Our relationship with our IMPACT kids is growing up. As are they. As are we.
When we started at IMPACT 1, we thought we would be with high schooler, doing more intense, interesting, thoughtful projects, having conversations about college, jobs, sexuality, music, hopes for the community, stuff like that.
We got 5th graders instead.
For the first 3 months I wanted to quit, but I knew that eventually I would care enough about the kids that my desire to work and play with and help form them would win out over my desire to run away from them. That sense of care wins much more often these days, unless I'm really tired and need a break from everything, not just 13-year-olds. I've come to love them more and more.
When Bumb first stared coming to IMAPCT, we knew that he was different from the other kids, mainly because they all stayed away from him. He would hit them, call them names, sometimes make threats, and nobody likes that. We really wanted for him to stay in the club--he said that his dad was on disability pay for a mental illness, and that he doesn't talk to his mom. Obviously something is wrong at his house, and IMPACT could be second family for him. That's difficult when he lashes out at the other kids, not always out of anger, but sometimes just because he thinks it's funny and doesn't know how else to get attention. And our kids, like most anyone, wanted him to leave, so he wasn't getting any friendship out of IMPACT.
Things got better when we started sending him home from meetings. He realized that IMPACT, this time that he held so dear, could be taken away from him if he didn't act like an IMPACT member (trustworthy, compassionate, participates in IMAPCT activities...), but also that at least Kelly and I wanted him there because we expected him back the next week. It also gave us a chance to talk to the other kids about how they treat Bumb. They would usually yell at him or hit back, so we explained that his actions are bids for attention, and by responding to negative bids, they reinforce the negative behavior. We asked them to begin to accept him, which has led to many of them kind of ignoring him, but a few trying to engage with him (with varying degrees of success).
Bumb is by far the most reliable IMPACT member where attendance is concerned. He'll come on building clean-up days, gets to meetings 30 minutes early, even stops by the office to make sure we're still doing IMPACT. While we can't always understand what he's saying (mumbled slang is still beyond our Romanian abilities), we hope that by listening we're giving him someone to trust. Whenever we can understand that the mumbles are about him skipping school or fighting, we reiterate that that's not going to help him in the future or the present, and that we expect better from him. We offered to try to help him in school for a while, but then his grades improved. It looks like they're slipping again, so we may dig that offer back up, though neither of us is sure if we have the time or ability to really give him the help he needs. He needs a good school counselor and teachers who are willing to work with him more individually. And IMPACT. His odd little family that still accepts him, even if most of the kids at school stay away from him.
Thanks you for asking about him over Christmas break, those of you who did. Kelly and I feel often that we don't have a whole lot helping us in this situation. A bit of youth work experience and some patience, and hope for him to apply himself in school and to learn how to constructively interact with other people. Your questions about him and prayers are so welcome.
Friday, April 24, 2015
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Holy week.
Romania celebrates Easter on the Eastern (Orthodox) calendar, meaning that this year we're a week behind our families in the US. Easter will be April 12, and so this is the week of waiting.
For me, this week has been full of work. I am frantically working to finish some big projects for work before Easter comes, before we head to the annual CRWM retreat and meetings and IMPACT international trainings. It's been hard to keep my head above water this week, much less take time for sober reflection on Jesus.
But it hit me in a flash of revelation last night, as I was eating a hurried dinner before returning to my work, that perhaps this frantic-ness and sense of desperation is part of what Holy Week is about. That my mixed-up longings (for Easter celebrations, to finally break our Lenten fast, for a much-longed-for break from work, to be done with a stressful project) are largely selfish, and yet they are producing in me a real longing for this coming Sunday. I may not be entirely pure of heart, but it does feel right to be desperately hoping for the coming of Easter. And it's a reminder, when I can lift my head up and think about it for a second, that even though I am just like the fickle crowds who wanted Jesus for their own purposes, I am still cared for. Cared for enough that God would die for me. And the things that worry me are already overcome in His victory.
On Saturday we visited some friends in Sibiu, and on Sunday morning we decided to go to the Orthodox church there for Palm Sunday services. The Orthodox church in Sibiu is enchanting -- gorgeously painted with the stories of the Bible on every surface, and blessed by priests and a choir with the most beautiful voices I have ever heard in a church. (The first time Jack and I visited Sibiu we heard their liturgy being sung from blocks away, and like cartoon characters sniffing a wafting aroma, tails wagging, we followed the sound to the church, where we stood in awe.)
This Sunday was no different, except that the church was packed. The liturgy was beautiful, the choir glorious, and the church was full, shoulder-to-shoulder while a thin line of people wove their way through the middle to kiss the icons of Jesus and Mary near the front. In the crowd there was plenty of sniffling and coughing, rustling of plastic bags and the occasional cell phone -- and yet somehow it was still transfixing. Jack reminded me afterwards of how some church fathers had written about how, during the liturgy, they couldn't tell if they were on earth or in heaven, and at that service I felt like I suddenly knew what they meant. The heavenly music, the beautiful art, the warm light -- and the sniffling, awkward crowd of humans -- all adoring the God who came down from that perfection to stand in our midst as we shuffle and clear our throats and hush our children. Heaven and earth, intermingled.
And so rather than berating myself for being too caught up in work this week, I am embracing the fact that this is what life on earth looks like -- deadlines and stress and wrestling and work -- and that even so, if I just look up, there is Holy Week. Holy and full of light and present and hopeful, even in our broken humanity. They co-exist, if we just have eyes to see.
For me, this week has been full of work. I am frantically working to finish some big projects for work before Easter comes, before we head to the annual CRWM retreat and meetings and IMPACT international trainings. It's been hard to keep my head above water this week, much less take time for sober reflection on Jesus.
But it hit me in a flash of revelation last night, as I was eating a hurried dinner before returning to my work, that perhaps this frantic-ness and sense of desperation is part of what Holy Week is about. That my mixed-up longings (for Easter celebrations, to finally break our Lenten fast, for a much-longed-for break from work, to be done with a stressful project) are largely selfish, and yet they are producing in me a real longing for this coming Sunday. I may not be entirely pure of heart, but it does feel right to be desperately hoping for the coming of Easter. And it's a reminder, when I can lift my head up and think about it for a second, that even though I am just like the fickle crowds who wanted Jesus for their own purposes, I am still cared for. Cared for enough that God would die for me. And the things that worry me are already overcome in His victory.
On Saturday we visited some friends in Sibiu, and on Sunday morning we decided to go to the Orthodox church there for Palm Sunday services. The Orthodox church in Sibiu is enchanting -- gorgeously painted with the stories of the Bible on every surface, and blessed by priests and a choir with the most beautiful voices I have ever heard in a church. (The first time Jack and I visited Sibiu we heard their liturgy being sung from blocks away, and like cartoon characters sniffing a wafting aroma, tails wagging, we followed the sound to the church, where we stood in awe.)
This Sunday was no different, except that the church was packed. The liturgy was beautiful, the choir glorious, and the church was full, shoulder-to-shoulder while a thin line of people wove their way through the middle to kiss the icons of Jesus and Mary near the front. In the crowd there was plenty of sniffling and coughing, rustling of plastic bags and the occasional cell phone -- and yet somehow it was still transfixing. Jack reminded me afterwards of how some church fathers had written about how, during the liturgy, they couldn't tell if they were on earth or in heaven, and at that service I felt like I suddenly knew what they meant. The heavenly music, the beautiful art, the warm light -- and the sniffling, awkward crowd of humans -- all adoring the God who came down from that perfection to stand in our midst as we shuffle and clear our throats and hush our children. Heaven and earth, intermingled.
And so rather than berating myself for being too caught up in work this week, I am embracing the fact that this is what life on earth looks like -- deadlines and stress and wrestling and work -- and that even so, if I just look up, there is Holy Week. Holy and full of light and present and hopeful, even in our broken humanity. They co-exist, if we just have eyes to see.
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