Paint With All The Colors Of The Wind

This was written as a monthly reflection to be posted in the ELCA-MUD Blog which includes updates from the other YAGM volunteer and our coordinators Brian & Kristen Konkol. It can be viewed at www.elcamud.blogspot.com.

I was reading the other night when I heard SA’s Got Talent come on the TV in the other room. I had some things to do and wasn’t going to be able to watch the semi-finals with some members of my host family (though the auditions had been pretty entertaining last week so I’m sure these were also wonderful). Before refocusing myself, I did briefly hear one of the contestants singing the chorus of “Colors of the Wind” from the classic Disney movie, Pocahontas.

I began to think about this concept of wind. When we try to explain the idea of wind to kids we are really only able to do this through its impact on the concrete things around us. You can “see” the wind as it blows through the trees shaking every leaf (or frond for those of us who have always seen more palm trees than big shady oaks.) It’s almost as if the wind causes the trees to dance a beautiful number in unison. But, growing up in the state of Florida (aka Hurricane Central), I also learned that wind wasn’t always so friendly and nice. I saw firsthand, on more than a few occasions, the wake of damage and destruction that can be left in a storm’s path as it comes ashore. Interesting, how this unseen thing can have such different attributes.

When I came to Kimberley I found that the same, strange, love-hate relationship with wind existed here as well. As we are moving into the summer season, temperatures are rising, especially in the semi-arid desert landscape where I find myself these days. A breeze is a beautiful gift from above as people move about our township and the greater city to get to and from work, visit the local clinic, or head off to school. The contrast comes, in that because of the climate, most people do not have grass since it takes so much water and effort to maintain it. This means that most yards, empty fields, parking lots, and shoulders next to the roads are nothing but sand. When the same breezes that are so nice to cool us in the heat of the day arrive, they simultaneously carry dust literally everywhere. My neighbors in this community do their best to control nature by actually raking and then watering their yards of sand with hoses daily to keep it from being swept up with the next gust. It is successful here and there, but how do you water an entire community? I can now “see” the bigger gusts of wind as they come down the road because they have a brownish hue to them; something I can say has never been an obvious attribute of wind based on my experiences in the States. But I am learning the wind is so much more than what we typically “see”.

As our Country Coordinator, Brian, explained in a post on this blog a few weeks ago, the M.U.D. program here in South Africa stands for and incorporates the idea of this program as a Ministry that is both Upstream and Downwind. This is a concept that is taking a much stronger hold in me the more time I spend with the wonderful people in this beautiful community of Kimberley. Although I am learning more and more about these aspects, the notion that this was ministry focused and upstream, were the easiest parts for me to find my fit in the program. Yes, I am here with the Church to build relationships where mutual growth and learning can be found in the love and grace of God. Yes, I am going against the current, as the majority of recent college grads in the States aren’t running off to be volunteers for a year instead of starting grad school or striving to land their dream job. Yes, we are against the current as we shift the ideas others have of what it is to be a “missionary”. Yes, I am even against the current when South Africans ask me what I am here to DO and my response is to BE with the people and to share life with them. There are already and will be many more examples of this program as a ministry that is upstream. Where I initially had more difficulty was in wrapping my mind about being downwind. I was a religion minor in college and so learned in one of my first classes years ago that the Hebrew word “ruach” means breath/spirit/wind. I struggled, not so much in understanding the intention of calling our attention to the breath/spirit/wind of God, but more in how I would daily find myself experiencing it. I just couldn’t foresee that piece, so I set it aside for a later time. Here, now, is that time where it all begins to click and fit together.

As I have walked the streets of the Roodepan Township and felt the wind blowing through my hair, I have started to “see” the effects of the breath/spirit/ wind of God on the concrete things around me. Those concrete things are more than just the trees or the sand, but are the hearts of the people I meet daily and even more the heart I find within myself. When locals ask me what I think of my time here and the people I have met so far, I can only answer that they are wonderful. I only wish there was a word to really sum up just how welcome they have made me feel and how open they have been with me about their lives. Instead there are stories. There is the story of a client at the home-based care group I serve with who has been living as an abused woman for the last 8 or so years. In a language I couldn’t understand, she explained the abuse she suffered and her continuing love for the man who treats her this way. What I did understand were her tears as she told the story. It was healing for her to tell her story and to cry – to sob – and breathe in deeply the love of God through three women that were placed there to simply listen and to pray with and for her. Another story. Two days a week, I get to spend the day with 6 orphan babies at the ChildWelfare Children’s Home. They are so spectacular in many ways. I love that they will both laugh and cry at, what to me, are the littlest things. They are the breath/spirit/wind of God that remind me without words how fragile and joyful life can be. A third experience. I have been blessed to be absorbed into an amazing group of friends that knew my name months before I would even meet them and know who they were. They welcomed me into their homes and families and even wedding and birthday celebrations from the day I arrived and once again showed me what the meaning of “family” really is. They are the ones that laugh at me as I try to pronounce things in Afrikaans, but are always striving to teach and encourage me with the kind of humility that can only be from the breath/spirit/wind of God. The stories that I have had the privilege to listen to and be a part of, have taught me more than I ever expected about the way that God’s life-giving breath/spirit/wind shapes and impacts each of us.

Footprints left in the morning hours here in Kimberley will be gone long before morning tea time as the wind sweeps across the community. And, just as the wind that we can “see” picks up every loose piece of sand, always changing the pictures we have drawn, the breath/spirit/wind of God is constantly in motion changing hearts, minds, and lives. There is another lyric in the song from Pocahontas that says “if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you’ll learn things you never knew, you never knew.” I think that is incredibly relevant for where I am today as I begin to truly blend the pieces of the M.U.D. program together. I am learning the most about the program I am in, from those former “strangers” that I get to walk alongside this year. This is truly a Ministry that moves both Upstream and Downwind, even when we can’t “see” it right away. I encourage you all to find the breath/spirit/WIND in your life and have some fun and happy painting with ALL the colors you discover.

P.S. – I think the rest of the lyrics to “Colors of the Wind” are pretty awesome so find them all below and ponder them for a bit, from a new context. It’ll rock your world. Go Disney Classics!

You think I’m an ignorant savage and you’ve been so many places I guess it must be so.

But still I cannot see if the savage one is me.

How can there be so much that you don’t know?

You don’t know.

You think you own whatever land you land on.

The earth is just a dead thing you can claim.

But I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name.

You think the only people who are people, are the people who look and think like you.

But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you’ll learn things you never knew you never knew.

Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned? Can you sing with all the voices of the mountain?

Can you paint with all the colors of the wind? Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest.

Come taste the sun sweet berries of the earth.

Come roll in all the riches all around you and for once never wonder what they’re worth.

The rainstorm and the river are my brothers.

The heron and the otter are my friends and we are all connected to each other, in a circle, in a hoop that never ends.

How high does the sycamore grow? If you cut it down then you’ll never know.

And you’ll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon.

For whether we are white or copper skinned, we need to sing with all the voices of the mountain, need to paint with all the colors of the wind.

You can own the earth and still all you’ll own is earth until you can paint with all the colors of the wind.

An Authentic Self, Made in the Image of God.

This was written as a monthly reflection to be posted in the ELCA-MUD Blog which includes updates from the other YAGM volunteer and our coordinators Brian & Kristen Konkol. It can be viewed at www.elcamud.blogspot.com.

Earlier this month I had the privilege of leading the regular meeting of the Youth League at St. Luke Lutheran Church in the Roodepan Township of Kimberley. Life had been very busy in the days leading up to this particular evening and my talk was slowly coming together. I was pretty clueless when I first began outlining it as to what I should speak about. How would I, as an American that had just stepped into this place, relate to a group of mostly high school aged youth that I had met on one occasion prior to this night? And then as I was processing all that I’ve been experiencing in the 6 weeks here in South Africa before this particular day, I realized that in some ways, I had been reliving that same time period in my life. Those were the days of first impressions and trying to make friends that would last a lifetime. What image would you portray to someone you had just met? What view did you have of them and what formed those opinions? Funny, that my life has been an intense, non-stop series of first impression-making situations since arriving in South Africa and even more so since I settled here in Roodepan.

In thinking about the first-impressions I have been making, I can’t help but recall a wonderful conversation I was blessed to have with a fellow MUD3 volunteer in Pietermaritzburg after an ELCSA Young Adult League conference. We spent part of an evening discussing our personalities; the things that make each of us tick, what makes us who we are as individuals. We talked pretty openly about the traits that sometimes we wish we could shake because of the reputations that they have given us (both positively and negatively). Then came the big realization: even with a chance to be someone completely new coming into a situation like this where no one knows who we have been, we both found ourselves revealing the same core identity, these same traits, being viewed in the same ways by entirely new people. What was it about these core characteristics that we still couldn’t leave behind, even in coming to another hemisphere of the world?

While pondering these two ideas of first impressions and core identity, I found myself remembering the story of the creation of mankind, found in the first chapter of Genesis. There, as I had read so many times before, were the words “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…” and “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them...” And suddenly, I found myself on this quest to define God’s “image” and “likeness”. What does it mean and how does it relate to my life where I am today? While we can dwell on the characteristics of an all-powerful, all-knowing God who is a Wonderful Counselor, the Prince of Peace, etc, etc how does that translate to a mere human, who by nature is imperfect and will never hold all the power? I found myself reading some of those passages of the Bible that were written with the very intention of teaching us to live our lives in a way where we are striving to be a true image of God. We were created in the image of God, a reflection of those characteristics on earth, but not actually to be just like him.

The night of my discussion with the Youth, I gave them a long list of verses to look up and read out loud to the group (quite the challenge when I’m giving a book of the Bible in English and they have never heard of it because the books apparently translate differently in Afrikaans – we managed to navigate through with some mutual learning along the way.) In the end though, we could sum up all of what we were reading in Jesus’ answer to one of the Pharisees’ questions about which of the commandments was the greatest of them all. It is here in the Gospel of Matthew (22:34-40) that 10 commandments become just 2 – “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Still the question remained for me: How does this fit in with that core identity I can’t seem to escape?

These days I seem to find myself standing out in all sorts of ways. In all likelihood, I am the ONLY white person living in the Roodepan Township (which is a predominantly coloured community – during the apartheid era this was the term used for those who didn’t fit in the White, Black, or Indian categories because they were actually “mixed-race”.) I frequently find myself being watched as I walk the streets to my work sites each day, catch a taxi, or even ride in a vehicle through the community with a friend or host family member. But on the flip-side, the whites in town can’t seem to figure me out either. As I wander the mall with coloured friends of mine, carrying their 18-month old beautiful boy, it is easy to see the questions on their faces trying to figure out if he is light-skinned enough to be my child or what in the world I might actually be doing hanging out with “them”. Even if people are not hung up on the color of my skin and just speak to me, the moment I respond, either to say “sorry, I don’t speak Afrikaans, yet” or to actually carry the conversation they are then stopped in their tracks by my accent (even if they can’t place it as American initially.) It has not been easy trying to fit into the boxes that my “neighbors” have for me. But how often have I been guilty of this in some way too?

My definition of “neighbor” has been challenged most of my life, but in the last couple of months it has taken on a whole new meaning. While in my mind, my neighbor has always included the people of Africa, South Africa, Kimberley, Roodepan (and the rest of the world)– I have only now been able to begin to put faces with that concept and I find myself taking to heart those words of Jesus a little bit more. I have had the privilege of traversing part of this beautiful country by bus three times now between Pietermaritzburg and Bloemfontein and I’m reminded of a line from one of the many movies that have been shown for entertainment during those trips. The characters were having a conversation about race issues amongst their youth baseball team. The coach asked the team what race one of the players was and the boys responded based on the color of his skin. The coach told them they were wrong and went on to say that “his race is human because there is only one human race.” What an important reminder for us as we try to determine who our “neighbors” really are. We are one human race and our neighbors are our brothers and sisters that make up that one human race. We don’t get to decide who fits in that box, everyone is in, and everyone needs to be loved in the way that we love ourselves.

Coming back to these ideas of first impressions and core identity, I see that so often we can only create a first impression by what is obvious and usually based on what is on the outside. We rarely give one another more than a few seconds, before making a judgment about what that person’s core identity surely must be, based on things like the color of their skin or the accent with which they speak or the way they dress or how their hair is done (or un-done), etc. In this journey to understand those traits of my core identity that keep coming back, I find that they are the characteristics I was given when I was made in the image of God and are much deeper than just the outside surface of my person. I can only hope that my attempts to embody this image by loving my “neighbor”, translates into an authentic picture of myself. I hope that I’m not just carrying that notion in my head and in my heart but that it is also so very apparent through the smile on my face and in the way I greet a new person in the street. I want my core identity, that part of me that I can’t seem to shake even when I have a chance to reinvent myself, to continue to be a beautiful reflection of the image of God and I want it to be obvious to those around me. I hope that so far I have been the most authentic “version” of myself to the people that I have met in South Africa, but more so I hope that I can lose the other “versions” and just be the person I was created to be, without fear of what my neighbors might think. I hope, too, that I am learning to see that all of my neighbors were also made in the image of God and that their unique characteristics are what make them a beautiful part of the family of Christ. I think that I have definitely been placed in a community that will challenge me to this task day in and day out for the next 10 months and I am grateful for that. I pray that this is a contagious idea, worldwide – you don’t have to be in South Africa to challenge your notions of who your neighbors are or what the image of God looks like in you. I hope that all of us will truly seek to live out our lives as our authentic selves, made in the image of God. After all, first impressions can be hard to break.

Info for Sending Packages

Hi friends. Just a quick piece of information for those of you who were wondering about sending packages....

I can definitely receive them, however, a few things to consider:

1) Don't send it if you can't stand to lose it - corruption is a big deal here including with mail at the post offices please don't send anything extremely valuable unless you want to potentially give it to a South African.

2) Customs - you will be required to fill out a customs form - try to include the word "Used" (yes even for a toothbrush) with a listed item - this I have been told is a good deterrent for theft when it arrives in South Africa.

3) Cost - be aware that what you send me (if it is much bigger than a regular sized card) I will have to pick up at the post office - I also will have to pay a customs fee to pick up these type of packages so please beware that I am living on a budget and as much as I would love to receive goodies...please be sure they will not be extremely costly on this end as well.

Thanks for the continued outpouring of love and support! Keep checking back for further updates from my time here.

Peace and Love,
Jess

Yes, I'm Still Alive...Here's a Quick Update

Helloooo Blog World! Sorry you have been neglected since my arrival in South Africa but internet has been sketchy. Please find below a brief update of the things going on in my life here. It really is just a quick overview but I should have more reliable internet from here on out so there will definitely be some analysis of things that have been happening in the last 6 weeks coming soon! I miss you all. Don’t forget to email (jfairfax@alumni.ufl.edu) and Facebook me updates in your lives. Here also is my mailing address if you want to go the old fashioned way and send me some love. (Jessie Fairfax, 3 Pansy Street, Pescodia, Kimberley, 8309, South Africa)

It has been wonderful hanging out in the Southern Hemisphere. I am living in a township called Roodepan just outside the city of Kimberley, South Africa. Roodepan is pretty much an entirely Coloured (mixed-race) community so they don’t fit in the mold of White, Black, or Indian. While some of the YAGM here will encounter Coloureds, I am really the only one living in a community that is entirely Coloured so that should provide some interesting discussions when we meet up for our first retreat at Thanksgiving.

I am living with a host family that I absolutely adore. The siblings are all around our ages (my sister, Ilse, who lives at home is 22, my brother, Ralph, is 29 and lives on the next street over about a 2 minute walk from where I’m staying, and my brother, Shane, just turned 30 last month and is married with a 5 year-old and a 14 year-old and lives a 5 minute drive from our house in Roodepan) so that has been really awesome to connect with them and meet a ton of their friends. I already have a list of weddings to go to in the next few months. Crazy.
The primary language here in Kimberley is Afrikaans but most people also speak at least some English. I am working on my Afrikaans though so I don’t wind up quite so left out of some conversations and all of the sermons at church. Haha. Having a family to keep watch over me and feed me like 10 meals a day has definitely made it easier for me to adjust and to keep any homesickness away. My parents have been able to call my really ancient South African cell phone via Skype when they get the chance although we’re still working on the whole time difference thing but it’s been nice to be able to catch up with them. If you have a Skype calling plan and want to call me sometime – let me know and I’ll get you my number!

The pastor that I am working through here is very big on getting the church he serves part-time more involved in the greater community and is using me as a springboard into some different organizations to find ways to start including them. Mondays and Tuesdays I am working at a children’s home/orphanage and since most of the kids are at school when I can be there, I spend my days hanging out with the 6 babies (ages 5 months-3 years). All of the kids who live there are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS and most of the caregivers don’t seem to have a lot of training, so it is definitely an eye-opening experience. Wednesdays I am working with a home-based care NGO that is literally a team of mostly women who go out into Roodepan and walk to visit different patients that they have, every single day during the week. Most are helping to deliver meds for TB patients or giving elderly persons sponge baths and other things but sometimes they are just visiting with people as well. Most of the women carry a 12-15 patient load and are walking long distances through the township to visit each of them each day. Thursdays I am spending working at the church Creche which is like a day-care/pre-school. I am also involved with the Youth program, Young Adults League, and Confirmation classes, and whatever else someone grabs me and tells me I just have to be a part of at St. Luke’s and beyond. It’s busy, but I’m loving all of the different types of people that I’m getting to know through these various ministry opportunities.

Things I’m learning – the list is very long but really I would say the main thing is just learning to listen to the people around me. Everyone has a story or something that they want to share with me and although I may be exhausted some days, it is still important for me to listen and participate in the conversations and activities that I am invited to. I can’t say that I’ve been disappointed yet by putting off sleep or time to myself for the people that God has placed in my life at this time.

Weirdest Food so far - I did eat pig’s feet the other night for dinner. I told my host family just not to tell me until after I’d eaten things what it was so I usually don’t ask questions. It was kind of weird but definitely not bad but I’m sure my opinion would have been different if I’d known from the start. For the most part though, they eat things that we would consider pretty normal which has been really nice.

Prayer Requests:

My country coordinators (Brian and Kristen Konkol) are expecting their first child literally any-day now. She is officially due the 21st I think, but when we saw her at the end of September she was ready to go at any time and they told Brian he wasn’t allowed to leave town as he had been planning with us. They are a bit nervous so just be praying for the safety of mom and baby boy (who was dubbed “Creature” by the last YAGM crew and that name has stuck since they won’t reveal the name they’ve chosen) and the peace of the Lord to be with all three of them as they wait.

Other than that, my biggest prayer is for my community and placement sites. I’m am 99.9% sure I am the only white person living in Roodepan and that attracts lots of attention and when I tell others where I am living they kind of scoff at me. I gave a talk at Youth this week about living our lives in such a way that we are striving to be the image of God that we were created to be. I pray that this is something I am doing everyday as I walk the streets and ride the crazy taxis in this place and that I am taking the time to truly see the people that have been placed in my life these days.

Time For A New Venture...South Africa

Hello, dear friends and supporters!!!

Look for updates soon and (internet-access willing) often as I embark on my next adventure...a year of service in South Africa with the ELCA's Young Adults in Global Mission program. I leave home in about 7 hours bound for a week of orientation in Chicago. From there, the 43 of us scatter across the globe to 6 different placement countries (11 of us will be headed to South Africa together.)

I can't wait to see where this path is heading and to have you all along for the ride.

Stay tuned.
Peace and Love.

We're Here...and Working Hard!

Man, oh, man! The South is wonderful and I have missed it. The City is great too, but there is something about coming back down here...the weather, the food, the people. It's been nothing but amazing!

We flew out on Sunday after an extremely long week of getting things shipped down to New Orleans and making all final plans for what we would need here. It was CRAZY! Adding to that, when Lana and I were getting on our flight, we were on the same flight with a colleague from the D.C. office whom we had never met and being picked up by yet another colleague whom we had never met. Things worked out perfectly though from timing to finding one another to getting back to our hotel in the city. It was great.

Our hotel is definitely one of the nicest I have ever stayed in! It has so much character and every room seems to be a bit different. Lana and I have a foyer, full kitchen, sitting room, and a master room with two double beds, nice furniture, a full vanity area, closet, and massive bathroom...oh yeah, and it's on the 17th floor with a great view of the Mississippi River! We so don't deserve this but we're certainly making the most of it.

Sunday we also got a quick look at the Interaction Center only to see that almost nothing had yet to be set up. Yesterday proved to be incredibly productive, as we were able to get almost all of Jackson Square assembled and painted. There is more to be done today but then the focus will quickly shift to our other space called Justice Town that needs tons of work. Wednesday at noon is "go time" so its running away from us quickly. It has definitely been fun to see everything come together from the ground up though and to get to know the staff so much better. It's an interesting group but we never cease to have a good time even while working and hauling stuff from one end to the other (the whole convention center is something crazy like 1.5 miles long and the ELCA is using nearly half for the Gathering - of course our spaces are not exactly close to one another - we have decided we will be getting plenty of exercise this week!) Oh and all the kids will start showing up today...this city is going to be bursting with energy which is great because we are going to be exhausted by the time we actually start and will need to feed off of them!

I should go get ready...got to be back at the IC in 45 mins for Day 2 of setup! Today we bring in the Uhaul and more stuff! Yay!

When Nothing But A Hug Will Do

It's been a while. Life in Chicago finally slowed down a bit the last two weeks. Our bosses were both out of town which slowed work way down. It's much harder to have conversation and get the answers you need when you're juggling time zones, meetings, availability in general. Overall, it was nice to relax a bit but frustrating to not see progress with your work. We're at that stage that budgets HAVE to be approved, orders HAVE to go in, money HAS to be spent or we won't have anything when 36,000 kids show up in New Orleans. Scary. On the other hand, I had lots of time to be reading website upon website and learning tons of things about what different groups are doing to fight the social injustices seen in our world. And Pandora is my new best friend at work.

This last week has been really great. I discovered about two weeks ago exactly the one thing I've been missing the most. A hug. I've decided that I get completely spoiled in Florida, from school to home, there is ALWAYS someone there to give you a hug when you need it, and even when you think you don't. The last hug I had was when I dropped Kaitlin off at O'Hare on May 31st. That was until Tuesday. Four whole weeks later. It seems silly I know, but it taught me something incredible about the power of human connection and community. Sure a smile can make your day but sometimes you need to have that reassurance that only a hug can bring. We all have a need to feel connected to one another and the way that is displayed varies from person to person. I needed a hug. It came in due time from an unlikely source that I'm so thankful for.

Tuesday, I saw an old family friend of ours for the first time in about 13 years. Heidi's son, Andrew, plays professional soccer for the Chicago Fire and she was in town for the week to see him and catch a couple of his games. By the wonders of Facebook no less Andrew and I had reconnected barely but it was a means of communication. I randomly told Andrew that Lana and I and her boyfriend had wanted to come to the game on Tuesday and it worked out perfectly that his mom was going to be there too. He arranged for a ticket for me and we saw a great game (the Fire won) and I finally got my hug the moment I walked to my seat in Toyota Park.

The Dykstras then continued to spoil me all week - the game Tuesday, made me dinner at Andrew's on Thursday, game and dinner and even my very own Chicago Fire tshirt on Saturday. It was great to have that reminder of "family". I mean 13 years...Andrew and I had to completely reintroduce ourselves to each other because we were like 10 the last time we saw each other. But then we all just picked up like it wasn't nearly that long. And we got to celebrate Andrew's success. He had come into the team in March/April as the 3rd goalkeeper. He was promoted to 2nd about the time I moved here, but there was still a chance that it could be lost just as quickly. On Friday they found out that the other keeper (original #2 then moved to #3) had been released from the team and Andrew's spot was solidified. Hard to take in in some ways, but an amazing opportunity for him. He got to share that with his parents. And even after the team lost on Saturday, he was still all smiles. Family is good, for so many things.

But all of this only got me even more stoked that my Mom is coming to town on Thursday for the holiday weekend. 4 days and counting. I couldn't be more excited. It's The Taste Of Chicago here, and I know it will be insane with people everywhere, but we're going to enjoy it, just like any other tourist. It will be exactly half way through the summer for me, which is so crazy that it's almost here already. In 3 weeks I'll be in New Orleans, and then my summer is pretty much over. So crazy. But I'm most excited for more hugs. Enough to last me the rest of my summer I hope. I'm convinced moms give the best hugs...lucky for me I'll have seen two moms in two weeks!

Remember sometimes only a hug will do. Go hug someone you see today. You never know how long it's been since their last and how much they truly need it.