I haven't written in the past few weeks for several reasons. I've been depressed; lost over 10 pounds. I have felt like a complete failure in every way and a lot of my clients hit the fan with certain things: Ms. Walker thought I was involved in a shooting in her neighborhood. Ms. Cynthia had another PCP trip and she and her mother literally screamed at each other; her mother told her she wished she'd had an abortion and Cynthia was nothing. Worthless. And I'm there in the apartment and start crying myself. Also worthless. Ms. Dudley needs a lot of rental assistance and cussed me out because she lied on a benevolence application from this church and got denied money. Ms. Brown's CRF director wants her to have a completely new doctor and medical evaluation when really, the woman's a lazy, sometimes cruel person who refuses to help herself. Tarsha Smith's out of food. Rose Shaw's son is stealing money from her and she needs a new payee. Lisa Ruth has to have supervised visits with her daughter and guess who gets to go with her? Oh, and add to that my paperwork has sucked, SUCKED lately and I have felt like I can't do anything right. I've gotten lectures about memorizing my clients NOW, knowing everything about the SSA system NOW, CFSA NOW, court hearings, appeals, food stamps, crisis beds, hospitalizations, authorizations for disclosure of health information, referrals, background checks, probation officers, TANF, SSDI qualifications... the list goes on and on and I've been too overwhelmed to do anything. I've lost 10 pounds since taking this job. I'm 110-113 and haven't been this small since high school.
I am working on the art of shutting my brain off and not allowing certain thoughts to go to far, especially the "you're not good enough" thoughts. Those are the worst, and they get me down every time. The good news is, I got all my treatment plans done PROPERLY this time around, as well as caught up on Lisa Ruth's monthly from MAY when I wasn't even her case manager, as well as caught up on face sheets, as well as made over 100% productivity, as well as got all my client's assessments finished. I'm caught up, and over the weekend, I don't have to think about work at all. That's a huge deal, and I'm thankful for it.
In this job, The Lord is showing me the most incredible, breathtaking things, and through this job, I feel like I'm discovering things for the very first time. Is that strange? I feel like I am knowing myself, allowing myself to really rip off the layers of protection I built so people wouldn't see the real me, but I feel no reason to hide the real me at work, around these people I work with, both in the office as co-workers and outside the office as clients. I am a very emotional person, and I have allowed myself to feel these things so deeply and become so moved over the past 2 months. I weep over tragedy, the injustices and the unfairness of it all, and I weep over joy that prevails. I smile at the people who try, who want nothing more than to get out of the ghetto and live differently, and I wonder at their perseverance.
How incredible the human spirit is. These young boys and girls who get an education and get out are going to become so culture shocked from the white America they'll encounter, and yet white America will never go down to the ghettos and understand where the blacks came from. We'll never appreciate the courage it took to break out of that comfort zone, even if it was the ghetto, and get to another place. And the unsuccessful people without the tenacity to get out? The ones on drugs who have abusive, traumatic histories they can't get past? Those are my clients, and through all the feelings of worthlessness (because I really can't think of a better word to describe the root of this depression), I have been given the great privilege of being used by the Lord to attempt to love people as Jesus would've loved. And seeing people react to that cannot help but move you.
It has to move you.
It has to be something powerful to the point where I won't be satisfied with the everyday status quo. I don't want to be satisfied with it. Even down to the cup of cold water, and supporting my clients when no one else will, loving others like Jesus is literally the hardest thing in the world. The hardest. I don't know how He did it. But It's not easy to love people who are angry at you, so entrenched in Satan's lies that defeat seems inevitable; knowing that and loving them anyway. My flesh tells me its a waste of time, its hopeless, and that nothing will come of it. My flesh tells me I could be doing something else with my life. What sucks is I'm right. But Jesus is greater than the lies my flesh says, and my trust is fully in my Savior who saved me when no one else could.
