing how happy these children were. He smiled back; he could see them. Suddenly, it hit me, and it was in this moment, surrounded by awestruck children, that I learned my lesson.
These kids I came to help were living in the middle of poverty, conflicting religious groups, and standing in the same hot sun that was driving me insane. And do you know what it took to make them happy? Bubbles. All it took were some simple ordinary bubbles. Compared to them, I was living in luxury. I was in what was a small house to me, but it was a palace to them. I had three square meals a day; often they struggled to get even one meager meal. I had several outfits, while many of them had only the clothes they were wearing. I had a mattress; they had the dirt. I had buses to ride on to get where I wanted to go; they had their feet. Maybe I did not have running water right then, but at least I knew what it was like to have a running toilet. And who was happier—was it me, the privileged foreign visitor living in luxury, or the poverty-stricken Haitian kids who saw some bubbles?
I stood there blowing bubbles for a very long time. When I let the kids blow at the bubble wand themselves, their mesmerization with the bubbles they had created became more pronounced. Even the people who were not blowing the bubbles, like Jonathan, still remember how happy the children were. I could have blown bubbles for the children until I ran out of breath if it would keep those bright, bouncy, bubbly smiles on their faces.
I remember riding back to the mission house, half asleep but contemplating what I had learned since my conversation with Jonathan that morning. As I sit here writing this, the lesson, that is still impacting my everyday thinking, nearly moves me to tears because of how simple yet powerful it is. We privileged people often take the basic things we have for granted. Anything that is different from what we are accustomed to can drive us up a wall. Many people, if they were forced to live in the situations same situations as these children, would become some of the unhappiest people in the world. Because I was unhappy I had not slept that night, I forgot to focus on the little things that can still bring joy.
This lesson is one of the most important things I have learned. Sometimes, my life does not go perfectly. In fact, it is more likely for my day to be imperfect than it is for everything to go exactly the way I had planned. If I let the fact that I did not sleep for a night, ruin my whole day and attitude, where would that get me?
The children in that community had never known the many blessings that I have lived with nearly every day of my life. However, in one way, they were far richer than I was. They had learned, through all the hardships life had offered them, that sometimes it is the simplest things that can make you happy. Life has a lot of bubbles in it. Maybe you got up this morning and your little sister reminded you to have a good day, or your best friend texted you something that made you smile; those are happy life bubbles. Sometimes, life gets me down, and I cannot seem to get past the fact that I did not sleep, or that someone in my family is in a bad mood, or any other inconvenient thing. These are the times when I must remind myself that life has a lot of beautiful, magical, glowing bubbles if I would just take time to look for them. If I would have paid attention to the beautiful sunrise I had seen as I drove to school early in the morning, my exhaustion might not have seemed as bad. If I would have remembered to be grateful that I have a family that loves me, their bad mood might not have seemed as bad. If I could always remember the lesson I learned that day, life would not need to be perfect for me to be happy. I would be happy simply because I chose to be happy. I would be looking for the beautiful bubbles of life and smiling my own bright, bouncy, bubbly smile because of them.