This is an excerpt from a paper we have due this Thursday that I thought some of y'all might like:

We had just finished taking tea at around 1pm when she casually began to give her life’s story. I was taken back by how she simply proceeded to share with me her life up to date from when she was three. It was completely unprompted yet thorough, as if she either assumed I needed to hear it or had to get it off her chest. I sat back and listened the best I could, still a bit bewildered, but could not help but wander off during parts of her life. I pulled hard on the reigns of my mind, but to no avail; my thoughts ran wild. I was distracted by the readings I had to do, the papers (like this one) I had to write, and even the birds outside the widow. I interacted with her the way I might a textbook; zoning out for all the details but catching the main points enough to answer intelligibly. I began to feel guilty that my mind refused to listen, but the guilt soon became a distraction of its own. I decided to stick to the affirmative grunt and nod and hoped I could coast through undetected.
As she neared the end of her story she began to talk about the importance of education, concluding by encouraging me that if I studied hard I could do anything I wanted. This struck me as particularly profound (and a bit out of line with what we’ve learned about the community centered African worldview) in light of her life’s story, which I thought I’d totally missed, and I caused me to question what I honestly wanted in life. Before I had much time to think, she changed tracks and began talking about how she expects to be there for my graduation and my wedding. Still hesitant to immediately respond to anything flatly stated, I held back anticipating the catch. There was none. She sincerely planned on attending my graduation ceremony and my wedding (whenever that happens). I was dumbfounded at her sincerity and quickly grew cynical as all my logic and reason failed to produce any viable reason for her to do such a thing. How could she even afford it? My assumptions about financial prudence, wisdom, and practicality locked up as she proceeded to gently instruct me as to how love worked.
There I was, awestruck by the simplicity and greatness of what she described as if it were from the mouth of an angel; not sure if it was real or how to receive it. The guilt I had from not being able to pay attention to her story briefly intensified as she spoke, but was quickly replaced by utter humility as I saw the enormity of God’s blessing unfold before me. The purity of her explanation of how the love for her son was far too big for any airline ticket to hold back landed before me like the precious pearl or buried treasure one would sell everything for. I was astounded at how after only two months of knowing this woman she was willing to save up for more than a year in order to make it to my graduation, a ceremony I have often failed to see the hype in… perhaps until now.
God was showing me, due to no efforts of my own, how people are to love each other. This love epitomized the kind of relationships prevalent in traditional African culture as it assumes “what it means to be in the first ancestor, to live in the organism…, to be him [Christ], his blood still coursing the living veins, his soul infused in the body,” (Taylor, 82). I had become one with my host mother across the ethnic and geographical lines that so often disfigure the body of believers (Sider, 81), lines which required her to give beyond her means, giving as much as she could, voluntarily (Sider, 84). My mom’s desire echoed the desire of the Kerr couple Sider described as “wanting to share their lives and influence wherever possible.” (Sider, 186). Mom was truly “unconditionally sharing her life with other members of Christ’s body.” (Sider, 206), causing me to fully embrace and wrestle with Sider’s crucial question: have I committed myself to be a bother or son to others so unreservedly that I enjoy far-reaching liability, availability, and accountability to them? (Sider, 214).