Staring Into the Abyss...
August 7, 2007 One of our dinner regulars got cleaned up off the booze. He was doing so well. I hadn't seen him for about six weeks but, based on how well he was doing I wasn't particularly worried. Saw him at dinner again and he tells me that he spent most of that time in jail. Of course, when he got out the room he was renting is gone, along with the furniture and anything else he might have owned in the world. He was drinking again, and taking a bed in the Mission after dinner.
A woman who has drank most of her life away has been - for several months - sober. It's been amazing to see her grow lighter and finer with each passing day. Tonight we passed one another on the sidewalk, both of us on the way home. She had been drinking. She smiled and said hello as she passed. I just felt the terrible burden of it all. You have to see that burden coming, and know it for what it is, and refuse to take it as your own. You can't. The accumulated weight of all those lives shrouded in all that death... will simply kill you. So you wonder about the ones who are absent, and hope for the best. You wait. You see. You wish it weren't so.
That's what they don't tell you about this ministry when you start - that's there's no end to it. There's no point at which you can claim a victory - no matter how small - because it's only a matter of time until that too is snatched away. So you just keep showing up, and doing the best you can, and praying them out the door at the end of the night, because you need to stand there, you need to hold that light against the darkness, you need to know that your life means something, too.
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Reader Comments (14)
You're not alone when you're praying them out the door.
You are so much like the woman I know who takes in foster children, and holds them in the midst of their tumultuous little lives. She doesn't notice so much that Jesus is there with her either because it is such a natural extension of who she is.
This post made me cry. At work. Thanks.:-D Heading off to the bathrooms to check on the status of my mascara...
wrong! every day is a victory! and lives are richer cos you are in it.
and your life means something - not because of what you do - but because of who you are.
'nuff said
As I worked, I reflected that the victory is not in the day's work done (weeds gone) but in the perseverance over time. The victory is in the fact that I will not be thwarted until the True Victory comes. Each days' task gets completed but the victory is in taking on the task of each day.
Me thinks you will arrive in heaven one day and not know what hit you when those thousands of people whose lives you changed are standing there cheering you on all the way to Jesus.
GBY.
Heather - Foster children.... I couldn't do that. I just couldn't emotionally survive always letting them go...
lorna - I do know what you mean... It's just getting kind of hard to see it.
Bob - That was simply beautiful. Thank you.
bjk - I hope it will be worth it.
Mike - The thing is, nobody's life ever changes. Nobody ever gets delivered from the booze. Even 20 years down the road and alcoholic is still only one drink away from disaster. It's beginning to look like the alcoholism is stronger than God.
Hey Jules! - I did read it - though I never thought of it like that before...
NaNcY - In the end, we can only do what we can do.
Clung to a ball
That was hung in the sky
Hurled into orbit
There You are
Whether you fall down
Or whether you fly
Seems you can never get too far
Someone's waiting to put wings
Upon your flightless heart
You're on the verge of a miracle
Standing there
Oh you're on the verge of a miracle
Just waiting to be believed in
Open your eyes and see
You're on the verge of a miracle
Here in your room
Where nobody can see
Voices are loud
But seldom clear
But beneath the confusion
That's running so deep
There is a promise you must hear
The love that seems so far away
Is standing very near
You're on the verge of a miracle
Standing there
Oh you're on the verge of a miracle
Just waiting to be believed in
Open your eyes and see
When you've played out
Your last chance
And your directions
Have all been lost
When the roads that you look down
Are all dead ends
Look up
You could see if you'd just look up
You're on the verge of a miracle
Standing there
Oh you're on the verge of a miracle
Just waiting to be believed in
Open your eyes and see
You're on the verge of a miracle
http://communityofjesus.blogspot.com/
yeah that's why you have friends - to remind you what a blessing you are. Not that you'd be complacent - but just so you wouldn't give up.
We minister one by one - if we look at the millions we'd be overwhelmed - but God gives us our ones and twos - and we do what we can.
It's hard to see relapses time after time - but just as our heavenly father encourages you and me every time we get up again and try to walk again - we do that where and when we can.
I know it's not easy - and we don't want to put you on a pedestal - but the fact that you do care really hits home. For those individuals you are Jesus - His hands, His voice and most of all His heart.
and I'm so glad that I can encourage you along YOUR way too.
I *so* know what you mean, brother.
Two of the things I do which bring me much joy also bring me so much frustration. I spend time working with those same drunks you see, trying to share recovery with them. It is one of the most rewarding, and one of the most incredibly frustrating, things one could spend one's life on - other than your calling, I'd say. The other is working with teen-aged boys in a youth fraternity.
There are days that each of us hit when it seems like we are shoveling raw sewage into the tides - and wondering why all the big chunks end up back on the shore. I really understand the guy who wrote "I shot an arrow into the air/it came to earth I know not where" - but he lost a lot of arrows doing what he did.
So do I. So do you. And in a world where people count arrows in the quiver as success, it hurts, sometimes. One day, the kid I worked with for so long to get sober and stay sober calls up to say goodbye, and disappears back into the bottle for some trivial reason.
The promising young man of 15 with the heart of gold that I nurtured and encouraged for a year, who is on the edge of greatness, ends up a losing pawn in a custody battle and with his less-drunk-than-the-mother dad, in New Jersey. And he's gone from my sight
Some government horse-dropping policy derails some small goodness that we'd worked on for weeks or months.
Each one ends up taking a piece of our heart with them. And there are days when it just seems to hurt too much to go on.
But the best ministry advice I ever got came from an old coot in AA who told me, "Steve, there are days when the only thing you can do is keep on keepin' on. Not because we're gonna succeed against the darkness, but because we are called to be light that others can seek out. We just never know which kindness we do will end up changing a life forever. So we gotta keep doin' it..."
And please, please know this: by the very act of sharing this with us, you bring the light of Christ to me - across the miles, across the ether and bits-n-bytes. I have never met you in person - and may never get to, thanks to how successfully you cover your tracks.
But I know you are a brother-of-the heart, and you brighten my life in so many ways. Our vineyards are different, and yet so much the same. And I'd remind you of what my first AA sponsor told me as I left Toledo for Kansas at barely 5 months sober. I was worrying that my life would carry me where I'd never see Bob again, and he said this:
"Steve, I promise you this. If *you* are walking hand-in-hand with God, and *I* am walking hand-in-hand with God, then we are walking together, no matter how much physical difference might separate us. When you sit down with someone who needs you, I will be over your shoulder, and you will be with me in the same way. What God has brought together, no man can sunder."
Keep on keepin' on, brother. I just wish I knew where you are. It would be worth it to grab a coffee and some conversation, someday...
An AA sponsor from Kansas also said this: "I'd say 'go with God' - but fortunately, neither of us gets a vote on that one."
This is huge and would not have happened without the shelter staff who care until it hurts! This woman may make it or may end life way to early but she is Gods! RWK, I believe if you stop hurting you stop caring. God has given you a wonderful and difficult mission field. You are equipped for the task. Stand firm!