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

The Smile, The Dash

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I remember seeing a photo, probably at the end of the war. A man hanging on the entrance to a train.  Looking at the platform. Another man held a woman in a firm embrace. Her feet in the air. A loving kiss. The man on the train had a genuine smile. The two on the platform reunited. A man and woman, in love. Welcomed home after what had probably been a few years of war overseas. 

Or the picture of a woman running to the waiting arms of a man. A hand made sign hanging outside reads “Welcome home Hector” A small boy close on the heels of his mother, racing to the loving arms of the man that would return home, changed forever, but home at last. A big smile on all three would be recorded forever. 

In times square, faces, faces and more faces all with smiles. 

A petty officer dances on the streets as a nearby gal watches with a joy filled smile. 

The look on a person’s face tells a story that words struggle to convey.  “A picture is worth a thousand words” pops into my head. 

For me? I don’t remember moments that made my generation dance in the streets, kissing a stranger in Times Square, or confetti flung from windows high above the streets as the “world celebrates” a single event.

Instead, I remember: 

Iran-Iraq War, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Tiananmen Square Massacre, AIDS Epidemic, Chernobyl Disaster, Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Olympics Boycott,  Iran Hostage Crisis, Emergence of disco, Breakup of the Beatles, Elvis Dies, Ted Bundy, Watergate and the end of the Vietnam Conflict. 

That doesn’t mean we didn’t have things that made me smile. I honestly believe there was a better platform for my “boomer” friends. Don’t get me wrong, Boomers had their fair share of hard times… but gen X?  We had “World Hunger” & “AIDS” celebrations. We are the “Forgotten, Latchkey” generation. So what made us smile? Ask any genX about “MTV” and fond memories are almost always the response. Or say the words “Asteroids” and see a bit of a grin start to form. Or ask them what it is about the phrase “gag me with a spoon” Ask them if they knew any “headbangers” or maybe ask them about which of the “brat pack” they most identify with… 

Every generation has something to smile about, some are big events with streets of confetti, some are sneaking cigarettes and watching MTV before your friend’s dad gets home and tells everyone to get outside and not come home until the street lights are on. 

I see the smiles recorded in history on a train platform, in times Square, On a big screen watching the Breakfast Club… and I realized something… all those before us, all those after us and even ourselves, we all have a smile to talk about. We all have a fond memory, of something. We can all share something that was valuable… but, like so many before us, we will all pass into the land of memories. Collected in a shoebox, a hard drive. Maybe a slab of granite in some StPaul suburb, a mothers last effort to preserve that memory engraved into a headstone, forgotten after only a generation or two… a year connected to another year by only a small “dash”… a dash that represents all the smiles of joy, screams of sorrow, groans of discomfort and days of remembering. 

So many years before me, so many years after me, so many memories in my “dash” I want my dash to be one of joy to those I have influenced, I want my dash to be remembered for the next 40 years by anyone I meet as a memory filled with a smile on their face. I will be forgotten one day, one day I will simply be a picture in a shoe box that hears the words “Mommy? Who is this man? Is he my great, great grandpa? He has a nice smile!” 

I pray your legacy outlives your life and that your smile makes another person’s smile just a little bit warmer. 

God Bless, and “Rock on dude”, Charlie