One Year in Housing
One year ago today I began a job that would completely upend my life. I can be dramatic, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that housing incoming refugees has been the hardest thing I have ever done. With 788 people arriving since this day last year, I have rarely had a moment to catch my breath, let alone reflect on how this job has rearranged my heart and mind. This work has been brutal, lovely, horrific, tender. I know things about life that I never wanted to know. My heart has been shattered and I have been disappointed by systems again and again. I have screamed in my car, ugly cried in church, forgotten to eat some days (which I do not recommend). For a while, hope seemed completely elusive in a world where there would never be enough money or volunteers or resources. And yet, through it all, it keeps coming back to the things I’ve always known: God is good, and everything is always about people. I thought I was leaving pastoral work, but I’m finding that pastoring is everywhere, and for everyone – that we are all called to it, in some form or another. So I am taking time today to write out the main things I’ve learned this year, knowing full well that I will learn a thousand more things in the future.
Prayer works. The very first thing I did when I got this job was form a prayer team. I send out an email every few months with updates on how the work is going, and in the darkest moments, I told them what I was experiencing and the fear I had of it all falling apart. They prayed, and I attribute those prayers to my not quitting. Along with this, I began a few months ago to pray for every family we resettle. I set a timer for five minutes, pull up their photos, pick up my guitar and sing blessings over their relationships and their home. I pray for healing over their trauma and grace over their new lives here in Columbus. These prayers have radically changed my heart posture toward the work, and I recommend this to anyone who works in any field. Pray for your clients, your coworkers, your business plan. Send out a quarterly email to friends about the prayer needs of your job. Treat it like missionaries treat their work – because it matters just as much.
Work with people who make you laugh. Four months into the work I hired Anna, and this changed everything. Having a partner to laugh with, cry with, and lose my mind with gave me the strength to keep doing impossible things, over and over again, every day. I could have hired a lot of people, but a hired someone I enjoy being with, and that has been a gift.
Let people be people. Last night I read a journal entry from Mother Teresa, where she notes that “you can touch the leper and believe it is the body of Christ you are touching, but it is more difficult when they are drunk or shouting to think that this is Jesus in his distressing disguise. We need to be pure in heart to see Jesus in the person of the spiritually poorest.” It is easy to want to help people who thank you; it is less so when they’re yelling at you, or hate the house you’ve worked hard to find for them. This is by far the hardest and most humbling thing I have learned this year: that we must not tell people how to experience their circumstances, and I must let them rage – even if it’s at me – when life has dealt them another sadness. People are not obligated to be grateful to you.
It’s not an emergency until it’s an emergency. I got so worked up about so many things at the beginning of this work. I’ve learned not to let my adrenaline kick in until it is absolutely necessary (otherwise my adrenaline would be pumping on high all the time). Someone says they have bedbugs? It is very possible that it was just a few fruit flies on the furniture one day. Someone ran a car through an apartment building? Give me the details before we do anything else. There are three eviction notices on client’s doors this month? We still have about 38 days before homelessness is really inevitable – let’s get that rent paid and move on. It’s not time to freak out until it’s time to freak out.
Take care of your operations team. The people who run the budget, IT, and anything else that happens behind the scenes are actually your main people. Listen to them, care for them, try not to take advantage of them. The social-work, empathetic types need the logical, analytical types for anything to stay afloat in this world. Don’t ignore each other.
Fight for your hope. There were many days where I felt that hope was dead. I found that in those moments, it is best to get up and fight. I would literally stand up, put on a loud, victorious worship song, and punch the air for five minutes. I would pick up my guitar and sing worship songs while sobbing. I would go up for prayer at church and have people pray that I would have the courage to keep going. I have spent most of this year fighting anxiety and despair, and it has been worth it.
“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. ”
I’ve probably learned a thousand other things this year, but these are the ones that stick out. Luckily, this is only the beginning – there is so much good work to do, and so much time to do it. Yalla, on y va, vamos, let's go!
