Merry Christmas! An unfortunate opening knowing that my last post pre-dates Thanksgiving this year (and that by quite a lot). Good grief life is busy. And good, mind you. But nonetheless busy.
In the time since I last wrote I've been to Disney World and made not one, but two trips to VA Beach (Thanksgiving one week, the next back for our company Christmas Party). I've hosted family for Christmas and been hosted by family and by friends. And the days have, yes, flown by. Yet it isn't the lack of time nor of focus that keeps me from this page...far more it is the backlog of ideas and choices on a growing list of "to-do's" that somehow pile upon one another forming what looks very much like an insurmountable wall.
Rather than sit staring at the wall, let me share a story that has been on my mind since sometime this summer. If nothing else, it will serve to break the log jam!
Through a growing friendship with several men in our region, I was invited to attend a small "luncheon" at a ministry in Roanoke. The ministry serves the homeless, the addicted, the lost. The men who invited me have a heart to play a role in this ministry's mission of recovery & rescue. Sitting at a large table inside of the facility, I found myself more in the role of observer than participant - watching "both sides" of the discussion while enjoying a lunch representative of the daily fair the ministry provides to those in need.
The men I was with came to the table in hopes they might bridge the gap between being "in the mission" and "re-entering the world." One of these men had mentored just such a man "caught in the gap," offering leadership and advice as well as practical items such as a pre-paid cell phone or periodic rides to job interviews and the like. He'd experienced the powerful impact one man can have on another man's life and had a hope to marshal others (like myself) into playing a similar role.
Most of the conversation revolved around this idea of "bridging the gap" and people on both sides weighed in with thoughts and ideas, both for what "the gap" looked like and how it might be bridged. In the midst of this discussion a very interesting question was posed to the man who runs the recovery ministry (interesting to me, at least):
"What does success look like?"
Now you must know that I had expectations of the answer to this question. I expected something that might as well have been printed in a brochure or on a website. I expected a pat answer, not necessarily rehearsed, but comfortable and safe. But the question seemed to stop this man in his tracks almost as if he had never before considered it, much less articulated an answer.
"When I was younger, first working with my Dad at the mission," he began, "I would have given you an easy answer that sounded something like, 'a wife and two kids with a white picket fence,' or something that looks normal and right to most any of us." He paused, leaning back in his chair. "I think that idea is part of why I left for a while. I was constantly frustrated to see that virtually no one who came here ended up that way. They all lapsed or failed...or even if they didn't completely fail, it never looked like they ended up in the life that I expected for them."
"But when my father was in the hospital," he continued, "I got calls from men he'd helped wanting to come see him...to thank him. I said yes to most of them, only asking that they not drink or show up high at his bedside. Many of them managed my request, though not all." He looked around the room, folding his arms as he spoke.
"Every one of those men, even the ones who couldn't manage to walk into the room without a drink or something to help them through it, every one of them was there to tell my Dad what a difference he had made in their lives. To thank him. Many of them broke down and cried."
At this point I was putting together in my head both the scene he was describing and the idea around it. Here was a man who had, at some point, worked for and/or with his Dad in this ministry, then left that work, only to return to it...and, clearly, to inherit it. Like a strange prodigal son.
"After watching those men and seeing how it lifted my Dad's spirit, I don't think I can tell you what success really looks like in this program. I don't think I know anymore. Maybe it just looks like a guy who lived in a bottle for years and now only falls into it for a week or so before returning to get some help. Maybe it looks like a guy who's life is still in some form of shambles, but its a life he's working on and the mess of it isn't littered with quite all the same crap as before. Maybe its a guy who can pull himself together enough to see his kids for a weekend...and not much more than that...but that weekend is more than he's managed in years and years."
"Maybe success is just doing better today than you were yesterday or last week or last year. Stumbling next month again but having some kind of depth and desire to pull yourself back together for one more try. And another after that."`
The room was silent as his answer trailed off more than it ended. Somehow everyone knew we'd stepped inadvertently onto holy ground through his conjuring up of this response. The men in the room all stared at him or at the table or at their hands. It was clear to me then that there was no gap in this man's ministry.
Finally someone broke the silence with a simple observation that lingers with me even today.
"That sounds just like us."
