Just a simple pair of shoes.

They were just a pair of shoes. Like most females I have an overabundant supply of shoes at home. Even here, in Jamaica, I have more than seven pairs of sandals and, yes, still, only one pair of feet to wear them on. Unlike most females I’ve always had an overabundant supply of athletic shoes, as well. This particular pair I’m thinking of today, didn’t even make it to my Philadelphia life, but rather had been collecting dust at home in Oregon for three years. That was until they made it to Jamaica this past June.

Joyce and I have the same birthday, February 4th. That’s beside the point but one other random fact that makes me want to hug up this 37yo woman all the more. Last November, less than eight weeks after giving birth to a healthy son, Joyce had a severe left cerebrovascular accident (CVA), or in other words, a stroke. The entire right side of her body was severely affected, leaving her unable to actively control or move her arm or leg on that side of her body. On top of all of this Joyce had post partum depression.

The first months of her therapy were difficult on more than one level. Joyce showed slow progress but also a lot of low level plateaus. In June, she attended the third ever Stroke Camp, entailing five days of intensive therapy, lots of repetitions and two on one, one on one help. Like the rest of the patients attending, Joyce made huge gains by the end of the camp in many areas. Those carried over into the next weeks of therapy, even in her new found compliance and persistence with her home exercises. Although still without a lot of use of her right arm, by the time we met in July, Joyce was walking on her own and was beginning to gain strength and independence with activities such as dressing, bathing, and rising from a chair.

Joyce is tall like me as well. Another random fact, but also surprisingly not the first thing I noticed when she and I met on a Wednesday in July. No, the first thing I noticed about her was her shoes. As she walked towards me, my PT eyes were glued to her shoes, missing the hesitant asymmetric gait, that relied heavily on a cane. The shoes were the ones I’d actually hesitated to give just two months before.

I was humbled. No longer just a simple pair of shoes, they’d become rather a part of a much bigger picture.

One of the major stumbling points we run into here in the PT world is good foot wear. As you can imagine, most Jamaicans (us PTs included) don’t like to have their feet encased in hot, sweaty closed toed shoes, much more wear any type of sock. Slippers (flip-flops) and sandals reign --which happen to be right up there under high-heels on the “Worst Shoes for Your Feet to Wear All Day” list. Not only do Jamaicans not typically want to wear athletic shoes but they often can’t or won’t afford them.

In a case such as Joyce’s, with a neurological problem, individuals often need some type of brace or orthotic to help them get up and moving, walking again before they have enough of the muscle activation and strength to control the motions themselves. An ankle foot orthosis (AFO), like the one Joyce now wears, would not be possible without a good fitting shoe. Athletic shoes are ideal as she learns to walk again as they provide more support to the foot, won’t fall off while she’s walking, and have some shock absorption as well as fit her foot well with the AFO.

Sheepishly enough, I do have to admit how selfish I was in actually thinking twice, three times even, about giving those shoes away. It seems silly now. They were bought some time in my undergrad life, a pair of cross training shoes that would give some added ankle support for IM basketball, bought and paid for by Daddy no less. They were used maybe a handful of times indoors and then stored away in closet after closet. Yet I hesitated to give them away just in case I would have need of them again sometime in the future. I went back and forth and back and forth, over and over again about giving away a simple pair of shoes that I hadn’t worn in three years.

The shoes lost their pristine white and Adidas logo many a Jamaican day ago, but they are getting more use, better use now than they ever would have gathering dust in my closet or on my possible basketball court years from now. Seeing Joyce in that same simple pair of shoes is a weekly lesson of the beauty of giving and the abundance that can come from it. There are no conditions to what or to whom we give, just that we give joyfully, abundantly, and in faith knowing that God will provide.

So what are you hesitating to give? What has God richly blessed you with so that you may in turn give unto others? This simple pair of shoes could have come from anyone or anywhere to affect Joyce’s life. Don’t let whatever you’re called to give grow dust in the closet instead. It’s not always as simple as a pair of shoes, but I guarantee that no matter what the sacrifice, it will be more than worth it in the end.

This past week Joyce walked across the room without a cane, a smile on her face, one foot after another. Her son will be turning one next month and as she told me this past Wednesday, “Des feet gwan ta be a runnin afta him.”