Living Hazzardously

Little pieces of our journey with Jesus

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in-between

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I am sitting here on a calm Saturday morning, it is 5:37 am.  Jess is wiped out and decides she needs a bit more sleep, so she has gone back to bed.  Al isn’t up yet and my three pups are interested in getting morning pets. This morning we will meet with our kids on Zoom, after that I will be headed to Sam’s Place for a work day, there is still plenty to do. I keep telling myself, “just a bit more work”… “Keep going, it will be done very soon”, I bought a pop machine, now I need to learn how that works… 

Have you ever taken on a task that feels like you are pushing a rope up into the floor above you? We never thought filling this building with clients would take so long… Finding the right clients is not an easy task, we know there are perfect clients for Sam’s Place. Slowly we are finding them. It’s slow, and arduous work, Jess is a spectacular director!

Vetting, that’s what it’s called… interviewing humans, asking questions, determining if this Sam’s Place is right for them as well as if they are right for Sam’s Place. We can’t just take everyone! Some folks have walkers, wheelchairs or balance issues… We have stairs, narrow doors and no elevator. We are tasked with determining the correct fit, vetting those who may not be stabilized with their medications. Finding the balance that fits for everyone, finding balance for the client and the clients already living here… as well as future clients… What’s best for them? For us? And for others?  Can we meet the needs based on our environment? Our staffing? Our purpose? 

I’m reminded of the 12 disciples of Jesus, I think about Jesus vetting them… who gets to be let in and who isn’t let in? Did Jesus make a mistake when he let Judas into the group? Should he have done a better job vetting the man who hastfully drew a sword and cut off the servant’s ear? What about the ones Jesus rejected? Are they wanted? Why did Jesus reject some and not others? Are they the Social rejects? You know the ones… they have issues.

What about the ones that are accepted by society? They look good to the community! They are wearing the right clothes. They have normal hair. They don’t cause any concern of tarnishing our reputations…. Not everyone fits everywhere, and that’s ok.

We do background checks, read diagnostic assessments, scan files, review reports and collect release of information forms. We get signatures, make phone calls, explain criteria… 

Maybe if Jesus had just done his due diligence in vetting his disciples, things would not have gotten so messy…  Or would they? You see, people are messy, humans are not perfect, and no vetting procedures are perfect. Jess reminds me “Everyone deserves a chance” and I remind her “We can’t ignore the past”. We do vetting as a team, I think we do pretty good but still can improve a  lot.

Jesus said to forgive as many as 7 times 70, is that a good model for Sam’s Place? Let’s be real, that’s probably not a good idea.

Easter, Good Friday, Maundy Thursday… but today is Saturday, what is Saturday called? Jesus was in the tomb today. Today, the day in between.  I think the disciples were probably confused, trying to understand what just happened and thinking about what the future would bring. Will I be next? Are the priests going to hunt me down as well? Did I do a good job “vetting” my friends? Am I going to remain faithful if I get tortured to the point of death? Even death on a cross? Where should I go? What should I do? Who can I trust?

Are the Faithful that wouldn’t deny Jesus? Are we the faithful? Are we the ones that hold strong, remain diligent? I get it that we need to be careful in our vetting for Sam’s Place, and I believe Jesus did his vetting perfectly. 

So, it’s Saturday, the day “in-the- middle” Like the middle child, forgotten, ignored and not as important… It’s only the day in “between the days” that gets all the attention. The day that holds the other two days in great tension… together and yet apart.

Sam’s Place is also the “middle Child”. It’s the place where folks live that don’t need all the help and attention yet may need more help than nothing, it’s the inbetween land, the land that is forgotten, it’s our calling! Helping others to help themselves, just a little bit.

We are serving an Easter meal at Sam’s Place at 2 pm. We opened it up to the world and invited some folks from the community. We invited anyone that has no place to go. We opened it up to the “in-between” folks. We opened it up to you! 

The joy of Easter should be shared, we hope you join us. 

Life is always valuable

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Somebody once told me they thought everyone should work in a hospice care facility as a post teenager, they would learn the value of life… I wonder if that’s true… I think back to my wild youth filled days… I don’t think it would have made any difference to me.

 I don’t think I really understood the value of life until the day my oldest son almost died when a bumper fell off a scrap pile in Ramsey MN, missing him by maybe an inch. But the years leading up to that day were filled with some of the worst events I can imagine.

February 1991 My father passed away from cancer, born August 1 1920, he was still very young, but I had only seen him a few times and barely talked to him for years, not out of some rift, I just didn’t have “time”. Then my sister Laurie got hit by a train on a Cold September morning in 1993 at age 28, leaving behind two children. Only a few months later, Chris was born, and I almost lost him in childbirth…

That’s when I started to recognize how fragile life was. That’s when I started to feel the pain other people felt, it was the conception of my compassion… but not the birth. It was only a few years later I found myself holding a shotgun, feeling the rage and anger that was fully “justified”, an anger so strong over the violation of an innocent child… I probably wouldn’t have spent a day in prison, because it was fully justifiable…

God’s plan for my life was unfolding, I received into my life the gift of empathy. 

Empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, and to see things from their perspective. It involves experiencing another person’s emotions and thoughts, as if they were your own, while still maintaining a sense of your own distinct identity. 

Empathy is different than sympathy. Sympathy simply means you understand the pain… empathy means you actually feel that pain.

Many times I find I need to build walls and boundaries to protect myself from feeling the pain and suffering of others. You may not understand this, but there is another reading this blog that knows exactly what I mean. 

I can’t fully explain how and what I feel, I just know that when I see another person suffering, it can overwhelm my emotions and I can start to feel that pain as if it were my very own, as if the loss they feel is my loss, as if the joy they have is my own. It is weird, I know, I am not sure why I feel that emotion but I do, and it can be so exhausting that I need to find ways to manage this emotional stress so that I don’t shut down and curl up into the fetal position myself. 

If you know me, you know I always make a joke or speak a bit of sarcasm, or even dismiss a topic, it is a defense mechanism, otherwise I could short circuit and become a blob on the floor. Does this make me a “sissy” I don’t know, maybe from some perspectives its a show of weakness, but I really don’t care, I am genX… stick your opinion up your nose (just a bit of sarcasm for  you) I honestly don’t feel the need to prove my “manliness” anymore, I had that hang up in my teens, that is a different blog post from a while ago, Im sure one day I will revisit that mess. 

So, back to the value of life,

I have an event that scars my heart, a decision from years gone by, a choice that can not be undone, a pain so deep, it only can be touched by the best of human emotion surgeons, and even then, its so deep, the best can not truly find that scar. I remember that day so well, the day she decided to say she never wants to talk to me again… I can’t imagine the pain I caused her by not being there. What she doesn’t know about me will remain forever a mystery to her. She is fully justified in never wanting to hear from me, but I know she cant forget me, because I can’t forget about her… maybe that’s why God allows me to feel his emotional tie to every story I hear, maybe that is why I was given the cursed gift of empathy, because back then, I felt nothing for anyone.

I can’t undo my past, and to be totally transparent, I believe God has blessed my wretched existence with much more than I could have achieved on my own, I very much believe that in spite of my wretchedness, God chose me, and calls me his own, because apart from God? I was a pretty horrible, and a pitiful creature.

As I close this blog, please understand, life now is great, life then is what an ignorant young man thought was great, but that was total ignorance.

God took me and washed away that life, made me new, and He can do the same for you. 

Praise God He saves, and never gave up on a monster like me.

Charlie

I’m an odd duck…. Or am I a quack?

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When life gets messy, do you run and hide? Do you become hostile? Do you immediately switch into “damage control mode”? We all react differently in these situations and sometimes we regret the choices we have made in the past. As a Christian, what is the Biblical response to adversity? When things go south, what should we do? 

Peter in the boat cries out to Jesus who is passing them by, walking in the water… Peter leaps out at the first call from Jesus to step out in faith, but then he doubted his calling and sank.

Peter exclaims he would go to the place of death with Jesus on that fateful Friday but instead he hears the rooster crow, showing him how he failed again to have faith.

Jonah outwardly refused to do the will of God, but still ended up in Nineveh, to preach the word.

Esther complained to uncle Mordecai. Her uncle simply revealed if she didn’t do the calling on her life, God would raise another in her place.

Jess and I have been called to Sam’s Place, to serve those in need. When things get “messy” do we walk away? Or dig in for the hard push? Faith is one area God has gifted me. The truth is … it has topped my spiritual gift list for about 15 years now… prior to this it ranked in the bottom three.  I have no doubts about what Jess and I are doing.

BUT!!! This past week has put us both to the test. Let me tell you of some folks that could live at Sam’s Place. “Joe” had no family. Parents died years ago. Family is far away in a different state. Alone, lonely and tossed around from place to place. And “Bob” is a similar story as far as some aspects go… things got messy, I mean really messy, and it took a few days to get things worked out to get them better help, the system is the real mess. These two are humans that need a special kind of care… CARE!  The level of care we at Sam’s Place would love to offer but we are not set up for this level of care. We have to make decisions all the time to provide the right level of care… AND IT’S MESSY!! But we don’t quit. 

Let me tell you who we can care for: 

We can provide care for the lonely woman, living in the house or an apartment but struggling to keep the house clean, maybe forgets to take meds and would rather just stay away from people all day.

We provide care for the guy living with mental illness that just needs someone to monitor his mental health on a daily basis because he gets so busy with work that he forgets to eat or take his meds. 

We take care of the single mother that is trying to get her life together after her husband stops being part of her life, and she just needs help for a year or two.

That Vietnam Veteran down the block that looks out his window…  to make sure the kids are not coming into the yard to rip out the tulips he just planted.

That guy that’s always been an outsider in life, living in the trailer behind his mothers house when she was still alive.

The old guy that doesnt mean to make inappropriate comments but rather wants to say something nice, and always says it the most offensive way.

These are the folks Sam’s Place is looking to help, People made in God’s image, Messy people that you may not ever talk to because association with them may be embarrassing. People who may not always know what reality looks like and need a reminder that they can live a healthy and normal life, with a bit of help.

I’m reminded of Burl Ives narrating Rudolf the red nosed reindeer… Telling about the “Island of Misfit Toys” … The toys that are rejected by society for being old fashioned, odd in nature, not conforming to expectations… struggling to find a home, a place where they are just loved and accepted… A place where a Gal walks in and says “This is so much nicer than the places I’ve had to live” and she goes on to say, “Its clean!” Imagine, you just want a place to live that’s not gross! A place that’s not riddled with drugs and “drunk” smells. 

Give me your tired,

your poor,

your huddled masses

yearning to breathe free.

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

America is the biggest “dream land” in the world, folks are coming in by the 10 thousands, because it is the best place to live in all the world. It’s not a “fairytale” like Disneyland, it’s real, it’s messy, it’s home. Like America, Sam’s Place truly is the place of opportunity, for those we serve. 

Let’s get messy together! Let’s not worry about what someone “may say” . Let’s just make Sam’s Place the best community friendly, safe, loving and best place for everyone! Even if you don’t live or work there, you can still show love and compassion for the brother or sister, mother or father, uncle or aunt, veteran or orphan…

Serving others with love, sometimes will get messy. That’s ok. 

Charlie