The Story of the Blocks

Contrary to popular opinion I am not actually trying to offend every person I know. Or at least not all the Christians. So I am going to try to share a story that exemplifies my struggle, and also gets across what it looks like to care for poor people in a way that gives them dignity.

I have a very sweet friend that I have known since college. She lives out the Gospel in a humble way that demonstrates her beliefs through generosity to those who are not only in need, but are vulnerable. Her family has supported all my mission trips. She has supported me and invested in me ever since we studied the Bible together as students, and now we are mothers. That is a special connection and it touches me to have friends like that who have journeyed with me for so long.

Now let me tell you the story of the blocks... This special friend read my blog about my family being in need and wanted to help. She said that there was a large package coming in the mail. So here I am, so utterly depended on the kindness and generosity of others just to survive. Like to be able to pay bills and have anything for myself- like razors. Like toilet paper. And thank God for my generous friend that gave generously for me to have life saving things like supplements and yoga!

Ok so in my head I'm imaging what could be in the big box. I'm hoping it will be food, or something we really need to get us by that we can't afford. Target is like Disney World to me these days because it is like a vacation splurge if I actually scrape together $50-$100 to buy things like DISH DETERGENT or FABRIC SOFTNER SHEETS!!!

Well the box arrives and there are blocks in it. I'm looking at the blocks and am thinking, "I cannot eat blocks. We cannot do dishes with blocks." And then I think about the large amount of blocks my kids already have and how in any given week they may play with 10. I'm thinking, "What is a poor person supposed to do with blocks? What was she thinking??!" And then I think about how angry the blocks make my husband because of course the kids dump the entire box of them on the floor and walk away not having done anything with them.

The day after I get the blocks I get an email informing me that I did not get the job I had my heart set on. It was an amazing advocacy job doing work I am passionate about. So forget the fact that we desperately needed that income, it was also such a heartbreaking blow that once again I have no outlet for  my passion, and no way to support my family. I became very depressed. Every time I thought about the blocks and contemplated how this sweet friend could be so disconnected from my very real need, I got more depressed.

Then the rest of the box came in the mail from Amazon. It was snacks and baby wipes and things a parent with small children actually needs! I felt relief that my friend was really not as clueless as I was starting to believe, but then I was still stuck with the blocks. And I was so depressed about this job I did not get and another huge financial setback where provision did not come AGAIN- I could barely go about my day. I decided I had to find the blocks a home with people who were in an even worse predicament than myself. That meant I pretty much had to find homeless people. So I took the blocks and my changing table and some other things to the Night of Peace shelter as I already wrote about.

I tell this story because it does in fact have a happy ending. But I also want to share how I have also received food donations from very well-meaning people in church. These donations sometimes contained things we could use, but often there was a lot of off-brand, high sugar content, (stuff that to my stringent organic standards is just junk), and then stuff that was expired. And when I say expired I don't mean by like, a week or even a month, I'm talking about by YEARS. Do you know how insulting it is to a poor person to plan a meal around ingredients in a donated box and then go to prepare your dinner and find out the spaghetti sauce expired 2 years ago?!?! And then you think about that church member who just pulled that can or jar from the recesses of their pantry and thought it would be a kind or generous thing to unload it on you. Like the message their is, "This is not good enough for my family, but because you are poor it is ok for you."

I had the privilege of going on a 10 day exposure trip to Haiti with Mission Waco my senior year. It was not a mission trip. We were not there to save people that already knew Jesus. We were not there to help poor black Haitian as white people with all the answers. We were there to be exposed to a country living in absolute poverty. We were there to provide a little money and assistance to the World Hungry Farm. It opened my eyes and touched my heart in ways that still affect me. One really meaningful thing we did every evening was have a little devotional time with Jimmy and Janet Dorrell, two great heroes of the faith who have lived an incarnational ministry to the poor and have dedicated their lives to giving students an education in how to care for poor people as Jesus instructs. I vividly remember a discussion we had about poor people and dignity. Jimmy asked us if it is always proper to give homeless people money. He said they may need the money, but what they really need is DIGNITY. He said it is better to have a clothing closet where you charge $25 for clothes than to give it away for free because it gives the person receiving the clothes dignity to pay for them.

I never forgot those lessons. I will never just hand over a dollar to a homeless person without praying about it and asking myself if I am just giving the dollar to relieve my guilt or if it is really to benefit the homeless person. This is something I think about a lot in how people treat me and my family. How much is the person really thinking about us when they dump their unused pantry items on us? I think it is more convenient to get rid of stuff and unload it on a poor person rather than think you just wasted X amount of money on food you didn't eat. So I get to be the person who does the necessary job of THROWING OUT YOUR FOOD. People do this everywhere. My friend has a school for the poor in India and she said people give their trash to these poor kids all the time.

So I might seem like I'm just a bitter whiner who is attacking perfectly good and kind people for no reason. But then again, these people might just be feeling good about their kindness and generosity while really making my family feel like crap. Is it SO bad to go to a nice, warm church building every Sunday? Is Sunday school wrong? No, if you fit in. If it works for you. But the point is, it isn't working for everyone.

My hope in writing this is that it will cause people to at least evaluate what they are doing and why they are doing it, even if they do not actually change. There is so much we just do without thinking about it. And just because it is done with ignorance or carelessness does not mean there are not really bad consequences, such as denying someone dignity, or all out neglecting someone in need, or even pushing someone out for the sake of our own comfort. Or maybe our doctrine really has caused actual harm and damage to people that needs to be admitted, confessed, and repaired.

May we all do the hard work of leaving our comfort and to do unto to others as we would like them to do to us.