Need

This is from my journal entry today, but for some reason I want to share it:"We turned onto East Hastings and I didn’t notice at first. But I looked up at a grocery store and there I saw her. Aged woman, proud, strait. And sad. So sad I couldn’t look away. She was deathly thin- her face wasted away and her stick legs came gray white out of her long black coat. That black black coat she clutched around her trying to keep it out. I don’t know what it was, but it also meant my eyes couldn’t leave her feet, crippled by a pair of tall black shoes, too big. With every one of her steps I winced for her pain. She kept walking.Walking and I wanted to tell her to take off her shoes, please take off your shoes and don’t hurt yourself anymore. But she wasn’t hurting herself- those shoes were protecting her from something, she was afraid. I wanted to walk out and pick her off those weary feet, pick her up like a frail bird in my arms and take her somewhere safe. Somewhere safe and I would take her shoes off and wash her feet. Her thin sick, gray feet. She was so thin and I didn’t think she was ugly. I only saw need.We got back to school, in the cafeteria and I almost forgot- maybe I really would have forgotten. I could have forgotten her! I almost forgot but there were smiling girls in black dresses and black high shoes. Waiting, not walking. Young and maybe not sad. A dance. But it was the same picture- the same wall protecting a different treasure. Or maybe the treasure was the same, but one wall was full of holes- and the other had just been built. Sometimes need jumps out at you, takes you by the throat forcing you to swallow a lump so big you spit it back out. Other times it sneaks by so quietly that you would hardly notice; if it had not sneaked by so many times. How do we begin washing those feet? Lord help us."