Normal people

It's been many long months (okay, maybe just weeks) since I blogged, so I thought that instead of giving you a recap of my life, I'll give you a recap of some of the most interesting people I've met at work over the last while. Between tutoring and nursing, I've met people of all ages who have blessed and inspired me, challenged and grieved me, and given me a window into my own heart and into the heart of God. (Of course, as usual, all the names are changed in case someone reads this and fires me.)

At tutoring I struggled for a long time with a little boy named Mark. He's about 11 years old and he is totally unmanageable. He's behind in math and English so I'm trying to help him catch up so he can get into a regular class. When I ask him to do something (usually math) that he doesn't want to do, he pulls out all the stops. Whines, swears, kicks the wall, flat out refuses, etc. I've tried bribing him with games and jellybeans, threatening him with telling his dad and making him do more math, manipulating and coercing and cajoling but nothing works. I suspected that his home life might not be that great because he always came to tutoring covered in scrapes and bruises and as dirty as a little boy could possibly get.
Finally in despair I talked to my boss for some ideas and she gave me some background about him.
Mark's parents are alcoholics and drug users and he spent from the age of 6 until recently living on the streets. Finally his grandma was able to get him and he's been living with her and going back to school. At first no school wanted him because he was so wild, but he's made a lot of progress and almost caught up with his grade. He has ADD and fetal alcohol syndrome, you name it. His dad has been sober for awhile and takes him to tutoring on the bus and really does love him, but it's Mark who looks after his dad, not the other way around. The kid has been used to fending for himself and looking after others and doing whatever it took to survive.
When I heard Mark's story I knew my approach had been totally wrong. I'd been very task oriented in trying to get his math done. In reality, if we got ten minutes of good work done in our hour together, we were making progress. Mark needed to have fun at school so that he would want to stay in school and graduate. (Education isn't the answer for everything, but it certainly can help break a cycle of poverty and addiction.) I realized also that consistency and discipline were majorly lacking in Mark's life and even though I wasn't a parent, I could help him a lot more by being consistent and not giving in to his whining and manipulating.
He's extremely gifted with writing, despite his terrible punctuation, but we've finally worked out a system of rewards involving purple play-do and board games. We're making progress. Slowly but surely.
While nursing I met an intriguing fellow named Stan. Stan has bipolar disorder and he was brought into the hospital and then detox because God spoke to him (so he said) and told him not to take his medication or wear any clothes. He'd been wandering around town and got taken in. Even after we got him stabilized with some meds he would still appear periodically at the nursing station in his skivvies (or his birthday suit) asking for a chocolate milkshake. He's a gentle-spirited and very polite man and when he's in his right mind he has a little twinkle in his eye and makes wisecracks under his breath to the nurses.
Carl is only 19, which is the youngest age detox will take (there is a detox for youths in BC where they help kids as young as 8 detox off of drugs or alcohol). He looked like 16 and he had a scared, timid look about him. At first he wouldn't look me in the eye, for about two days. Every time I tried to talk to him he avoided my gaze and gave me mumbled answers. Finally one of the social workers was cleaning his room and found a stash of used needles and a spoon with heroin on it. She also found that he'd been wetting his bed and stuffing the sheets into the closets and under the mattresses. I felt myself recoiling from the awkward conversation I knew we had to have.
I told him we'd noticed the sheets and I asked him if he was sleeping too soundly because of the meds we were giving him, and not able to make it to the bathroom at night. He was embarrassed but I told him that we were happy to wash the sheets, he could just bring them discreetly to the laundry room and get new ones, but not leave them in the closets because he had a roommate coming. I asked him about the needles. “Carl, we found some needles in your room. Are they yours?”
He said he thought they belonged to the guy who'd been in the room before him. I did a dipstick urine test but it was negative for drugs. I told him, “Carl, we take very seriously using drugs in detox here. If you are using while here we'll have to discharge you. However, I always give people the benefit of the doubt and if you tell me that you haven't used, I am going to trust that you are telling me the truth.”
For the first time he looked me in the eye.
Sometimes when I'm working I believe that the Holy Spirit gives me insight into people's lives. I've found that with very young people heavily involved with drugs, there is often a history of sexual abuse, and I felt very strongly then that Carl had a history of massive sexual abuse. Sexual abuse destroys trust and respect and is devastating for anyone, but especially a young man who can't easily talk about it. So I looked Carl in the eye. I told him that I trusted him and that I wanted to see him do well here. He actually cracked a grateful smile and later, came and talked to me and the social worker about something else. He held his head up.
He finished detox two days later and went on to treatment and I pray for him that someday he finds freedom from the things that try to chain him down.
At tutoring I appreciate the normalcy in most of the kid's lives. Some of them are so innocent and untainted by life that it's truly a joy to see them discover and have fun learning. I commented on this to my boss and she laughed and said, “well, you like to think they're normal!”
The next day one of my most 'normal' students was missing. Stacy is a pretty blond 15-year-old; a little overweight and shy but we've shared a lot of laughs over French. I asked my boss if she'd heard from her. Apparently Stacy's parents had just gone through an ugly divorce and her dad refused to pay child support and her mom had run up a big debt with tutoring and other activities and finally it had all come to an end. My boss felt like Stacy and I had made a lot of progress in French, mostly in the area of building confidence, so she encouraged Stacy's mom to save the money and pull her daughter out. Suddenly normal didn't seem quite so simple.
Janine at detox seemed pretty normal too. She's the mother of two lovely teenagers who dropped her off at detox and cried when they said goodbye. She has a lilting Newfie accent and while struggling with depression she started drinking, and eventually it got out of control. She talked to her husband every day on the phone and when she was feeling a little better she bleached the whole kitchen and washed all the windows for me.
It seems to me that suffering pain is normal. Doing whatever it takes to survive is normal. Laughing and making jokes even though everything is wrong all around you, that's normal too.