Storylines

Last year, after a particularly wrenching death within the community, a dear friend sent me this excerpt from the epilogue of Mary Lou Kownacki’s Monasteries of the Heart.

See,
I used to believe
that with enough care,
with enough acceptance,
the victims of poverty,
of mental illness,
would become whole,
would lead meaningful lives.
But that didn’t hold true
for Zelda
What Zelda has taught me,
then,
is that you don’t care for someone-
give him or her a home,
some food,
your time -
in order that she or he gets better, or things turn out
right.

You care
for someone
because you care
for someone,

You love
someone
because you love
someone.

I’ve returned to this prose again and again and again to remind me that the point of loving is loving, not to cram someone into my personal and idealized version of what their life should be. As Father Greg Boyle says, we go to the margins not to make change, but to be changed.

Sometimes people don’t get better.
They don’t find a landlord that will take their voucher and it expires.
They can’t find their way back to reality because it’s too painful.
They don’t find a steady job, a steady partner, a steady paycheck.

And sometimes they do.

One of the big things I’ve learned in this work is that the whole story of someone’s life is not yet written. Like a novel with a surprise extra chapter, or a thrilling epilogue, there can always be surprise.

Today, J. reminded me of that.

Several months ago, J. was released from jail (for failing to appear on a camping ticket — an excellent use of community resource, by the way), and was identified for housing. J. and I worked together to gather his documents, to get to his appointments, to try to find a place… but as is often the case, someone sleeping on the streets spends too much time trying to survive and not enough time trying to carve out a future. This is not a result of an intrinsic character flaw: it’s a result of the inherent scarcity of time and the sheer amount of time it takes to stay alive on the streets. This doesn’t, of course, mean that J. did everything right: he made mistakes and some of them pissed me, as his advocate, right off.

It wasn’t terribly long before J. had lost his chance at housing and had turned to substances to help him cope. Since he was no longer in active pursuit of housing, he moved to the second tier of my attention, with the first being reserved for people who needed me more to keep moving forward. It’s a weakness of mine: I’m action-oriented and if someone is stuck in the spin cycle, it’s hard for me to sit with them and be a listening ear. It’s true about me whether I’m proud of it or not.

This, in turn, pissed J. right off. One day he slipped past volunteers and camped out in my office to tell me that I had failed him and to accuse me of cutting off his food stamps. The former allegation was rooted in truth, the latter was absurd. We had two similar exchanges before I erected barriers for him to visit with me.

Anyone on our team can help him with basic requests, and, I reasoned, it was not a good use of anyone’s time or dignity to hurl accusations at the other person. So he saw other people at the office.

This morning, I decided I’d see him next time he asked, just to do a temperature check and see where we might be able to make progress together.

It turned out that J. is stone-cold sober and living in a sober community. He went to detox for himself, and is working to get his life back on track. He looked amazing and it was joyful to see him. We were both proud to know him today.

I wouldn’t have known this chapter if I had written J off as a “lost cause.” If I had decided, summarily, that he was unhelpable or unworthy.

That’s the tricky thing about being human. Other humans always surprise us and the story is never, ever over. That’s why, when people get into housing, we don’t just walk away, pat ourselves on the back, and call it good. People change, circumstances change, new needs arise as old ones are addressed. No one is beyond help or unworthy, and the final chapter usually has yet to be written.

The thing that doesn’t change is our need for other people. That’s why J. kept asking to see me, even as I kept him at bay. He knew I was someone who believed in him. And right now he needs that belief.

There is a chasm between wishing someone well and wishing someone away. To truly, lovingly, wish someone well, you must engage their version of well, not your own. J.’s transition to the next chapter of his life is written entirely by him, and it’s (frankly) better than the one I envisioned initially. If you’re superimposing your ideals and values onto other human beings, you’re wishing them away. Maybe not in the Nextdoor-rant, letter-to-the-editor kind of way, but it’s still what you’re doing.

As important as we think we are, we cannot always control things. Some people will not heal, will not get sober, will not find housing, will not hold a job. And some of them will not accomplish these things… yet.

But they can always change you if you let them, and they are never, ever beyond love.

You love
someone
because you love
someone.