Finding Momentum

Man, God is totally wreck­ing me with this Betty thing.

It’s been hard not to be cold to Betty after our repeated con­fronta­tions with her. To not let bit­ter­ness take root every time I feel like I see her act out of (what I believe to be) enti­tle­ment. And well, if I had to call it out, it is entitlement.

Monique is another lady that sleeps on the porch steps of the main church build­ing. She uri­nates on her­self, which leaves a  lin­ger­ing stench on the porch for days. I’m not sure if the incon­ti­nence has psy­cho­log­i­cal or phys­i­o­log­i­cal roots, but she has refused to let us take her to a med­ical facil­ity or shel­ter and asked us to leave her alone.

I real­ize more now that you think you can help the home­less, but in real­ity you don’t know how. And because they keep push­ing your bound­aries, ask­ing for more food, tak­ing away at your time, you start to build resent­ment toward them, and dehu­man­iz­ing them in your mind, which leads to bitterness.

We asked Monique to leave. But the church is the house of prayer, she told us. We told her that we just didn’t know how to help her, and that she just couldn’t sleep on the steps. Why can’t you just leave me alone and let me sleep there? she asked. Good ques­tion. We could, the­o­ret­i­cally, but it’s a health risk, we told her. We have peo­ple come in and out of that build­ing all the time and it’s unac­cept­able that they have to smell it. Fine, I’m done with you all, nyah, she protested and she gath­ered her belong­ings and stormed off.

I felt pretty guilty, because while you know that you can’t help her, the other part of you feels like it should. And the other part of you knows that you’re mak­ing her feel bad, that she can’t help her incon­ti­nence, that she prob­a­bly feels totally con­demned and ashamed right now, and you should just leave her be.

Betty got into a shout­ing match with Rico, another home­less man in our build­ing today while we were fix­ing them din­ner. The two exchanged vol­leys and Betty demanded to call the pol­icy while Rico asked her to leave. “I need some safety, some pro­tec­tion” she kept say­ing while Rico yelled pro­fan­i­ties at her. We asked Rico to leave, and Betty was adamant about call­ing the cops because she felt threat­ened. So she did. And we sat around and felt like fools wait­ing for the cops to arrive. This is stu­pid, we told our­selves. We’re being held hostage in our own place.

I saw Monique get up from sleep­ing in the park­ing lot this morn­ing. She averted her eyes and wouldn’t talk to me and made ges­tures to get up and leave, then moments later when my head was turned she put her bags back down. We need this lot cleared today I told her. When she wouldn’t answer, I held my gaze longer until she averted her eyes, then turn around and walk away. Why do I do this? I’m not sure. It sure is eas­ier to do than offer­ing her to use the restroom and clean­ing up after her. It might have to do with my cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance and fear in ask­ing her to leave the day before then not want­ing to enforce that bound­ary the next morn­ing. And it could be that I enjoy feel­ing pow­er­ful. This is really hard.

I’m not sure what God’s doing in me through all this, but what­ever it is, it’s a lot more than I expected. Lord have mercy.

–

Edit: it’s not all bad. I had a push-up pop after­wards and felt much bet­ter. I’m not sure if Eric can say the same.