The Job Gets Real

I had worked with him before.  He was never exactly a pleasant client, one who was increasingly frustrated by the slow progress of finding housing.  I never expected to hear what he had just said to me.

In my six months I have had clients who have died, clients who should still be in high school, clients who were on so many drugs they couldn’t even walk, let alone talk, clients who have been homeless longer than I have been alive, clients who are clearly disabled but have been denied disability several times, clients clinging to their last shred of hope, clients just trying to feed their children, clients who have PTSD from witnessing the murders of family members.  I thought I had seen almost everything.

Not quite.

He looked at me with the saddest look I’ve ever seen in another human being and said quite bluntly, “I’m going to kill myself.”

I stared at him wide-eyed, surprised by what I had just heard, everything racing through my mind except what I should say.  I hadn’t been prepared for this, I hadn’t been trained.  I didn’t know what to do and I have no problem admitting that.  It shouldn’t have shocked me as much as it did, I have had countless clients telling me they’re suffering from depression.  But it did.

“Oh no, Mr. B, you don’t want to do that.  We’re going to help you.”  That was all I was able to spit out.  All I could hope was that my client trusted me to take care of me.  

I sat staring at my computer for a minute, thinking desperately of what to do, acting like I was looking for certain resources.  I had to get this man to someone much more qualified than myself to work with him.  I found one of my coworkers and had her sit down with him in her office.  This coworker has an amazing skill in being able to relate to our clients like no one I had ever seen, I knew my client was in good hands.

The next thing I knew my client had agreed to go to the hospital and was going to be escorted there by a police officer specifically trained to handle people facing mental health crisis.  

I saw my client a few days later and he was in much better spirits, seemingly comforted by the fact that we were trying our best to look out for him.  

I desperately wish this could be the end of my experiences with clients facing the idea of suicide,  that I could end this blog here, but I can’t.

“Rick, could you come to the front desk?”  That exact phrase, uttered several times per day by the Beans and Bread receptionist is often an annoyance brought on by a client that I won’t want to deal with.  I thought this would be the same last Friday.

I go to the front room and the receptionist asks if I can see a client, even though they did not sign up on the case work desk.  Beginning my usual explanation of how I can’t see someone who didn’t sign up, I am stopped by the look of pure desperation on the man’s face.  “of course,” I say, “come on back.”

I sit the client down, a client whom I had never seen before, and ask him what’s going on.  Suddenly he breaks down, tears streaming from his face.

I do what I do best in a moment like this; I listen while the client describes how his mother just died, how he just got robbed, and (he is a man with a severe mental disability) he is tired of people calling him retard, leading him to want to kill himself.

Quick tangent:  this is just one of millions of reasons why people need to be aware of the words they are using, the context they are using them, and how the use of these words can effect people.  This cannot be tolerated.

I listen to his story, I speak with him along with another one of my coworkers who immediately came to my assistance, and get him a new set of clothes.  After about 45 minutes he’s calmed down and I am finally comfortable in trying to get him to go the hospital.

Bad idea.

He again starts panicking and begins telling me all of the reasons why he cannot go to the hospital.  He clearly wants to leave and there’s not a lot I could do about it.  I tell him the importance of getting back on his medications, it is the first thing that he must do.  

He calms down and agrees to go immediately to his doctor.  He leaves in clearly better spirits, but leaves me with the troubling thought of whether I would ever see this man or not again.

One of the biggest surprises I’ve had this year with working with my clients is the large number of people with mental disabilities.  Major depression, schizophrenia, bi-polar, and mental retardation are prevalent throughout the homeless community but are often times not readily addressed.  There is a shortage of locations for homeless men and women suffering from mental illnesses to get proper treatment and a shortage of housing programs in general.

It is a common stereotype that all disabilities are visible.  Obviously this is not the case.  Next time you pass a homeless person, and before you just assume they’re crazy, ask yourself what they could be suffering from, how their homelessness is even more crippling to their illness, and what they would be like if they had access to proper treatment.  You might be surprised by the answer you get.

A Crisis of Sorts

Coming into the JVC one of my main goals for the year was to reignite the fire that is my faith, or as I should say, was my faith.  I never would have considered myself a spiritual person in my past, but my faith had certainly reached new lows in college.

It will come as no surprise to a lot of my friends that the decline in my passion for my faith correlates perfectly with the death of my father.  But why?  My faith is not suffering because I am mad at God for taking my father away much before his time.  To me, these feelings are kind of childish and not the way I deal with things.

A lot of it seemed to come from the general apathy I had about a lot of things at this time and the fact that I had much higher priorities on my mind than my faith.

Entering into my senior year of college I was way beyond the point of caring at all about my faith, even though the whole time I felt there was something missing.  Luckily, going into this year, I had made the wise decision to live with long time friend, but at the time never close friend Kyle.  The entire fall term Kyle was persistent, “Do you want to come to 242 tonight?” (the college group he attended that would be my first venture outside of catholicism) “Hey man, wanna go to bible study?’

I always had an excuse, but I was quickly running out of them.  Finally, at the beginning of the winter term, I gave into his constant pressuring and went to 242.  And what a great decision it was!  For the remainder of the year I was surrounded by a huge support system of amazing people and I was able to live out my faith.  That’s the kicker: live out my faith.  I have always felt my faith should be action based, but it never was.  But it never went beyond that.

This passion to live out my faith was going to fit in perfectly with my year in JCV where I would be living in an intentional community with people whose faiths were similar to my own.  Here I would have a chance to live spirituality with people, to pray with them, to work for the poor and live simply, together.   Unfortunately parts of this just haven’t happened.

There is certainly effort involved.  The work I am doing at my job has certainly helped my faith; the strength I see in the people I encounter everyday, who hold on to their faith as the world crumbles, is, for lack of a better word, awe inspiring.  We engage in spirituality nights, I have read spiritual books, (note to self: maybe the fact that none of these are the actual Bible might be significant), and I have a spiritual advisor.  All of these things have been great, but my faith is still in a stand still.

The biggest issue is that I have identified what the problem, I just don’t know what to do about it.  The issue:  I can’t pray.  Or maybe that I don’t know how to pray.  To be completely honest I never really learned (can you) and I never did it consistently at any point in my life.

When I did Youth on Fire in high school one of our requirements was to pray for thirty minutes every night, and I found that when I actually did it I felt tremendously better, like a hugh weight had been lifted off my shoulders.  And yet I never kept it up.  I still sometimes pray at night, but I am surrounded by the feeling that I’m talking to myself, even though I think it’s a ridiculous concept.

It’s hard for me to maintain my faith when, in my opinion, it is our responsibility as Christians to live as Jesus did; with and for the poor.  And this is something that is not happening.   I know that many of the issues in the world are in fact man made and are not caused by either a non existent God or one that simply does care.  But it is a struggle.

For me to make a difference in the work that I am doing I know it must be for both the poor and for God.  The beautiful thing about faith is that it gives a choice.  And while I am going to struggle with my faith for probably quite some time, I have chosen not to ignore the constant nagging that is happening in my heart.  The effort is there, and results will come, and I must recognize that God is behind it all, and then maybe I will be able to open my ears, my heart, my mind and have a conversation with God.

Love is Why I do what I do.

This is the written copy of the talk I was asked to give at the JVC Re-Orientation retreat that happened this past weekend.

When first asked to give a talk on social justice I kept asking myself the same question; why am I involved in social justice issues?  And as I’ve come to find out in the past five months the answer is quite clear; it is for the people.

One of my favorite quotes is from the book Jesus for President, by an author many of you are probably familiar with; Shane Claiborne.  He says, “the tragedy today is not that the rich don’t care about the poor, it’s that the rich don’t know the poor.”

 

In my job, getting to know my clients on a more personal level was one of the most important things for me.  I work at a place called the Beans and Bread Outreach Center, which is a homeless day shelter.  There I am a case worker, meaning I meet with 8 clients per day and try to assist them in whatever they’re looking for; clothing, housing, employment, health care, substance abuse treatment, etc.  During my first week there my boss sat me down and said very bluntly, “you are not going to be able to help everyone, don’t expect to.”  While that stung my unrealistic belief that as a JV I was going to save the world, the next bit of advice was even more profound for me.

“But if you want to make a difference, treat every client with the respect you would anyone else, look them in the eye, listen to their story, and give them a smile.  These are things they won’t get from anyone else in their day.”

I have tried to do that with every client, no matter how frustrating they are to work with, and I have seen the difference in the way they act around me and me around them.  They come to me at their most vulnerable, and without knowing anything about me besides my name, they trust me.

One of my clients is Mr. Fleming.   After I’m done working each time with him he always says the same thing to me.  “You looking out for me?”  Of course Mr. Fleming.  “You got my back?”  I got your back.  “You’re my man.”  And every time he says that I almost start laughing because I start thinking of the movie Rain Man and totally ruin the moment.  R-I-C-K, my main man.

But why does he, or any of my other clients trust me?  In the several times I’ve met with him all I’ve done was get him on a couple housing waiting lists and get him a couple of cell phones.  He is still homeless, and probably will be for quite a while.  It would seem that I have done next to nothing for him.

The reason I treat my clients the way I do, the reason I’m doing JVC can really be simplified to a single word: Love.  We express our love by our actions in every day life, with everyone we encounter.  But what is maybe even more important in my daily interactions with my clients is the love that they show me.  They know that I will not be able to solve all of their problems for them, but out of love they come to meet with me, and trust that I really do have their best interests at heart.  I don’t know about you, but this is something that I cannot do easily with someone I just met.  It’s both inspiring and humbling, and allows me to see the best in people.

But it is important for us to make sure love does not just become a word without meaning.  We can not simply tell people that we love them, we must show them.  This love ties back to our faith.  Our faith is love based, the love Jesus had for everyone and everything.  Our faith is also action based.  If our faith is to be defined by the way we live our lives, and the actions we take, then our love must be as well.

This love is our blessing and our curse.  It is our curse because it will stick with us forever.  There’s no going back to the life I led before I got involved with social justice issues, no matter how much I wish I could at times.  I will not leave JVC on my last day, walk out of my office and forget about my clients, or the many issues they are facing.  I care about them too much.  We can not see people we care about suffering and not do anything, it is unforgivable.  I hate to be the most cliche JV of all time, but this love has ruined us for life. 

But this love is also a blessing because, again, it will stick with us forever.  We will dedicate our lives out of love to serving the poor, and in turn, to serving God.  We will become one with the poor in spirit.  We will realize that what we’re working for are not only political issues, or social issues, but ultimately, people issues.  We will suffer with the marginalized in their hardships, and celebrate with them in their triumphs.  We will come together to work with people who are, as we’re slowly realizing, quite similar to us, to work towards common goals, a common future.  Love is our motivation, our guide, our direction, to serving God and serving others, and becoming one with them.