Amazing Grace

Despite feeling like I was pretty much phoning it in this Lent, Holy Week was The Way of the Cross.

It started Wednesday.  We had a client at the shelter who reminded me what I love and hate about the job.  This was a woman with potential.  She was smart.  She was educated.  Her children were grown.  Her future was an open book.

But she had destroyed her last career with her drinking.  And she had come to us directly from a mental health agency.

But I liked this woman.  She was the first client who arrived during my shift and I was as nervous as a hostess.  I helped her get settled.  I happened to be working when her boyfriend was arrested.  It was intense.  She was one of those people who'd been abused her entire life and she'd never pressed charges before.  When I told her that her boyfriend had been picked-up, she grabbed hold of me and sobbed.  I sat with her, and between sobs she said how she didn't deserve it.  He had treated her worse than an animal and she didn't deserve it.  The empowerment was palpable.

I knew the cards were stacked against her.  No income, no resources.  But she tried.  She applied for housing, jobs, and any benefit she might possibly be eligible for.  When another woman, very pregnant with two small children, came to the shelter she took her under her wing.

Fast forward a couple of weeks.  The Wednesday of Holy Week is Tenebrae, a service of darkness during which the candles in the church are ceremoniously extinguished.  I arrived at work to discover that the pregnant woman with the children had left because the other woman had stolen money from her.  What?  I had spent quality time with this woman and I didn't want to believe it was true.

The next day was Maunday Thursday.  The day of betrayal.  For me a spiritual day of grocery shopping and arranging to get the furnace fixed.

Good Friday.  The crucifixion.  Why do we call it good?  I started my workday by accidentally setting-off the security alarm at our agency's outreach building.  Then I slipped while trying to help someone move a heavy television and it dropped on my fingers.  On my bowling hand, natch.  Then I headed to the shelter. 

My fave client had stayed in her room all day.  That just wasn't like her.  She'd been very depressed since Wednesday which didn't bode well.  We had good rapport so I went in to talk to her.  I just had to know.

We talked.  And talked.  And she cried.  She talked about the pain of growing up bi-racial in the 60's.  The pain of being an adopted child who was abused by the mother who had chosen her.  The pain of being told by her husband (the abusive husband who had preceded the violent boyfriend) that anything she had ever accomplished in school and work was just because she was the token person of color.  She simply oozed pain and worthlessness.  But she knew she was smart.  She knew she had to show her children, even though they were grown, what a strong woman is and how she should be treated.

She admitted that she had been drinking the day before.  Denied stealing money or drinking that day.

Sitting with her had been a moving experience, but the warning bells were chiming in my head on my drive home.

The next day, Saturday, she had moved to the couch and was watching movies. She didn't feel well.  She had avoided contact with the night staff.  While she was watching movies I searched her room.  I found the empty bottle of vodka in her closet.

I calmly went downstairs and sat with her in the living room.  I pointed out that, yes, drinking an entire bottle of vodka would make one feel pretty sick.  She was going to have to leave.  She did not deny anything or argue.  She understood.  Since things were slow and she was being reasonable I said she could stay until morning when her son would be able to give her a ride.  I gave her a list of shelter numbers and suggested she look into a halfway house program.

I also told her I still thought she was one hell of a person with great potential.  And invited her to call me at work any time.

After I got home that night I threw myself into Easter preparations, not sure my heart was really in it.

Easter is such a magical time of joy and redemption, and it did not disappoint this year.  As I sat in church I felt peace.  I was sad about this woman, but not hurt.  I recognized that she hadn't betrayed me, she had betrayed herself.  And I had been able to respond with love and a measure of mercy.  I had always treated her as a human being worthy of respect and maybe, just maybe, she would look back and remember that and realize that she wasn't worthless.  I could look at her brokenness and failure and love her.

I sometimes wonder if God regrets that whole vow to never destroy the human race.  We can be pretty mean and stupid creatures.  But we are loved.

This is the gift I can bring.  I don't have the power to fix a broken life, but I can look for the person inside the problem.  And I can care.  I envision what I do as being like the parable of the sower: some seeds will fall on fallow ground, some among the rocks, but some will sprout and take root when we least expect it.  I may never see the result, but I will keep tossing out the seeds.

We can be God's grace in the world.  Amazing.