shoes

i am a lover of clothes, but am very different from most women in one particular area of fashion. i don't love shoes. i don't even really like shoes. i would go barefoot all the time if socially acceptable. i get by with 2 pair of flip flops all year round.....1 brown pair, and 1 black pair. i have a pair of heels that are so uncomfortable that i only wear them when absolutely necessary. i feel that they are the root of all foot induced evil. i also have a pair of black boots that jeans or leggings can be tucked into. i wear those twice a winter on average. i have a pair of imitation uggs that are super-de-duper comfy and cozy that i got at a manhatten payless when chad and i were in new york. the flip flops weren't cutting it in the sub-zero windchill and snow, so we had to make a stop to get something to keep my feet warm. these things are way comfortable and i love their look, but they make an appearance only when the temperatures here get down in the 30's...which is not very frequent. this year, i forgot i had them and actually did my christmas shopping on the snow day in...you guessed it...flip flops. oh well. my feet were cold...but at least they didn't hurt. all this rambling leads me to the point. we gathered up a bunch of the kid's shoes to send to haiti this morning. i had saved all the kid's shoes, so we had quite a few pairs that i thought needed to find some cute, little haitian feetsies. some of them looked like they had never been worn. this brought up some unresolved anger from a while back when our church did a "shoe drive" type thing. technically, you were supposed to bring the shoes that you wanted to give away to the lobby of the church and put them on this platform thing. i'm not really sure what the point was of putting them on display, but i didn't want to do it that way. after they made the "shoe give away" announcement, i wanted us to all take our shoes off right then and then have to go to lunch with no shoes on. just giving away our shoes is not a big sacrifice, but having to then walk out barefoot and go to lunch with no shoes on lead us to experience just a fraction of the uncomfortable-ness that people who have no shoes feel. so, aiden and i took off our barely worn shoes and walked out barefoot. aiden's were new mary janes that i got her to go with dresses, and mine were a brand spankin' new pair of running shoes. i NEVER wear my running shoes unless i'm running*, so it was weird that i had them on this particular morning instead of the ever popular flip flops. anyhow...i walked out feeling proud of us, which was most likely my downfall. :) fast forward to the next week when i noticed that, along with some other shoes from other people who had brought them in, aiden's were there, but my brand new running shoes were GONE! now, unless somebody came in from off the street who didn't have any shoes to wear, i can only conclude that someone who really didn't need them saw them and wanted them and decided to take them. i was furious that my give away shoe lesson had gone to waste. and, to make matters worse, the kids were there and saw it all. there goes my "teaching moment" from the week before too. i can only hope that those shoes went to someone who really needed them and not to someone who just selfishly swiped them. however, my pessimism takes over on this one. i found myself holding back on sending shoes to haiti because of this little incident that i have clearly not gotten over. i was thinking that they wouldn't really get there. i am still not sure they will make it to haiti, but i realized that God wasn't asking me to send them only if i knew for sure they would find the cute, little haitian boys and girls like i was imagining, but just to send them. period. so i did. *sigh*

* disclaimer: i realize that this sentence makes it seem as though i am an avid runner. i am not a runner. nor have i ran anywhere in the last 10 years. i have no business even owning running shoes. these shoes were bought on a whim when i told myself that i could be a runner, if only i had the appropriate shoes.