I am sitting here pondering what the hell I have gotten into. I am surrounded by filth…utter filth. I am looking at a carpet that is nonrecoverable under a layer of filth. There is food, wrappers, garbage…there goes a carpenter ant and a bug I cannot identify (I hope I can keep it in my eye sight so I know it’s not on me). I walk into the kitchen and I see last nights dinner encrusted on pans and plates, never tended to. I scan the kitchen no clean spot in sight…none! The sink is encrusted, counters are covered in food not in pans, the stove indescribable. The stench…wow, there are no words. I breath with short breaths trying to catch a whiff from the broken fan in the window, before it hits my nose it has already been contaminated with…the stench. I tell myself I can do this…remember the baby diapers I withstood. I begin to question “What the hell am I doing here…I earned my masters to be here, smelling and seeing this filth?!?!”
Then I look up and I see the eyes of “Pat” and Pat looks hopeful unlike the first day I met Pat. The first day was a day of pain, guilt, shame, hopelessness and much fear. I hear from Pat the painful comments and hurtful words hurled at Pat by family. The shame expressed towards Pat is inexcusable. I look a little further and I see the eyes of a child in a teenagers body, covered in dirt…the dirt the child likes to play in and smear all over the door and house. When this child feels anxiety, the child uses the same nails that dug the dirt to scratch their skin until it oozes and scabs. This child has an older sibling. The older sibling has eyes that evoke some hope. As this child shows me their senior portfolio I expect to see one thing and then see things I saw in my children’s 4th grade portfolios yet I see their pride in their accomplishments. As I respond with encouragement more and more things emerge from the piles I saw as junk and trash. One is a mosaic, another is a self portrait, more sculptures and much pride.
I continued to sit there and talk and sort clothes. I listened to stories of pain and hope as I touch their socks, underwear, shirts and pants in the various piles. I sorted their clean and dirty clothes with them all the long hiding my gags and wishing I wore closed toe shoes. I touched things covered in I don’t know how many bacterias FIGHTING the judgments wanting to surface. I kept fighting the thought…”This is not what I earned my Masters for!” And then feeling the guilt of my thought. I refuse to deny my pride erupting…it’s reality. I sat there as I touch filth and hated it, was dismayed by it and yet held a huge amount of compassion for the family before me. They are real people with real stories full of pain and hopefully, hope. If all I accomplish by sitting in this family’s filth is imparting hope in their life then it’s worth it.
My filth may be different than this family’s but it is no less filthy and Jesus entered it all…He sees my filth and He doesn’t accept it but He accepts me…His beloved. He forces me to face my filth and helps me clean it up. I am trying my darnedest to help this family face their filth and help them clean it up and I hope and pray that God is doing something way deeper. He is the only One who can do the deep cleaning and I am confident He is using my surface cleaning to pave a path for His deep cleaning. I must cling to this or I cannot continue in this line of work. I am selfish and prideful; I repeat I have a Masters after all; BUT…
If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:Who, being in very nature God,did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,but made himself nothing,taking the very nature of a servant,being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man,he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest placeand gave him the name that is above every name,that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philipians 2: 1-11
Jesus…I am trying practicing, it’s hard and in no way have I arrived but I will keep practicing until You finish the work you have begun ( I am sure I will drop the ball along the way but You won’t).
As I took a shower at the end of the day…the family’s filth washed down my drain and I envisioned the baptismal water that washed my filth away and thanked God that He is able to wash all filth and turn it into rivers of life:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Rev. 22: 1-2
