Being Worn (not in the knees)

I wish there were more moments in my life recently of which I could say that I was knocked down to my knees and decided to pray instead of dusting myself off and getting up right away.  See, I've been working for the past month and a half at a shelter for homeless, runaway, and trafficked youth in New York City (more on that later), and I've been knocked down often.  It happens.  It happened a few weeks ago when I did an initial comprehensive history with a newly-arrived minor who had been (somewhat willingly) trafficked into New York from several states away then brought by her pimp to our shelter to "work out her issues before coming back" to him, and then returned to the shared staff office where a resident was in tears over having just witnessed another resident be beaten bloody by police for jumping the subway turnstile--went home and cried and prayed.  And it happened more recently when I accompanied a resident to a two-hour psychiatric evaluation in which the exploitation of a friend-turned-abusive (is that redundant?) pimp and the anguish of an antecedent stillbirth that I'd learned about in her comprehensive history were painted in even sharper, fuller strokes--went home and sat on my bed and tried to find some comfort in the familiar Psalms.  But that's a mere two days of a few dozen to date, perhaps not all as intense, but all bringing me face to face with what feels like the underbelly of a world that's stubbornly asunder.  The rest of the days I come home and watch TV or cook and eat dinner or talk with my housemates.  It's not all that often that I remember that praying is breathing.

Usually I pride myself--and that's not a word I use nonchalantly, pride--on being able to bounce back so readily.  Cursed out?  Well, it's not personal.  Girls fighting?  Deescalate and call security if that doesn't work, then write up the incident.  Out of towels?  Apologize since there's not much you can do, already having requested some earlier that day and the previous two days.  But keep moving forward, because there's already a line out the office door: someone needs a metro card, someone needs a letter certifying their residency at a homeless shelter to apply for food stamps, someone needs their room changed because their roommate refuses to clean, someone needs their medication, and someone is just bored and wants to hang out in the office.  And it's good, because that's just what you have to do.  But it's also bad, because having accomplished so much in a day makes me more prone not to let myself be knocked down to prayer.  I can do this!  Really, though, I can't; wasn't built to.  I tell myself this to remember it's true and to make it true; some days I really don't believe that I can't.  Again and again though, the catharsis of the cross wins out over the catharsis of even the most wonderful of housemates rehashing with me the injustices and the trauma of just-another-day-at work, at least when I let it.

I'm lacking.  I hope I've made that clear.  My heart is often more worn than the knees of my work pants, which should be the most prayer-torn pants knees I own.  But that does not mean my experience of working is devoid of spiritual insight.  When I go to work, I know it's an honor.  It's early in my experience of working at the shelter, and I have no qualms admitting that--but still! most days I wake up and I can't believe I have the privilege of going to the shelter, at best to be of help but at least to just be a person who cares enough to be there.  Even when I'm proud of myself for a successful shift, I'm not self-congratulatory in a good-for-you-for-working-at-a-shelter kind of way; this, too, is a gift that's given to me, to not be allowed to close my eyes to darkness and injustice for too long and to see my residents at both their absolute best and their most wrenching worst and to be knocked down, at least to have the call to prayer resound in my knees striking the ground even when I don't answer it.  Yeah, this is the place for me to be.

I've been perhaps a bit vague to this point about what it is I actually do: I work at a shelter for youth who are experiencing homelessness (and often a lot of other things, from domestic violence to substance abuse to sex work to mental health issues).  I work on the females crisis unit, where about 75 girls from the ages of 18 and 21 (and sometimes younger, 16 or 17) spend an average of 30 days while we work with them to find more stable housing and also remove barriers to a successful transition out of the shelter, for example by providing mental and physical health care, GED classes, job readiness classes, and the like, or helping our residents obtain their identification or prepare for upcoming court dates.  Technically I volunteer for a program through which all my basic needs (housing, food, transportation, etc.) are covered in exchange for my service at the shelter, but for all ostensible purposes I am a full-time resident adviser working 40-hour weeks.  I make a lot of referrals and help in various capacities with all the things I listed above and many more as the need arises.  The opportunity to be here is one for which I can credit only God, who allowed me to dally in some other foolish ideas of where I'd be working after graduating before making it clear the game was up and taking me to this exact place.  I'd like not to romanticize my job, and I hope I have not--but I hope equally, and perhaps more fervently, not to have overemphasized its challenges at the expense of communicating the joy I receive from working there.  For now I will limit myself to that.  My words have likely been needlessly complicated; I apologize.  I can only say they reflect my thoughts and my heart, which I hope in time become clearer too.

At last, two songs to share (shout-outs to J-Mel and T-radz for bringing them to my remembrance), the first of which represents how I know I am and the second of which represents where I know I need to be.  Peace my friends!  Let us know whose we are and whom we serve.

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