So Overwhelming

 Good afternoon.

 Part of what I do with my work at RiverWalk is benevolence.  And part of that specific work is sometimes putting gas into the vehicle tank of someone who is in need.  I actually put the gas in for them; I don’t just give them cash or a gift card.  I’ll meet them at the gas station…usually a QuikTrip or maybe a Dillons…visit with them, and pump their gas for them.

I usually meet them at one of the downtown QuikTrips…Seneca & West Douglas, Kellogg and South Broadway, or maybe East Douglas and Washington.  I’ll usually get there before our client, and will park in one of the stalls that is NOT at a gas pump.  I’ll wait for the client to come in, then meet up with them and get them what they need.

Sometimes I arrive several minutes before the client, and usually take that time to just watch the goings-on at the QuikTrip.  It’s always busy there.  People are constantly driving in and out, going in and out the building, and generally creating movement.  Sometimes there will be a homeless person or two around outside, or maybe a QuikTrip employee will be outside emptying trash or doing some other kind of cleanup.

Sometimes I see a particular person and wonder what their day is like.  I wonder what kind of life they’ve been living the past years.  I wonder what the future may hold for them.  I wonder if they’re feeling positive today or are down.  I wonder just how healthy they are and if they have access to the care they may need.  Yes, I know these are questions with few answers…and that even the person himself or herself would not know how to answer some of those types of questions.

And then I visit with the one we’re helping with fuel.  Sometimes they don’t tell me much.  But sometimes they sort of pour it all out right there at the gas pump.

Like today, we pumped gas for a woman who seemed to be somewhat down.  I gently probed, and found out that her landlord has asked her to move from her section 8 house because he needs to do a complete renovation, and doesn’t have another place for her to go.

She knows finding a section 8 house is difficult at best, and the cost of private housing is even higher.  There’s the expense of moving, first and last month rent and deposit, getting the kids into a new school, the utilities, and all the other that comes with this kind of situation.

Her comment to me was, “It is just so overwhelming at times.”

Earlier today we helped a social worker with some food for someone she was working with.  The client was physically impaired, not even able to walk out to her mail box, let alone go to the grocery store or other chores we take for granted.  She got meals on wheels once a day and had been living on that.

The client needed some kind of mattress, because she was sleeping on a futon which was on a sheet of plywood.

The social worker volunteered that the client was raped awhile back and couldn’t bear to sleep on the same mattress that she was raped on.  She had tossed the mattress away and was making do with a futon.  She filed a police report, but was not told, she says, about support services that might be available to victims of sexual assault.  The police are supposed to provide that information, and may have tried, but in the emotions of the moment she may not have understood what they were trying to do for her.  However, there should have been some follow-up, but that evidently didn’t happen.

The social worker is working with her to obtain some of those needed services.  In the course of my conversation with her, the social worker told me, “It’s all so overwhelming.”  She was speaking about the load that she herself was carrying in trying to make a small positive dent in the lives of those who come to her for services who are so broken in so many places and ways.

It’s Thursday afternoon.  Each Thursday afternoon, I mentally feel like I’ve just run a marathon this week.  I don’t work Fridays, so have a three-day weekend to recover.  But even then I usually have responsibilities on Sundays at the church.  I too sometimes feel like it’s all so overwhelming.  The weekend, though, is welcome, and I usually spend a lot of it on the back patio…at the edge of the park…and just be for awhile.

I wrote on Facebook recently about a conversation I had with a friend who spoke of “finishing strong,” regarding our lives and how we as older folks choose to use the time remaining that God has given us.  I want to finish strong.  I don’t want to lay around the house doing nothing…and I think Pat wouldn’t want me there in any event.

The idea of finishing strong has become one that is at the forefront of my mind, and probably will be for a considerably long time.  It’s what I want to do should God give me the grace and mercy to do that.

The QuikTrip parking lot and gas pumps are, I think, a decent sampling of life for many.  Some time when you have some time, stop by one, park where you can see the action, and just observe for a few minutes.  Who knows?  It may open up a whole new understanding of our society and give you a much better shot at knowing and understanding how many people live their day.  It isn’t all unicorns and rainbows.  In fact, I have yet to see a unicorn at a QuikTrip.  But it is life…life in the here and now…life for many just trying to get through the day relatively intact.

 

 

Blessings…

Continue On

 Good afternoon.

 The wife and I like to watch old TV.  Ed Sullivan, Carol Burnett, Hogan’s Heroes, and M.A.S.H. are some of our favorites.  We enjoy these old shows for a couple of reasons.  First, because we won’t see anything on any of these shows that is beyond a PG rating.  Second, these shows remind us of times past and gone when we would watch them with our parents and family.  And third, there were some unique and truly professional people on these shows…people of the caliber that is difficult to replicate in today’s world.  Buddy Ebson, Dick VanDyke, Tim Conway and others were fun to watch and demonstrated great (dare I say “one of a kind”) talent and ability in their field.

One of the shows I most like to watch, and which affects me the most is M.A.S.H.  We’re on, oh, I don’t know…the seventh or eighth (at least) repeat of the shows.  There were a total of 256 shows produced, and we’ve seen them all multiple times.  Yet the show continues to touch my heart in ways few other things do.  Why?

I think there are a couple of things at work here.  First, I was in EMS and health care for a number of years, so I have some familiarity with the scenes in the show.  Not only was I an ambulance attendant, but at the small hospitals where I worked, I also was frequently called on to help in the emergency room, in patient rooms, X Ray, or some other patient-related area.  I’ve seen a lot in my health care career.  I’ve seen, I’m guessing, about 30 people take their last breath…many of them people I knew.  I’ve worked accidents and other scenes where the victim was already deceased.  I’ve done suction, CPR, oxygen therapy, and other procedures as directed by a provider in the emergency room, patient room, or ambulance.

However, in all of this, one thing stood out.  I wasn’t alone.  We worked together, the other staff and me, as a team to do the best we could for the patient.  In those times, it didn’t matter if I particularly liked another staffer or not.  We did what we needed to do; we did it the best we could; and we often had good outcomes.

Second, there is the continual storyline in the M.A.S.H. show that the work never really ends.  People die.  Nurses and doctors go home.  Others ship out to some other part of the war.  Some new people move into the life of the 4077.  Yet the patients continue to come.  They just keep on showing up.

Finish one 30 hour O/R session…another one comes around in a day or two.  Save this soldier; lose the next one.  Patch them up so they can go back to the front and the fighting.  It all seems so pointless.  Yet, they do it anyway.

They do their jobs and do them well.  Each one…each one from colonel to private can be relied upon to carry out their particular mission at the M.A.S.H.  They do the hard things.  They do them well.  And they do them one. Patient. At. A. time.

 

There’s a lesson there…a lesson for us all, and particularly for me.  Sometimes it’s hard to even get up in the morning, let alone come in to work knowing that the day is largely an unknown quantity.  Yes, I have some idea what I’d like to accomplish this day, but I don’t know from moment to moment who may show up at the office door.  I don’t know what the next phone call may be about.  The emails come all day, without advance notice.  A member suffers a medical emergency.  Maybe a member comes to my office door with bad news of some kind.  The office visitors to our entrance door usually have some kind of need that requires some kind of immediate attention.  And just as is portrayed on some M.A.S.H. episodes, the need expressed is often a felt need when the real need lies hidden behind eyes that have seen entirely too much suffering and pain.

I get inspiration to continue the work we do at RiverWalk from many of the M.A.S.H. episodes.  I also am inspired by those I know in the greater Wichita community who, along with thousands of others, get up each day, knowing that the things they’ve planned for the day often will be supplanted by some kind of emergent situation that becomes the priority of the moment.

They will see the parts of society that most will never see.  They will interact with and work with people whose full time job is figuring out how to survive the day.  They will be doing the hard things…and doing them with compassion, kindness, and competence.

None of us will see the full picture.  We will only see what has been presented to us, and we may occasionally glimpse the story of another co-worker.  But somehow, it all seems to fit together and work together toward the goal of renewal…renewal of body and renewal of spirit.  The things my friends Suzie, Jennifer, Ryan, Julie, Tim, Mike, Kristen, Alaina, and a host of others do every day are all geared, whether they always realize it or not, toward renewal and new creation.

The work can be difficult.  It can be intense.  More often than it should be, the client we are working with will not follow up or help their situation in any meaningful ways, and we may have to disengage from that situation.

The work tends to drain us of both physical and emotional strength.  It often seems, just like in the M.A.S.H. episodes, to be a never-ending battle.  And it often seems like we’re all stuck in the mud, never moving forward, and sometimes getting stuck even deeper in the mire and muck.

Yet we continue…churches and faith communities, non-profits, government, and most of all individual people…we all continue to, as the Apostle Paul said, “press on toward the goal.”  That same apostle also admonished us to “Always excel in the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”  Good words.

Continue on…

 

Blessings…

An Intense Week

 Good afternoon.

 I say at the outset that I wrote most of this before September 11, but am recording it on Friday the 12^th.  You need to know that I very much have 9-11 on my mind today.  I watched it all unfold.  I grieved with the rest of the country as the towers fell…first one, then the other.  I thought about the future…what that might look like as we prepared for a war of the kind we had never fought before.  The Super Bowl commercial for Budweiser that ran only one time…the one with the Clydesdales kneeling still brings tears to my eyes.  This has been an intense week politically…with the Kirk assassination and the 9-11 observance.  It has also been intense for me personally this week as I had to attend to several situations that drained much of my emotional energy.  That’s one reason why I’m recording this on Friday instead of Thursday.  So, with that understanding, let’s launch into the thought for this week.

I don’t know who Charlie Kirk was.  I think I can truthfully say I had never heard of his name before his assassination.  I normally don’t pay much attention to political activists of any party or persuasion.  As an Independent, I do my best to try to find information from the least biased sources possible, something I find increasingly difficult and practically impossible to do.  Political activists just don’t fill that bill for me.  I’m sure they have their place, and I respect that.  Just not for me.

However, to silence anyone..anyone because of their political speech or belief is so far beyond the bounds of human decency.  I’m old enough to remember the assassination of JFK, RFK, and MLK in the 1960’s.  I’m old enough to remember the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan.  And there are others…some relatively recently.

Let me say it again.  To silence or attempt to silence anyone because of their political speech or belief is far, far beyond the bounds of human decency.  There is no place for this kind of violence.  And, may I say, there is no place for most kinds of violence we hear about on a daily basis…political or otherwise.

In 1992, Rodney King famously said, “Can’t we all just get along?”  That question remains unanswered in the minds of many, and in the minds of others, the answer is a resounding, “NO.”  But in the hearts of multitudes of Americans today, that question has been eliciting a “Yes,” answer over the decades…an answer that daily is being tested and tried.

So, what is the answer?  How do we fix this?  I’ll tell you now that I don’t have the answer.  I don’t know how we fix someone’s desire and need to kill someone they disagree with politically.

What I do know is that we can look inward.  We can look at our own biases…our own beliefs…our own tendencies.  We can take a good look at what we hear on TV or radio, what we see on social media, what we read and absorb.  We can take another good look at how we think about others who disagree with us politically, religiously, or philosophically, and how we might act toward them.  We can check our speech…the words we say and how we say them.  We can control our own thoughts and motives.

And if we find we cannot control those thoughts or actions, we can get the help we need in order to bring those things under control so we don’t contribute to the problem, but rather become part of the solution.

In other words, we may not have any influence over what the President says, or what the Senate Minority Leader says.  We may not be able to influence the speech of our Governor or Attorney General.  But we CAN decide what WE are going to say and do and think, and we can find the help we need if we have trouble doing that.

By the way, this kind of thing applies not only to political things…it also applies to religion and religious belief.  Belittling, talking down to, name-calling, and the like do nothing to promote harmony, peace, and unity.  They do a LOT to promote division, discord, and violence.  Think about it before you go off half-cocked on someone else because of their religious belief, their political persuasion, or one of any number of other things that we might use to stereotype or discriminate.

OK, now that I’ve said my piece on this, let me tell you we had a great weekend at the Eastwood Church of Christ in Hutchinson.  They hosted Keith Lancaster, founder of Acappella Ministries for a weekend “Songfest.”  The name tells what we did…we sang…acappella…both new as well as old songs of the church.  ‘Twas an experience of a lifetime, if I might say.

And, we, the bride and I, got to go to the Kansas State Fair on our own sans grand kids.  We separated pretty much as soon as we got through the entrance gate.  She went her way and I went mine.  We met up a couple of times and did some things together, but all in all it was a relaxing time for the both of us to get to see what we wanted to see, but not have to wrangle grand kids.

I saw some of the livestock exhibits, which she doesn’t care so much for…and she was able to see some of the more, um, domestic exhibits that are on the fairgrounds.  We rode some of the more tame rides that we traditionally go for…the train…the Old Mill…the sky ride.  We avoided the twirly, whirly, shake-em-up rides as well as the carnival games that no one can win.

We ate ice cream under the grand stand…had a funnel cake, and enjoyed lunch in the Cottonwood building.  I got my usual catfish lunch and she got the chicken & noodles lunch.  Pretty good stuff.  We bought some honey to bring home, and generally had a pleasant day of cooler weather and not a lot of sunshine.

If you have a chance, you need to take a day and go to the fair.  Yes, it costs some money to do it, but the entertainment is cheap, and they have a lot of free stuff on the fairgrounds.  The Lake Talbot boat rides, the giant slide, the train, sky ride, and Old Mill are all owned by the fair, which keeps prices in line so families can afford to have a really enjoyable day at the fair.

And while you’re in Hutchinson, check out Stratica the salt mine as well as one of the better aero-space museums around…the Cosmosphere.  The zoo is free admission and is a pretty nice one for the free admission.  Check them out soon.

 

Blessings, all.

Are You Trustworthy?

 Good afternoon.

 Over the course of a decade or more in working with the benevolent program at the church, I have become more attuned, I think, to the things people say and the possible meaning behind those things.  Many of those who come to the office looking for some kind of help are in a segment of society that many of us have little familiarity of.  The working poor and those who are disabled frequently visit the office asking for some kind of assistance.  Some are people I have worked with several times over the years, and have come to know more about their situations and life experiences.

In the course of conversation, people have told me about family members who are abusive or have been abused in some way.  They tell me about deadbeat boyfriends and adult children who won’t get a job.  They visit with me about someone they took into their home who was in worse shape than they, but have proven to be more of a burden than they could bear.  They speak to me about giving someone their last five dollars or their last meal rather than having that for themselves.

I have come to believe that most of what I hear by far is either the truth, or is the truth as they perceive it to be.  And even if only half of what they tell me is true, I still find it incredible that some of these people can even make it through the day, let alone weeks or months at a time.

I’m also finding out something else.  I have had several people, in the course of working with them over a long period of several years, and all of them women, tell me in the course of some conversation we were having that they trust me.

“I trust you,” they will say, stopping in the middle of some story to say that.  And then they will continue to tell about their latest run-in with a boyfriend, or their having to sleep on the street.  Or perhaps they will talk about a grown daughter who abandoned her children to Grandma.  Or they speak of some other thing in their life that is working against them.

These are, by and large, women who have suffered some kind of abuse from a man in their life.  A father or step-dad.  A boyfriend.  Or maybe a grown son.  It could be a friend or relative.

Whatever the circumstance, I have to wonder how many other men these women could say the same thing with sincerity…”I trust you.”  I have to wonder just how broken that trust factor is for them and how much courage it takes for them to say to me that they trust me.

I also wonder what it was, or is, that I have done or am doing that prompts these women to make that declaration to me…just how unusual it might be to have a man in their life who they feel like they can trust…and how many men have forfeited that relationship with them because of some abusive action.

I have to wonder just how this lack of trust has scarred these women, and how that scarring has affected their present circumstance…how things might be different for them if they only could have fully trusted other men who have been in their lives.  And I have to wonder just how I can work to help them regain appropriate trust in other people, and especially other men.

I then wonder, if I should introduce them to Jesus of Nazareth, just how they could possibly trust him.  Here he is, yet another man, telling them things that seem too good to be true, yet telling them to trust him implicitly, not only in this life, but in a life to come.  He tells them he can give them rest from their heavy burdens.  He tells them he will love them unconditionally and without reservation.  He says he can be their mentor and partner through life and will never leave them or toss them aside.

He says things that just seem to be utterly unfathomable to these women…women who have been abused, used, beaten and belittled.  Women who have endured so much pain and suffering at the hands of one or more of the men in her life.

Why, for heaven’s sake, would she want another man in her life such as Jesus?  She’s heard it all before.  The sky-high promises.  The “I love you,” language.  The lies wrapped in half truths.  He’s just another one of those who want something from me…he doesn’t really love or want me.  He just wants to use me and throw me away just like all the others.

“I trust you.”  That may well be something these women don’t say very often to very many others.  It may be something that is difficult for them to say even to me.  But it is something that I need to have a better grip on as far as the meaning behind it and my responsibility to not damage that trust in any way.  And rather suddenly, that short statement becomes a flashing sign in the darkness, telling me that I have a great responsibility, not only to this woman, but to all who I encounter…to emulate as best I can the life of Jesus…so that one day I may be able to tell them of this man who they too can trust.  Someone who can love them far more, and with a perfect love that I cannot fully emulate, even as hard as I might try.

I’ll leave this right there…and I’ll encourage you to take a long look at your relationships.  Can others say with sincerity that they trust you in the same sense that these women tell me?  Are you trustworthy?

 

Blessings,