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Sheltered Christmas Memories

How the (beep!) do you make happy Christmas memories in a homeless shelter?  This was the first question asked as our special speaker from the local craft store concluded her presentation.  

Eager to alleviate the misery of homeless families during the holiday season, volunteers from the nearby shopping mall visited the family shelter each Tuesday in December and demonstrated ways to make the holiday season merry and bright.  Photos and completed crafts were displayed in participating stores and sometimes donations were collected which benefited the shelter – community engagement at it’s best.  

Most of the shelter guests, who received incentives for attending the classes, genuinely enjoyed the classes which provided a welcome deviation from the typical Tuesday night support group.  Sometimes the presentation was painfully impractical.  The excited college student employed by the craft store and seeking to fulfill required community service hours came to the family shelter with gingerbread molds, frosting bags, candies, and a variety of sprinkles.  She explained that with minimal effort moms and dads could create a warm, lasting family memory by making gingerbread houses and decorating the holiday home with their tasty creations. She carefully demonstrated the process and seemed oblivious to the scowls and rolled eyes of her students.  There were no dads in our women’s shelter.  The women had restricted access to the kitchen and all food that was not consumed had to be discarded.  Many of the families shopped at the convenience store across the street – the only store within walking distance – which did not sell gingerbread or sprinkles.  The irony of creating from gingerbread the one thing you most needed in reality – a house – was hard to swallow.  

But the core issue was even more discouraging – how can you celebrate anything in a shelter?  How can you create memories in a place that you hope your children will soon forget?  The women in shelter without children often ignored the holiday or simply worked extra hours and appreciated the overtime compensation; but for moms with children it was difficult to hide from Christmas.  To complicate the celebration, volunteer groups would bring Christmas (a terrible phrase from volunteer management world) weeks before the actual day of Christmas, so all gifts and parties and visits from Santa were long gone by the the 25th of December which was usually lonely and uneventful.

Whether you are celebrating the holiday with your family in a homeless shelter or simply under stressful circumstances, a few realities remain. 

1.  You cannot make a memory.  The concept of making family memories is contrived by those selling products or experiences designed to do so.  You cannot control what someone remembers or how they preserve an event in their hearts and minds.  I have five children who are very close in age and they remember (or do not remember) family events in five different ways, some positive and some negative. We live in the present. 

2.  There is always something to celebrate. Look for and embrace the goodness of each day as it is.  After the gingerbread presentation in shelter that Tuesday, the mothers present were encouraged to consider what their children enjoy about living in shelter.  One young mother said that she could not think of anything that her two year old son, Jamal, enjoyed.  All of us exclaimed at once – Jamal likes to swing!  It was true – Jamal could sit in the swing on the playground outside for hours. So swing! No toy or visit from Santa or hand crafted gingerbread house would please Jamal more than sitting in the swing, pumping his chubby little legs and giggling at his mom.  No child in our city would be happier on Christmas morning than Jamal, wrapped in his faded blue blanket and snuggling his one armed teddy bear on a swing in the shelter’s back yard.

As helpers, we regularly pity those living in poverty during the holiday season and go to great lengths to provide a manufactured Merry Christmas.  Sometimes we de-value the goodness in whatever a family does have by deciding that it must be MORE in order to be valid and Christmas-worthy.  We may transport to the family homeless shelter the same consumerism that makes Christmas so disappointing and dysfunctional in our own suburban homes. 

There was real kindness and compassion in the hearts and actions of the wonderful volunteers who donated toys and baked cookies and decorated gingerbread houses and there was also great value in the traditions and resourcefulness of those living in the shelter – how do we appreciate both?  How do we acknowledge and grieve the injustices in our society and donate and volunteer and serve while simultaneously highlighting and exalting the goodness and strengths in each beautiful, struggling family? How can we encourage one another to lay aside the pressure to conform to the ideal holiday season as described by advertisers and embrace and celebrate what we have in front of us?  How do we strive to recognize the insufficiency and the people and resources that are missing but also embrace and rejoice in what we have, however small.  How do we as neighbors desperately search for Joy and Peace together in all places at all times?

Knowing What is Mine to Do

I have done what was mine to do, may Christ now show you what is yours to do.  

It is said that St. Francis of Assisi uttered these last words to his brothers and friends moments before he died.  Barely able to move, he asked the friars caring for him to remove all of his clothes and place him on the floor so that he could die as he had lived in poverty and simplicity.  In these last humble moments he was satisfied that he had accomplished God’s purpose for his short life and he prayed that those he served and trained would also learn to honor the limitations of their work and calling. 

Everyone I engage needs more that I can give.  Every one I pour my resources and time and energy into still needs more.  Even those that leave my presence, ministry, or organization satisfied will need more tomorrow.  If I took the most desperate, most innocent, most deserving   person in my community and gave to her all of my money, my home, my car, and the promise of all of my affection and attention – it still would not be enough to totally satisfy all of her emotional, physical, material, and spiritual needs.  She would still be lacking.  I was not created to completely satisfy another person, nor was one individual created to meet all of my needs.  We are hunters and gatherers.  We are designed to search for and find solutions – to grow and nurture and develop and then wake up the next day and do it all again.  

We are designed to find and discover and share what we need within the context of community and not within a single relationship.  The concept of a one-stop-shop has great value for service providers and for those in need, but the reality is we will not find literally everything we need in one place at one time.  Life is an ongoing discovery of what we need in the eyes and arms and words and homes of many people.

Helpers can forget the beauty of this truth and become disappointed when those they serve leave their presence or their ministry with more to do, more to find, more to figure out.  We would like neighbors in need to visit us and walk away with food, housing, clothing, education, job skills, meaningful employment, fulfilling relationships, and more.  When someone leaves disappointed or knowing that they have more to do we can feel a sense of failure – they are still in need, they have problems that are not solved, they are not happy, we must have failed.  

It is not the job of any solitary person or organization to address all the needs of an individual or to solve all of the problems of humanity as they are expressed in a single face or family.  We share in the journey; we give a bottle of cold water at one point in a very long race.  Again, we must know what we are called or equipped or funded to do and feel good about the part we play without taking responsibility for all aspects of another’s life.  We must know what is ours to do and stand firm in the value of our role, believing that there are other helpers along the way for each of us.  Like St. Francis we must look for ways to remind one another of this truth, and find goodness in it.  

Measuring Worth

This really makes me question the value of my life’s work.  I looked at my friend as she finished this statement, wondering if this was sarcasm or something more serious.  We had just entered a large gymnasium in Memphis filled with nursing students, medical equipment, and several hundred people experiencing homelessness gathered for a homeless health care day.  Those living in poverty could receive basic health and dental screenings and medical students could practice their skills and accrue required community service hours.   The scene was somewhat chaotic and apprehension was evident in the faces of many of those awaiting medical care and many of those providing medical care, but nothing in the environment made me question my life’s calling.  

What do you mean?  I asked.

She seemed to be counting, disappointment and agitation growing in her expression. 

I’ve housed these people already.  In the last five years, I’ve housed at least twenty – no, twenty two – of the people standing in line here for services.  Hours of case management, housing applications, landlord agreements, moving days and furniture searches – for what?!?  Here they are, homeless again.  What’s the point?

Most work to address homelessness includes prescribed outcomes or deliverables which must be measured and reported.  Like the business world, the non-profit economy demands results and evidence of success.  Yet, the non profit sector does not promote a product or create sales goals, it measures success in people.  People who have their own unpredictable goals and ideals.  People with struggles, dysfunctional behaviors, and even total failures.  In order to consistently work toward a desired goal with people, we must carefully consider how we individually and corporately define success, regardless of outcomes reported or budgets reconciled.  We must hold the tension of properly stewarding the resources we have to share and generously giving of ourselves without condition or expectation.  

My friend in Memphis worked for an organization created to help people without housing find housing.  And she did that.  She created relationships with landlords and apartment managers and she creatively and beautifully found ways to connect her neighbors who needed housing with those who owned or managed housing. She went a step further and created partnerships with local thrift stores and churches who would donate furniture and other essentials to new residents.  Some of those she assisted thrived in their new homes.  Some did not. Relapse into substance use or complex mental illness, unauthorized roommates, poor stewardship of the property, domestic disturbances, and a host of other complexities resulted in eviction for many of her clients.  A few simply missed the community they had experienced in the camp or shelter and so they abandoned their housing.  Whatever the reason, some of those that she assisted eventually moved out or were forced out of the housing they once celebrated with her.  

Does this mean she failed?  Does this mean that the hours she invested in these individuals were wasted? If her measure of success is long term/forever housing – then yes, she failed.  The goal was not met.  However, if her goal is to meaningfully engage her neighbors, to actively listen, to model community engagement, to make connections among neighbors and community members, to provide the assistance and support requested each day to the best of her ability, to help someone without housing find housing – then she succeeded.  

Discouragement and disillusionment in this work occur when we create an unattainable or unrealistic standard for success.  We cannot control the course of someone’s life or guarantee that someone will be healthy or create a treatment plan that ensures that someone’s life forever aligns with our ideal.  We can, on good days, provide the services promised with compassion and hope.  What the client does with those services is out of our control.  We make available our agency’s resources, our time, our energy, our compassion in a healthy, appropriate way to our neighbor in need. If they choose not to make the “best” use of what is offered, that is not ours to control. 

Somehow we must wrestle with the necessity of defining our mission and determining to whom and how we offer the resources we have.  And this is a great struggle within the field of homeless services – do we seek the most vulnerable, the most likely to succeed, the most desperate, the most deserving?  Do we offer housing, food, case management, education?How can these things be determined and measured?  It is a conversation each individual and agency must constantly re-visit.  However, when we determine to offer our services we must be able to release the desire to control all outcomes.  While striving to serve as good stewards, we must also trust that what we offer is truly that, an offering, a gift that we cheerfully give believing it has value regardless of how well it is used.

Why Am I Here?

Hospitality requires first of all that the host feels at home in their own house.  Henri Nouwen

Several years ago I accidentally attended a Christmas party in a rural domestic violence shelter.  I was meeting a young mother and her toddler son for the third time to complete their Medicaid application, but the party was running late and it’s hard to compete with Christmas cookies and volunteers in inflatable Santa costumes.  As the party concluded, the volunteers entered the room with armloads of surprise gifts for the children.  The mother I was meeting stood in shock.  Her toddler son dove into the gifts and began to scream with delight at the pile of toys before him.  She began to cry and pushed past the volunteers cursing them as she ran from the room in tears.  

I knew why the young mother was angry.  She had worked overtime for weeks to save enough money to buy a few small gifts for her little boy.  She was elated to have something to give him on Christmas morning.  The gifts were small and mostly from the dollar store, but as a toddler he would have been excited to see them.  Now her gifts seemed pathetic and cheap compared with the lavish, mostly not-age-appropriate gifts from the volunteers.  

But, of course, the volunteers did not know any of this.  They were hurt and angry at the young mother’s words and quickly made assumptions about how these people respond to hard earned gifts.  Very harsh things were said about the young mother, comparing her with the other grateful residents.   The group did not volunteer again.  

There are many reasons why one moves toward another human being in need.  Pity, anger, and guilt combine with compassion, generosity, and hospitality and a host of other feelings and motivations to form a complex internal storm that can rarely be discerned as donations are gathered and food boxes distributed.

When one neighbor gives to another neighbor in order to receive some intangible affirmation in return, often both parties feel empty and used.  Acts of charity can not fulfill my need to feel important, valued, affirmed, seen, or approved.  When these needs motivate me the work becomes very much like walking on a frozen pond in early spring.  Each step may be solid or it may not.  Each interaction, conversation, good deed may yield the desired good feeling or it may reinforce feelings of worthlessness and rejection if those we help do not respond to our goodness with the desired adoration or respect.  It turns out that many people in need do not respond to relief efforts or long term commitment with displays of affection and words of praise.  In fact, many are unhappy with the help provided and may – for a lot of good and complicated  reasons – express only disappointment or the desire for more.  As a result the helper can develop patterns of thinking and behaving that are unhealthy.  

Is this person grateful?

Do they really deserve the help I am offering?

Do they really need this?

Are they lying to me?

How long are they going to come here looking for help?

Do they do anything to give back?

Some of these questions are valid in developing a strategic plan for distribution of resources.  However, when these questions linger in our hearts and minds and become sources of suspicion and paranoia guiding the direction of our service to others, we can find ourselves bitter, exhausted, and ready to quit.  

Creating a place where others feel welcome – which is foundational to all social services, ministries, and loving homes – means creating a place that is free from unspoken demands and  hidden motivations.  No one should walk in the door expected to meet the emotional needs of those providing the services.  Reciprocity and the building of genuine interconnected community where members truly depend on one another are components of the ultimate goal.  Codependence and unhealthy attachment are not.

Helpers who joyfully engage their neighbors in need and thrive in the work develop disciplines and practices that encourage pure motives and intentions.  Individuals, teams, and agencies should find ways to remind one another of the true reasons why they do the work they do and create space to challenge unhealthy motives, intentionally removing the beam from their own eyes before attempting to remove the speck from the eye of their neighbor.

Reflection Questions:

  1. What do I hope to gain from helping others?
  2. How do I want to be treated by those I serve?
  3. What kinds of interactions leave me feeling frustrated and disappointed?  Why?
  4. What kinds interactions leave me feeling energized?  Why?
  5. What do I need from my team members or partners in the work?
  6. How would I know if I or the group with which I serve have unhealthy expectations from one another or those we support?