More than one hundred wheelchairs in shrink wrap. A small purple one catches my attention and I wonder who the little girl was who sat in that chair, about her family.. whether she liked icecream. I finish tagging the chair and move on, only to be struck minutes later by the name on the side of another wheelchair "Restored by:" and the name of the inmate who spent hours on the chair. And why is it that several chairs later it is not the past I think of, but the future? Who is it that will go home in the crimson colored chair?
If I weren't needed to staple the tags on each arm rest, I think I might be paralyzed with the number of stories passing at my finger tips. In my little corner cubicle I have communicated with people at every step of the way, and now I realize anew that bringing mobility to a person with a disability is only a part of Wheels for the World. The chair may be a physical representation of what is passed hand to hand from city streets to prison halls to dusty roads, but the gift is far more. I try tracing that "something more" backwards, from the dusty roads to the prison halls to the city streets, hoping that in following its tracks I will better understand what it is.
And working backwards in time, I find myself once again on dusty roads.
On dusty roads, and the foot of the cross.
~Rebecca
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