Night shift numba 3.  Night shift brings silence. Silence brings contemplation, and contemplation brings enlightenment.  Night shift is so good for the introverted soul. Night shift is so good for my introverted soul. I'm tired of saying night shift.

It has been one month and five days since my arrival to Shelterwood, the place I will call home for a year.  Truth be told, at times, Shelterwood oddly does feel like home and at other times, it feels like a sick joke... (okay, that's a little extreme)... but really, sometimes (most of the time) this place is just plain hard to live in/at. One day here would fill three days for a normal person. We are living with 19 girls with 19 different stories. Everyone is all over the place, and we are floating from one person to another, living moments of their stories with them. At times I wonder how in the world I am going to get through a whole year in this place, when it feels like I've already worked enough hours to fill a normal person's work year (exaggeration). 78 hours a week, 16 hours a day (14 if we are lucky), less than 48 hours off a week. It's exhausting. All the time.

I am tempted to escape this place daily out of weakness, exhaustion, fear and a desire for comfort.  We are constantly moving forward and dealing with the heavy problems and struggles of 19 teenage girls, not to mention the fact that our program is completely changing and at times seems to be hopeless. It's uncomfortable. Our emotions and feelings are left behind without support. Our Director just left for another ministry, "Bigs" are leaving left and right out of exhaustion, "Littles" are regressing back to bad habits daily, some are just too much to handle: cussing us out, doing whatever they feel like doing, running away, etc.  others feel excluded and neglected as we are chasing around the littles who seek the most attention.  We are dealing with girls on so many ends of the spectrum: cutters, eating disorders, defiance (to the max), sex, etc. We are daily in a war zone with these girls, fighting for them when they cannot fight for themselves. Most either become apathetic or angry in their attempt to fight the program.  At times, it leaves us feeling tired and hopeless. As humans, we cannot possible take this feat on ourselves. It is not meant to be done alone. We will die.


I am not in control.
It is not my good deeds nor my words that will save them.


I have to keep reminding myself of this. This is not about me or what I can do, this is about Jesus and about what He can do and is doing. This program won't save these kids. He will. This is not about a behavioral change, it's about a heart change, something that will last for life if we let it.

I have been slowly inching my way through A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller these past few weeks during morning shifts and such. Please read this book if you haven't already. It has changed my life. This morning I was moping about, wondering why God would send me to such a shit-hole of a place, a place where I feel the life sucked out of me on a daily basis. Why God? Who signs themselves up for something like this?
     Miller writes about his near death experience (suicide) and talks about the feeling of hopelessness. He then goes on to write about Victor Frankl, an Austrian Neurologist and psychologist who is 1942 was deported to Theresienstadt, a Nazi concentration camp that housed Jews is transit to Auschwitz. Frankl was separated from his wife and lost his parents in the ghetto, yet still worked to prevent suicide among his fellow prisoners. Even though it was against the law and even though he could be killed, Frankl would whisper in people's ears that "life, amid the absurdity of human suffering, still had meaning. Suffering, as absurd as it seemed, pointed to a greater story in which, if one could find fulfillment in his tragic role, knowing the plot was heading towards redemption. Such an understanding would take immense humility and immeasurable faith, a perspective perhaps achieved only in the context of near hopelessness."
     Now, I am not saying that my suffering is anywhere near being close to the pain and the suffering that the Jews had to experience during the Holocaust, nor am I saying that for the girls of my house... but what I am saying is that we all seem to feel this sense of hopelessness at least once in our lives, and probably more often than that if we are really honest with ourselves. We feel hopeless because we feel that we deserve so much more than we do. We feel we are entitled to pleasure and euphoria, yet we deserve nothing. Frankl, after surviving the camps and even after losing his wife to the Nazis, indicated a philosophical conclusion that misery, though seemingly ridiculous, indicates life itself has the potential of meaning, and therefore pain itself must also have meaning. Freud argued that the purpose of life was to find pleasure, Frankl argues that life is a pursuit of meaning itself and that search for meaning provides the basis for a person's motivation.  Donald Miller writes, "Pain then, if one could have faith in something greater than himself, might be a path to experiencing a meaning beyond the false gratification of personal comfort."

BAM.
That punched me in the face. This year is about the experience, which is painfully hard at times, but the easy road is not always the best road. There is meaning in everything... even in a program that seems to be falling apart at the seams. I am not going to be comfortable this year, but in the long run, it's only a year and maybe comfort is NOT what I need during this time. In fact, I know that it's not what I need. I need struggle and I need a challenge, and quite frankly, it's changing my life. 

I am feeling a little more experienced and hopeful as each day passes. Some days are much harder than others. Some days we give thanks for the good hours that we gracefully receive in the home. I am learning and growing in ways that I never would have expected to. My heart is broken daily for the girls of this house that I have grown to love so deeply. I hear girls singing songs they wrote saying, "I just want to be loved" and I see girls trying to do anything to get that love that they are desiring. Sometimes, certain cases seem hopeless, but I have to remember that: 

THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE.
There is purpose.
There is meaning.
There is love.
There is God.
He is here.

Please keep us in your prayers. We are so grateful.