There are few days I remember by their dates. A few anniversaries and holidays stick out
of course. 9/11 as well. But I don’t really think about the “date”
things happened.
May 8, 2016, has stayed stuck with me. It will be in my mind for the rest of my life.
On May 8 I found out, with shock, that the hope of two young girls’ lives were being destroyed. These young girls who were very close to us, who we had shared a home with, who had taught for me, were being married off in their mid-teens to men they did not know. One girl’s situation I had known about for months and had been trying to resist in any way I knew, and this night was only the point of no return. The other, even younger girl’s situation had been kept a secret from me until that moment, most likely to keep me from getting the police involved or in some other way taking drastic measures to stop it.
My first reaction was to yell at my friend who had hidden it from me. Then I stormed out as I was asked to leave. Then I stayed up awake, all night, in internal panic, not being able to sleep over the heart-brokenness of what had happened. By morning I was committed – there was no way to undo what had just been done, but we would do everything in our power to ensure that these two girls still had some sort of shot at a decent life, or at least some sort of option out when things went bad. Part of my resolve stemmed from the fact that I was certain that no one, no one else in the world, would be able to provide that help to these two girls.
It was only two days later that the next ball dropped, and two more girls in Rosey’s life, who had already had more trauma than any young girls should, in one bad decision saw their hope for their future likely snuffed out in a flash. They are now in Mumbai, or not, doing God knows what. We don’t know what will happen, or even what has happened to this point, because they are gone and we will likely never see them again.
In the strange world of unintended consequences, the decision of those two girls caused the NGO that had been trying to help them to make another decision which unintentionally cut off my supply of teachers for a nearby slum literacy project. Five months later, my project there remains closed.
In an even more unexpected consequence, the decision of those girls thrust another young lady into an awful situation, and our willingness to put ourselves on the line to save her became her only lifeline to hope. So in that moment, we became foster parents for a young woman with absolutely nowhere else to go and a whole lot of things going on.
Within another week, through a long string of bad circumstances and other people’s bad decisions and his own bad decisions, we became quite heavily responsible for a young man’s life as well.
And so in the span of three weeks, we gained significant responsibility for the lives of four people we love, all of whom were in the midst of precarious circumstances.
It’s been five months now. There is no end in sight.
I want to say, “Things have gone better than I expected”. But no, they haven’t. Five months later, I probably have more concern in all four situations than I did when they started. For one or two of them, I’ve almost given up hope.
In fact, there are another four, five, six lives which are caught up in the draft of the ongoing disasters now, people for whom I don’t feel complete responsibility, but where I certainly worry that the decisions and effort I make in those first four lives will significantly impact them as well. Four, five, six more lives for whom I really don’t know who will be around tomorrow and who won’t. Who among them, if we leave, would make it, and who would not.
Today my wife went to the mental hospital to check my best friend out of inpatient care. She was unable to do so. He is doing terribly, worse than when he entered. Yet again I worry that this is permanent, that I will never know Ali as “Ali” in anything but name only again. That my best friend, my best teacher, is going to be in another world for the rest of his life. I’ve gone through this process with two of my grandparents, but I never imagined it happening with a 23-year-old friend. And if we step out of the picture, it’s almost certainly over for him. Both his initial acute attack of the disorder and his relapse came as we were out on brief vacations, away for just a little bit while he dealt with one disaster after another at home until it became too much for him. I don’t blame myself, because there was no way to know and no possibility of being around at all times, not to mention that I don’t know it would have gone any differently had we been here. But I do know that without us coming back, it would have gone even worse. Then again, what is “worse”? No matter how much we’ve done, could he be any worse off than he is now? His situation could be more hopeless, the disease’s progression more severe, of course, but with his mind where it is right now do we really have true hope to be realized or just false hope delaying acceptance of this dark night extending forever ahead?
The others, certainly, could be worse. Suicide threats and attempts can be routine events to deal with for those who love the downtrodden and the struggling, the relationally isolated. But I’ve had my heart plagued by more reports of suicidal ideation from those close to me over the past five months than in the rest of my life combined. If we’re not here, who makes it the next week, or the next year, and who doesn’t?
I could tell other stories – of psychiatrists who should have their licenses revoked for how they treated my daughter, of families who should have their children removed for how they treated their daughters, of NGOs breaking one promise after another because they were lazy or so that they could save face or because they got tired of dealing with a situation, of court systems that were basically designed to destroy victims, of government bureaucracies who keep screwing over the people I love, of one friend after another who just hasn’t been as reliable as we needed them to be when we really needed them. Of feeling like the whole world is conspiring to take away our friends’ and family’s hope.
Not that there isn’t occasional hope. But it is partial, fleeting, often surrounded by as many reasons for suspicion of hope as for hope itself. Not to mention that any time there’s hope for one of them, the desperateness of the situations of the other three tempers it into the ground. At times my hope has become so low that I was to the point of making deals. God, can you make it so half their lives turn out? Please, can I at least have half of them?
One? Can you give me one?
Can I at least make it to next year with some reason, any, to still have hope for any of them at all?
Some of you who have been aware of the stress that we’ve been going through during the last five months have encouraged me to take a break. “Come home.” “You can’t save everyone.”
The thing that is so difficult to communicate is that if I took a break the stress would be worse. Not knowing what was going on for them would make it worse. Knowing that their lives were almost certainly getting even worse without us would make it worse.
If your little sisters, your daughter, and your best friend were in desperate circumstances, and no one else could help them, would you leave town to get away, abandon them so you could deal? When would you give up on your daughter and just “save yourself”?
Is it okay for me to give up just because my best friend and my foster daughter and my “adopted” little sisters are a different color than me? Or from a different country?
May 8, 2016 will be the date that I went from feeling responsible for the hope of a community to feeling responsible for the continued day-to-day sustenance of individual lives. No couple should have to bear that burden alone. But as long as every single person who could seriously help to bear that burden either refuses to come here, or leaves, or simply can’t be relied on to stay in the lives of anyone who is “poor”, then we will have to bear that burden alone.
And as long as God sustains us, we will.
May 8, 2016, has stayed stuck with me. It will be in my mind for the rest of my life.
On May 8 I found out, with shock, that the hope of two young girls’ lives were being destroyed. These young girls who were very close to us, who we had shared a home with, who had taught for me, were being married off in their mid-teens to men they did not know. One girl’s situation I had known about for months and had been trying to resist in any way I knew, and this night was only the point of no return. The other, even younger girl’s situation had been kept a secret from me until that moment, most likely to keep me from getting the police involved or in some other way taking drastic measures to stop it.
My first reaction was to yell at my friend who had hidden it from me. Then I stormed out as I was asked to leave. Then I stayed up awake, all night, in internal panic, not being able to sleep over the heart-brokenness of what had happened. By morning I was committed – there was no way to undo what had just been done, but we would do everything in our power to ensure that these two girls still had some sort of shot at a decent life, or at least some sort of option out when things went bad. Part of my resolve stemmed from the fact that I was certain that no one, no one else in the world, would be able to provide that help to these two girls.
It was only two days later that the next ball dropped, and two more girls in Rosey’s life, who had already had more trauma than any young girls should, in one bad decision saw their hope for their future likely snuffed out in a flash. They are now in Mumbai, or not, doing God knows what. We don’t know what will happen, or even what has happened to this point, because they are gone and we will likely never see them again.
In the strange world of unintended consequences, the decision of those two girls caused the NGO that had been trying to help them to make another decision which unintentionally cut off my supply of teachers for a nearby slum literacy project. Five months later, my project there remains closed.
In an even more unexpected consequence, the decision of those girls thrust another young lady into an awful situation, and our willingness to put ourselves on the line to save her became her only lifeline to hope. So in that moment, we became foster parents for a young woman with absolutely nowhere else to go and a whole lot of things going on.
Within another week, through a long string of bad circumstances and other people’s bad decisions and his own bad decisions, we became quite heavily responsible for a young man’s life as well.
And so in the span of three weeks, we gained significant responsibility for the lives of four people we love, all of whom were in the midst of precarious circumstances.
It’s been five months now. There is no end in sight.
I want to say, “Things have gone better than I expected”. But no, they haven’t. Five months later, I probably have more concern in all four situations than I did when they started. For one or two of them, I’ve almost given up hope.
In fact, there are another four, five, six lives which are caught up in the draft of the ongoing disasters now, people for whom I don’t feel complete responsibility, but where I certainly worry that the decisions and effort I make in those first four lives will significantly impact them as well. Four, five, six more lives for whom I really don’t know who will be around tomorrow and who won’t. Who among them, if we leave, would make it, and who would not.
Today my wife went to the mental hospital to check my best friend out of inpatient care. She was unable to do so. He is doing terribly, worse than when he entered. Yet again I worry that this is permanent, that I will never know Ali as “Ali” in anything but name only again. That my best friend, my best teacher, is going to be in another world for the rest of his life. I’ve gone through this process with two of my grandparents, but I never imagined it happening with a 23-year-old friend. And if we step out of the picture, it’s almost certainly over for him. Both his initial acute attack of the disorder and his relapse came as we were out on brief vacations, away for just a little bit while he dealt with one disaster after another at home until it became too much for him. I don’t blame myself, because there was no way to know and no possibility of being around at all times, not to mention that I don’t know it would have gone any differently had we been here. But I do know that without us coming back, it would have gone even worse. Then again, what is “worse”? No matter how much we’ve done, could he be any worse off than he is now? His situation could be more hopeless, the disease’s progression more severe, of course, but with his mind where it is right now do we really have true hope to be realized or just false hope delaying acceptance of this dark night extending forever ahead?
The others, certainly, could be worse. Suicide threats and attempts can be routine events to deal with for those who love the downtrodden and the struggling, the relationally isolated. But I’ve had my heart plagued by more reports of suicidal ideation from those close to me over the past five months than in the rest of my life combined. If we’re not here, who makes it the next week, or the next year, and who doesn’t?
I could tell other stories – of psychiatrists who should have their licenses revoked for how they treated my daughter, of families who should have their children removed for how they treated their daughters, of NGOs breaking one promise after another because they were lazy or so that they could save face or because they got tired of dealing with a situation, of court systems that were basically designed to destroy victims, of government bureaucracies who keep screwing over the people I love, of one friend after another who just hasn’t been as reliable as we needed them to be when we really needed them. Of feeling like the whole world is conspiring to take away our friends’ and family’s hope.
Not that there isn’t occasional hope. But it is partial, fleeting, often surrounded by as many reasons for suspicion of hope as for hope itself. Not to mention that any time there’s hope for one of them, the desperateness of the situations of the other three tempers it into the ground. At times my hope has become so low that I was to the point of making deals. God, can you make it so half their lives turn out? Please, can I at least have half of them?
One? Can you give me one?
Can I at least make it to next year with some reason, any, to still have hope for any of them at all?
Some of you who have been aware of the stress that we’ve been going through during the last five months have encouraged me to take a break. “Come home.” “You can’t save everyone.”
The thing that is so difficult to communicate is that if I took a break the stress would be worse. Not knowing what was going on for them would make it worse. Knowing that their lives were almost certainly getting even worse without us would make it worse.
If your little sisters, your daughter, and your best friend were in desperate circumstances, and no one else could help them, would you leave town to get away, abandon them so you could deal? When would you give up on your daughter and just “save yourself”?
Is it okay for me to give up just because my best friend and my foster daughter and my “adopted” little sisters are a different color than me? Or from a different country?
May 8, 2016 will be the date that I went from feeling responsible for the hope of a community to feeling responsible for the continued day-to-day sustenance of individual lives. No couple should have to bear that burden alone. But as long as every single person who could seriously help to bear that burden either refuses to come here, or leaves, or simply can’t be relied on to stay in the lives of anyone who is “poor”, then we will have to bear that burden alone.
And as long as God sustains us, we will.
1 comment:
Note – I know that some of my friends are worried a bit about me right now. I will say that I am certainly doing reasonably good under the circumstances. If you look above, you can see those circumstances. The best thing you could do for me is to make those circumstances change. The second best thing you could do is help to get more capable people here to address the root causes of those circumstances. The third best thing you could do is to be a good friend, to keep in touch with me, to ask me questions, to initiate communication on a regular basis, to express concern for the things I’m concerned about and which are effecting me, to help address those things as you can. The fourth best thing you can do is to throw yourself and your life into addressing some of the same issues, wherever you are or wherever you want to go, and I will feel that solidarity.
If you have really faced stuff like this, in the situation that we are in, and handled it better than we already have, then I will take all the advice I can on how to do that. Otherwise, though, advice on how we need to do things differently will be taken with a grain of skepticism. Sorry to be so blunt, but I seem to be getting far more of that last bit of “help” than of any of the first four
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