Live, LICE, Love

I'm 22 and I have lice. I got lice because I went to Paraguay and spent 3 weeks loving children who were infested with lice. I didn't try to get lice, in fact I tried really hard to avoid it while I was there, wearing bandanas and anything else that would cover my head to keep those little itchy bugs away. Now I've been home for a week and a half, and the lice is hatching, and I'm not the only one who is itching like crazy. I know of about 15 people that have it, and people are freaking out about it.

I'm not sad I have lice, I'm sad about the way people around me are reacting to this little bug on my head. I'm not a leper, but why do I have to be treated like one? I'm supposed to be living in this great Christian community at Taylor University, so what's up with that? It's sad the way people are flawed, and I know I am too, but when I can see the brokenness and sin in this world, it really breaks my heart. I think a lot of this 'sensitivity' I have is from Paraguay and a lot of what I learned there was about simplicity and the beauty of the Body of Christ. And it's a hard adjustment to see the raw and simple and beautiful Body of Christ, and live in that love, and then come back to the States, and be in a whole new culture and world where there are completely different perspectives. It's a hard adjustment, and having lice is not helping.