Unfortunately, there are things that I have heard over the last two and a half years in my job that I wish I never had. Not that I’m not honored to have been a part of someone’s life to the depth that they were vulnerable enough to share part of their story with me, but that there were certain parts of their life that were so terrible and that they had that chapter that was able to be told. What response do you give to a young man who tells you that his mother once told him that she wished she had aborted him, or another guy who brings you visually and emotionally into his reality that as a kid when he was disciplined by his father he had to kneel down on rice scattered on their wood floor (often digging its way past the first and second layer of skin) with his hands clinched behind his head for hours; if he should so happen to get tired and begin to drop his hands than the man who was supposed to be firm but loving, a gracious teacher, and a light of guidance in a world that has enough trouble of its own; would take the metal end of the fly swatter and snap it across his bare back to remind him that his sentence had not yet been served. What response do you offer to a young man who was locked in a closet for days without food or water because he complained about the taste of dinner? And, what response do you offer to a young man whose father held his head in the toilet full of urine and feces, to the place that he almost drowned? He shared with me the desired response to this action, “I wish I had drowned. I just wanted to die.”
This finally became a tangible reality in the middle of one guy who would always ask me, “Why do you pick up trash all the time? Why do continue to pick up all that shit when you know you’re not making a difference?” I responded, “Well, I pick it all up, little by little, because I think we can make a difference; and because my mom told me to always leave it better than I found it. So, I guess I’m just trying to leave things better than I found ‘em.” The response that I got from him after what I thought was a deep and philosophical statement on my part was, “Well, my mom always said I was going to be a failure.”
A little back story of my past, is that I lost my mom to cancer when I was eighteen years old, and I thought that was as painful as it could get; but, I guess there are things worse than death. She never told me I was going to be a failure. She died, and that was devastating, but she never verbally killed me. She never uttered something so violent to my spirit; something that this guy will now live with for the rest of his life. I once again go back to my question I asked before, what response do you give to something like this? What action can we take that will be some sort of bandage or medicine for a wound to the soul? This became a daily question that I asked myself for months until I began to see a change in this young man through just investing my time and love. Over time I began to see his demeanor change, he seemed brighter and he no longer identified himself as a drug addict and a failure. Instead, he was now someone who told me that he was glad to be sober and alive, and he began asking for wisdom to persevere through the struggles and battles that continued to rage in his mind and heart. As his life began to change before my eyes, I realized that my answer had been there all along. Picking up the shit, was really making a difference, and it was slowly, but surely bringing him closer to who he really was. In every human life that we come across we must be willing to hear the stories that wrench our hearts, and we must then be willing to ask the questions of why, and how do we love greater?
We must be willing to ask ourselves, are we leaving those around us better than we found them?
