It always seems as though my entries are a long time coming.
I procrastinate intentionally.
I usually know what I want to say. I just don't know how I'm going to say it.
I have taken a new job. It's not really a job though, I don't look at it that way.
Miracles happen here, miracles of self discovery and new found love. So it's hard to define it as just a job.
Calls are made, emails and text messages are sent, voicemails are left. It all seems so... jobby. But it's not. At the end of those emails and text messages are meetings that look like every day events. One mom meets another in a parking lot. One takes a child out of the car and hands him off to the next. They talk about diapers and nap times and such. It all seems so normal. But really it's a miracle that these two mothers are joining forces to take care of another mothers child. A mother who desperately loves her child but whose mind is not well. A mother who desperately needed a break and had no one to turn to.
Her child is given rest, another pair of arms to love him, until his own mother's are ready for him.
Another woman is homeless. There are such severe connotations with that word: homeless. All it means is she had a squabble with her roommate. One has to leave and it is her. But she has no where else to go. No where that she and her kids can live. So she calls Safe Families. She requests a placement and says good bye to her children until she finds a home.
Some people have major issues with helping "these" people. The type that need help. Their stories are always messy. They make babies with men who don't stick around. They buy too much pop with their food stamps or brand names for their children although they have no roof to stand under.
They are easy to judge. They are easy to separate ourselves from because they look nothing like us. We would never feed that to our kids or neglect our bills for brand names. We can't understand being homeless. We would call a sibling, or a parent, or a friend. Because we don't understand it, we judge and we separate ourselves from them.
It's much easier.
Judging these people makes my job more like a real job. It allows me to close a case at the end of the day and go home. It allows me keep myself separate, declaring the splinter in their eye before acknowledging the log in my own.
But maybe there is something else to see.
Maybe we aren't so different after all.
Sure I pay close attention to what I feed my children, and I pay my bills on time and do most of my shopping at garage sales.
But could I truly stand blameless before these people and legitimately shake my finger at them? If someone was looking over my shoulder the same way I'm looking over theirs... what would be found? Would my file be squeaking clean? Or would I find a few smudges? Would I find some wasted dollars here and there?... or some bad decisions made during my younger years? Would I really be spotless and justified to point that finger?
Many times we are put into the position of being that all-seeing eye in someone's life. We see all that they do, we look at it carefully, and judge it according to our own standard. But don't we have an all-seeing eye peering into our own life? Does not the God of the heavens and earth see each and every one of us? If we were to stop and consider this...what might be seen?
I'm speaking from experience here. I came out of High School and went into College making harsh judgments about other people's lives compared to my own. At one point during my Freshman year I believe, I remember seeing a girl whose right side of her face had become completely paralyzed because of stress. I remember looking at her while she tried to talk to me with only half of her mouth and thinking, "Really? What could be so stressful about college that her face would become paralyzed? I have to take full-time classes AND a 4 hour gymnastics practice every day. Give me a break."
My next mission was to apply the same shallow view to my brand new marriage. I judged and weighed Jeremy's actions against my own often enough to drive him away from me. Our suffering started off almost immediately and it took 5 years of hacking it out until I finally began to submit myself to the idea that perhaps my slate wasn't so clean after all. Maybe, just maybe I had a few smudges on my own record too. I soon felt the sting of acknowledging my own guilty conscience. I knew I hadn't been squeaky clean, although Jeremy was aware of that far before I was.
I'm thankful that God was kind toward me when I finally came around and saw my own shortcomings. He didn't shame me or say, "I told you so." I felt like a fool and he would tell me that it's ok. God's love began to feel real to me in these places.
I began the long process of removing the log from my our own eye, and I can see a little better now. I can see these people who need help and resist judgement. In their own world, yes, they have made mistakes... but so have I.
Jesus comes as the great Equalizer, placing us all under his feet. I might be looking into their life, but I know I have someone looking into mine as well.
And besides.... if we listen closely to these people from another world, we might be blown away. We might find that they are prophets and truth seekers.
One woman tells me about her son named from the Bible because she asked God to give her a name for her son and he did. She goes onto explain that his middle name comes from an older cousin who acted as an angel in her life, taking her in under his wing and protecting her from the abuse happening in her home as a young girl.
Another woman sits in my kitchen. She tells me about the drama at work, and how people are becoming more and more heartless and crazy these days. At the end of it all she decides the whole world just needs Jesus and that's about it.
The true hands and feet of Jesus in this whole Safe Families gig are our host families. Have you ever tried loving a child that is not your own? It can be difficult. Taking in a child that is not your own with no financial reimburesment is not easy. You may be wiping a bottom that doesn't even belong to you, wondering what in the world his mom is doing.
It is very difficult to love others with the same love we have been given...with no strings attached.
This is where the rubber meets the road, where we get to put our faith into action, extending the grace and love we have been given to another who may not even understand it.
But just as they may not understand our love and our sacrifice, we who claim the Name are still called to it. Think of the sacrifice that Jesus made and how many of us walk the earth this very day not understanding it.
This isn't a job. This is loving others as I have been loved. This is measuring others with the same measure used against myself.
It isn't easy. But it's our call from above. Working for Safe Families, or volunteering to open up your home, or loving someone so different from yourself...it's living out the thickest part of the New Testament. It's reaching a clean hand into another's messy life and trusting the God who sees all of us to create a straight path out of the mud and the mire.
Maybe in the end we will all be changed.
"Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did." 1 John 2:6
