Month: February 2014

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Washing the feet of the weirdos

pdc2

If you’ve ever spent any time with me, I can guarantee that you know at least two things about me. The first being that I spend nearly all of my free time in coffee shops. The second being that my life is weird.

Maybe my own personal weirdness sends out a vibe to all the other weirdos in the world that screams, “Hey! This lady is crazy so come do all your crazy stuff in her vicinity!” Or maybe I have some sign on my back that is invisible to me but that invites people to lose their ever-loving minds in my presence… Either way, my love for coffee and my attractiveness to insanity came to a head yesterday afternoon in an absolutely hilarious way.

I had yesterday off from work because Thursday night was the Street School‘s ginormous annual fundraiser. After sleeping in until roughly one o’clock (Go ahead, judge me.) I got cleaned up and biked over to my favorite coffee shop in Five Points. (For those of you non-Denver-ites, Five Points is a notoriously terrible part of town that has been known for its random violence, gang territories, homeless population, & drug problem for the last thirty years or so. For those of you who are related to me and are currently freaking out, calm down.)

I absolutely adore Purple Door Coffee. Not only do they play my favorite music, have comfy couches, and serve delicious coffee, but they have an incredibly unique mission. When the owners, Madison and Mark, moved to Denver they knew that they wanted to open a coffee shop in a neighborhood like Five Points because their plan was to employ at-risk street youth who had a greater vision for their lives than to live in poverty forever.

Unfortunately however, their vision and their location clash sometimes simply due to the fact that the cute coffee shop stands out like a lit candle in the midst of a rather rundown neighborhood. Since their grand opening a year ago, they’ve had bricks thrown through their windows, they’ve been harassed, and they’ve dealt with unique situations like the one I witnessed yesterday.

Anyway, while I was locking up my bike, I watched a man who appeared to be homeless walk past me and into Purple Door– a pretty normal occurrence given the neighborhood.

About ten minutes later, I had ordered my latte, chatted with Madi, and had taken my usual seat in one of the white comfy chairs. I watched Mark as he calmly knocked on the door of the men’s restroom, sweetly telling the man who had walked in before me, that it had been about ten minutes, and that other people needed to use the restroom. No answer came from within the bathroom and Mark just looked at me and sighed before walking away. Without thinking much about it, I opened my school work and got down to business.

About ten minutes later, Mark knocked on the door again. The man inside yelled something that no one on our side of the door could understand and Mark walked away yet again. About fifteen minutes later, Mark walked back over to the door, knocked, and kindly asked the man once more to come out of the bathroom.

With a loud crack, the door swung open, and honestly I wish I would’ve had my camera out so I could’ve captured the stunned look on Mark’s face.

The man I had seen roughly half an hour earlier with hair about as long as my own, walked nonchalantly past Mark and out the side door… No big deal, right? Ha! Wrong.

As he walked out of the bathroom, clumps of hair that had obviously been patchily shaved off this man’s head fell to the floor forming a bizarre trail out the side door.

His head? Nearly bald. The bathroom and anything he had touched? Completely covered in tufts of long black hair.

Once the shock of the moment wore off, Mark and I made eye contact and simultaneously burst out into laughter.

How else do you handle something so weird? The homeless gentleman was gone, leaving behind only a reminder that Purple Door Coffee and its surrounding environment weren’t quite cut from the same cloth.

As Madison swept up the clumps of hair in the lobby and Mark tackled the bathroom laughing to himself, I was struck with how similar the crew of PDC is to Jesus. Not once did they grumble about the filth that they were left to clean up, nor did they say, “Well, we obviously made a mistake coming into this neighborhood. We should close this shop and open a new one in a place that actually seems to have its crap together.”

No. They are walking through the filth of Five Points to reach its people for Jesus, just like Jesus worked to literally clean the filth off the feet of the disciples in John 13 or how how we permanently cleansed us of the filth of our sins through His death.

Life isn’t pretty or clean, and people are most definitely weird, but just like Jesus, we as Christians have been called to step outside of our comfort zones and love the weird, the filthy, the unstable, and the broken by washing their feet.

What a beautiful calling it is to love our world, as Christ has first loved us.

Whose feet are you washing today? Where is God using you in your community?

When He had washed their feet and put on His outer garments and resumed His place, He said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.”
(John 13:12-15 ESV)

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Perfect Weakness

I’m a hypocrite when it comes to counseling.

If working with students who have been victims of abuse has taught me one thing, that would be it.

You can ask any one of my students and they’ll tell you that I am all about sitting on floors in empty hallways and letting them verbally process their lives and trauma when they can’t focus in class or simply are having an “off” day.

I do this so frequently with some of my kids that last week one of them sweetly asked me, “Miss, don’t you ever get tired of listening to stories about other peoples’ lives?”

And the truth is that I don’t. I love that part of my job the most. I love sitting on floors, listening, hugging, and reassuring them that they can bring anything to me in confidence.

But when it comes down to it, I’ve realized that I’m terrible at doing this myself.

Oh sure, I can hold a deep conversation with my girl friends about God, love, and what life is like today and what it might be like ten years from now… But there are some things that I simply am too afraid to verbalize, even though I know that I would be speaking in confidence with my closest friends on their bedroom or kitchen floors.

I suffer from crippling anxiety. About ninety-five percent of the time, you wouldn’t know this simply by looking at me; God has truly done miraculous work to bring me out of this through the last few years… But over the course of the last week, it has returned.

I know exactly what triggered it and I know that my inability to talk openly about the source with the people closest to me is only feeding into my anxiety and the accompanying restlessness and insomnia.

Every night for the last week I have had nightmares. I’ve woken up in tears; restless and fearful for my safety and obviously less than rejuvenated to face the day ahead.

Deep down I know that I need to speak up, for my own sanity, for the sanity of the thousands of people like me, but when I open my mouth to explain what I’m currently feeling or what I felt five, seven, or even nine years ago… Nothing comes out.

It’s like fear has me by the neck and I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe because I’m afraid of being judged. I’m afraid of people not believing me. I’m afraid that the nightmares and panic attacks won’t go away if I say something– if it becomes ‘real’ again. I’m afraid of the repercussions of the truth.

I’m simply afraid.

And to be honest, as a Christian woman, I’m a bit ashamed that I have let fear root so deeply in my heart.

In my heart I know that “Perfect Love casts out all fear.”

I’ve memorized the lyrics to the Chris Tomlin song and know that I have no one to fear because my God is “for” me.

I have read and re-read all of the verses in the New Testament that talk about God overcoming fear with His loving & powerful Spirit, and yet, I still laid on my bed tonight with my blanket over my face trying to remember how to breathe.

But tonight, as I laid there, I realized something.

This can’t be the way that I handle this any longer. I can’t just “wait” for these feelings to fade away, as I have in the past when they’ve risen up and taken over my life.

I can’t continue to allow myself to pretend like I’m perfectly healthy at work while I am waking myself up at night from screaming in my sleep.

This has to stop.

So students, if you’re reading this, know that you have inspired me to seek help. Your strength and openness has taught me that I can’t continue living like this, even if it is only for a few weeks at a time every few months, or years.

Anyone else reading this, I would genuinely appreciate your prayers over the next several days, weeks, and months. I know that whatever “this” is, that the healing process is going to be messy.

Speaking up is going to make me weaker than I already am, yet becoming weaker is a pre-requisite for becoming stronger in this case. Through this I will not become stronger on my own, or stronger because I will be “healthier” in the long run. No. I will be stronger because I will have laid my greatest fear down in front of God and said, “This is Yours because I can’t carry this burden on my own anymore.” And He will become my strength.

But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

(2 Corinthians 12:9)