October 22, 2011

Greetings My Friend,

For many years I went on mission trips. I got to meet people from different walks of life. Many times these people were the ones that fell through the cracks of society. They lived in quiet desperation. They didn’t have enough money to get the help they needed to make their home livable by the general population standards. Some didn’t have the skills to interact with society. Some were abused and fell through the help cracks. I truly got to see the desperation in their eyes.

For me the hardest mission trip was the year I was divorced. That year we went to help paint the shelter for women who were abused. In that place I met women who were struggling to break away from an abuser’s grip. They were beside themselves in overcoming the fear they had been living with. I guess I felt them way down deep in my being. I felt many times during that week that I should have been a woman in that community. I never went to a domestic abuse shelter. I should have, I would have gotten the strength to walk away, the support I would have needed to care for my children. My family kept sending me back saying that I was annoying and probably deserved the abuse. The problem is I was more than likely annoying because I kept trying to not aggravate the man. As the years have gone on I find that no matter what I did….I did not deserve to be beat. So if I ran around on my husband…and I didn’t he had no right to beat me. If I messed up dinner, he had no right to beat me. This has been hard for me to learn. I don’t deserve to get hit because I’m annoying.

I had a fear of walking into another relationship like the one I left. It was a huge fear. If I had to live through what I did the first time around….I didn’t want to be married again. My counselor taught me that “healthy finds healthy” so I worked extra hard at getting healthy.

When I met Junior one of the first questions I had was did he need to hit women. He said that if I aggravated him that much to hit me, he would walk out the door and never come back. He did not want to be with a woman that aggravated him that much. In his own way Junior comforted me. I knew he would not hit me even if I was annoying.

I keep playing with another phrase….”until you have walked a mile in my shoes” I feel that in my own life a whole lot. People don’t understand. When I hear comments like “I would never,” I feel frustrated. You don’t know until you are in the middle of something and don’t know how to get out….so I’d never….well you just don’t know.

I met a precious friend here in VA. This woman has made me giggle when I would have rather curled up in bed and not enter into a day. She has accepted me as I am and even found me funny and fun to be with. She has wanted to make our friendship like family. She wants to spend holidays with me and we even cook a holiday meal.

This woman is very intelligent. She is witty and funny. We share the sting of abuse. It is not a constant conversation but from time to time when life flares up around us we will help the other through painful moments. We understand on a level that other people don’t. Because she has been willing to listen more than one time, I’ve been able to process and then move on.

This woman was in a car accident many years ago. The car accident has messed her back up real bad and she has lived on assistance for most of her adult life. She had a son outside of marriage. She moved in with her mother to raise this son. When Mom died the woman inherited the house and she continues to live there. This house and a vehicle is all this woman owns in the world. Her son is now an adult and finding a job out here is difficult at best. Making ends meet and keeping the house in good repair have been difficult at best. Bouts of deep dark depression have consumed her as well. She is playing a constant game of how to make her very meager income stretch far enough. It is a constant rob Peter to pay Paul way of life for her.

As I have learned how desperate her struggle to sustain herself and her son I have felt a deep tug in my heart. I want to go buy all new things for her, help her clean up her home and yard and make life over for her. I can’t…we can’t begin to afford to bring her back to a more comfortable life. I can help here and there. As we were moving her refrigerator died. We had an old dorm sized refrigerator that we were keeping water and pop in on our porch. She wanted to buy it from us so we asked for $25. This is now her refrigerator. She wanted to pay for the refrigerator. It made her happy to buy her own.

Part of my struggle is that here in the US there are people who are living below poverty level. Their homes are more like 3rd world homes. This woman and her son are in that category. She said that things kept falling apart and life kept going downhill and this is the best she can do. We can sit in judgment or we can begin to open our hearts to these people. This woman is not a drunk or drug addict. She suffers with deep depression. The more she can’t get life in order the deeper her depression can go. People in the community make fun of her. In fact as I was befriending her, I had people tell me I should not befriend her. They could not give me a reason other than she wasn’t liked. This friend has accepted me as I am. She allows me to be me. We are funny together. We are like toddlers. We talk side by side both at the same time and neither one hears what the other is saying. She needs a friend. I want to be her friend. She has been a friend to me.

I don’t have a happy ending to her story. I am trying to find out what the church can do. I am trying to help her and be her friend. Sometimes that is the most important gift we can give to someone, friendship. God took me where I was at and loved me. In that love I find I can move out of struggles and face life. Because God loved me first I am now able to love as I am loved. So I reach out to this woman and love her.

Who has God placed in your life to love? Are they weird? Maybe there is a lesson?

May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.
Love
Janet