My workplace.

Hi!

It has been a long time since I last blogged. A very long time indeed... Since my last blog EVERYTHING has changed. Well not everything but a lot... Since my last blog I've started working as a Residential Care Worker supporting vulnerable youths. The 4 kids I work with have attachment disorders which means that they struggle to form relationships and build healthy attachments to and with other people. It's a very rewarding job but immensely challenging. I've never been so angry, frustrated, pushed, stressed out and anxious in all my life. Before almost all my shifts I drive to work with a knot in my stomach just hoping and praying that today will be a good shift! Quite often tho that's the worst part of the day. I realize now that you don't need to go to the poorest parts of the world to love the "least of these". (Not that I would dare knock anyone who's dream is to go feed the homeless in Calcutta). I feel for me right now the neediest for me are those right on my door step, in exotic Runcorn. The neglect and abuse that the kids will have been through is one of the worst possible sufferings a human being can endure. My job is to care and to bring restoration and to repair the brokenness of the kids I work with. (Which by the way is often much harder than to start again, I think God knows what I'm talking about). To salvage and to grow in these kids a hope for their future and to help them realize their potential. It's a flipping massive task! It feels impossibly hard sometimes because of the nature of the work, I have to remain professional and sometimes that involves protecting myself and not leaving myself vulnerable to these kids, sometimes it feels impossible to communicate to the kids because they're teenagers and think they know everything! (I remember the feeling). And sometimes it feels impossible because I know that I am one carer of a team of 9, from one out of two or three houses that these kids will have lived in, after spending so many years with a foster family, after being taken away from they birth families by a social worker who they think knows nothing about who they are.

But it's not all about me. I'm becoming more and more aware of the joy and pleasure I get in sharing joy with other people. It multiplies. It's so fruitful! There's a real freedom in living a life that is completely invested in other people. Screw a lifetime of seeking fullness of pleasure for yourself. I think life gets REALLY exciting when you can share it with someone else. One thing I have learned from these kids is how difficult it is to live for "number one". The kids I work with are the most stressed out, highly strung, most scared, difficult and selfish people I have ever met. They're a product of the society we live in. I belong to that society, I belong to a generation of broken, lazy, uncreative, destructive and consumer cultured people who can have kids!

However! God cares. He's doing something about it. I can see in the heartbeat and work of my colleagues and my manager battling everyday to spin the ball the other way, to pull the gear stick out of reverse and back into first. I see the kingdom of God breaking through, (even if my colleagues aren't "Christian"), glimpses of the Holy Spirit, little shards of light flickering as God gradually breaks in to guide us, to save us from the destruction that we head towards. I want to shout "COME ON GOD! SHOW YOUR LOVE!!", suffering every kick, punch and bite, putting up with every racial, verbal and physical abuse that these children can throw knowing that in the end maybe one... maybe two might turn around and think, "hm, maybe there is a better way of doing things, maybe I am loved more than I will ever know, maybe there is someone who loves and care for me because honestly, that's what I need".