Judge not lest you be judged ..........

This week has been one where I have been very ashamed of my fellow believers. It is sad as I had just spent 3 days at a conference with other people just like me and had come home thinking there was hope for the church and really wanting to find one to attend regularly...

On Monday morning I go to work and there is Fiona. Fiona is 8mths pregnant, a heroin addict and a street sex worker. She looked very sad as she searched through our clothes to try and find something to hide her bump. I asked if she was ok and she said no, she didn't expect to be down here(St Kilda) again and certainly not pregnant. She felt judged. I said that there was no judgement inside Gatehouse and she smiled. She then proceeded to tell me that her and her husband had been going to church and that they had got off drugs and were doing well for about a year. They got engaged and all was good. Then she got pregnant and the church threw them out. And now here she is with a habit again, 8 mths pregnant and selling her body instead of getting ready for the birth of her first child. Seriously where is that in the bible? Where is the unconditional love? I asked if I could pray for her and she said yes, tears streamed down her face as I asked God to show her his love. Inside I was furious if she would have told me the name of the church I would have rung them up and said "see what you have done, are you proud that your self righteous actions have caused this?"

On Wednesday I was reading my fb and one of my school friends posted ".....thinks it is all a crock of shit." of course I had to look. Turns out the Australian Christian lobby has a hateful site called saving marriage. I am not going to link to it because I don't want anyone else to have to read it. It has a section that details arguments against homosexual marriage. It states that once this is allowed it opens the door for to incestual relationships and that same sex parents will harm their children. More hate, more vilification. Again angry I posted on my friends fb that I was sorry and that not all people of faith were this bigoted.

I am sick and tired of two diminutional Christianity. Anti abortion and anti homosexuality is what they preach. They stand out side abortion clinics with signs and placards(and sometimes bombs) heaping hate on woman who have made the hardest decision of their lives. They hold meetings to discuss the evil that is incarnate in the homosexual person and how they will destroy the fabric of out society.

Last night 200 children were killed in afghanistan when an American bomb missed it's target and landed on a school instead, tonight 200 people will sleep on the street in the Port Phillip region alone, our indigenous community is being ripped to shreds by a unjust and undemocratic law that removes their rights, Again. Where are the churches rising up against these injustices?

Aren't we supposed to bring reconciliation and peace?

I know that their justification will be about people knowing THE truth, about making disciples of all nations but what they fail to see is that THE truth is one of love and peace and compassion and that discipleship is not about moralizing or telling society what is wrong or right but about the One. The One person God has put in front of me right now. To hold that person with compassion showing them God's love for them. So that he may reveal himself to them. This is not done on by angry protests or meetings but by the everyday relationships we choose to build with our community.

Life is Hard and then it gets harder

Today we began the big clean up Gatehouse it was wiped out by the storm water drain over flowing on Friday night. Not much can be saved. Jim and I had the unenviable task of trying to make us barely functional. Water and dirt every where, in every thing.

As we began B came to the door. "sorry chick we are closed." I say. " I really need to talk to you" B replies with an anxious look on her face. *sigh* "Ok lets go out side" I motion out the door but she doesn't move. "Its Dannielle I have seen her since Friday......."

She could have then been speaking French after that. My vision narrowed and I felt sick.

Danielle is a beautiful young woman who I have seen almost 5 days a week for the past 2 years. She had no where to go on christmas day so she came to our place with her lovely daughter who she sees once a fortnight. She is also a drug addict and my friend.

I had tried to txt her on the weekend to see if her house had flooded, no answer. Tried again to see if she had her daughter and would we all go to the park, no answer. Tried to ring her this morning to see if she wanted a lift to Gatehouse again nothing.

I instictively knew that something was wrong as B told me stuff that I have no idea about. It took no more than two phone calls to discover that Danielle was in intensive care with a massive brain injury.

Gemma and I dropped everything to go visit.

There was my friend as vunerable as I have ever seen her. Six lines in with various medicines and food. A machine breathing in and out for her. Her head shaven and bandages wrapped around it. Cooled to 33 degrees because it may help her recovery, her skin was grey.

As a speech pathologist I have stood in ICU wards many times before. I can read the monitors and understand the lingo. She is seriously ill and there are no grantees she will be ok.

My head screaming inwardly, "WHY GOD WHY", as I stand there stroking her calmly telling her she has to wake up. That her daughter needs her, that there are people who love her, that I need her.

I have been at Gatehouse for 2 years in March and the longer I am there the harder it gets. I spend more time with the woman than my own family. And I have grown to love them. It hurts to see them messing up there lives and not being able to stop it. But it is the nature of the Job and the nature of "small things with great love" But today "small things" did not seem enough I just hope "Great Love" is.....

I will end today with a quote I stole from Gemma my friend who's beautiful writing about today today and a photo of Danielle can be found here.

"Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain." William Faulkner.

The Man next Door

As described in my last post we have lived next to an interesting character. S was an inventor, chief of neighborhood watch, and a sad lonely man. You will notice my past tense. Well that is because S is dead." He was killed in a head on collision. The Police are not sure if it was an accident or suicide. Could be either given his constant talk about "people who want to die" and his terrible terrible driving. He was only 41.

S will be missed by very few people. He had no real friends to speak of and his mum is nearly as crazy as he was.

I will miss him though. I will miss our weird conversations about his latest inventions, the way the world would end, or his day at "supernatural school". I will miss him sitting on his bench in his front yard at all times of the day or night. As I walked passed his place tonite and I saw the lonely seat and I felt sad. We were not conventional friends but a strange as it may seem I liked him and will miss the quirky relationship we had.

Goodbye S, the Tew family will miss you x

Mirror roads, Laser Tv and other crazy stuff.

We have a next door neighbor who is an inventor, he invented the Laser TV , Mirrored Roads and the Laser Washing Machine.......never heard of these inventions well that is because they are a figment of his imagination.

S has a mental illness, schizophrenia I think, from the way he yells at the voices in his head some times. And his mantra "I am a nice person I don't hurt people you know...."

He is alone most of the time, isolated in his craziness, too paranoid to come for dinner on the couple of occasions that we have asked him. No friends ever visit him, he roams around on foot or in the car. His personal hygiene is terrible. He must be awfully lonely.

Then there is K she is a client of mine at work. She has been mentally unwell for as a long as she can remember. She has had fifteen admissions to the psyc ward in the last 8 weeks and

numerous suicide attempts including today where she lay on the road in front of a moving tram and it nearly hit her. The emergency department and the pych unit where she usually attends will no longer see her. She is homeless, addicted to drugs, skinny and desperate. Her suicide attempts are not because she is depressed but an attempt to get what she wants, a symptom of her confused mind

These are the forgotten mentally ill of our society. They are not unwell enough to access acute psyc services but need long term care so they are safe. But there are no such places, because, we, the sane, (well mostly) decided institutions are bad. Chucked the baby out with the bath water as we are want to do. I am not advocating for the bad old days when we locked them away never to be seen again but instead communities where they can be safe, housed and have access to the help they so desperately need.

Mental health is drastically under funded both at a state and federal level. Our prisons are full of mentally ill who are not being treated appropriately. Mental health workers are overloaded and there is a huge burn out rate.

My fear for both S and K is that something bad is going to happen to them. That one day the tram will hit K or S will act out the things his voices are telling him to do. A colleague of mine says she feels sick every time she thinks of K-that her time is short. K thinks she is "beyond help" and quite frankly the way the system works now she probably is.

I have no real answers, but instead questions. Who will go to K's funeral when it happens? Is there a better way? Are their some people who are in fact not able to be helped?

If you do, would you mind saying a prayer for S and K that they might have some rest from their minds and find some peace......

Great Love- The Hardest thing to do

I have not posted since August, not because I didn't want to but because my life has been mad.

Where to begin I am not sure. But I do know this I am learning the lesson of what Great Love is.

My friend and colleague, Gemma, posted about such love on the Dark Room Red Light Blog a great read so go there if you can.

In the last 4 weeks I have had my ability to love unconditionally shaken. It is something that has always come easily to me. I quickly take people into my heart, compassion and empathy are easy for me, a gift and a curse, as it is exhausting to care so much about people that you feel their pain, but it is what makes me good at what I do.

Then Yesterday........

There is a couple with whom I have been working with for over a year. In August last year they were homeless, heroin addicted and desperate. Then M found out she was pregnant. for the first time they asked for help. I took them to appointments, spent hours on the phone trying to find them accommodation and along the way grew to understand how and why they found themselves destitute and drug addicted, and, to love them. Together we worked our butts off to see them housed, drug free, having custody of their beautiful baby girl and their teenage son.

On Friday night M's mother txts me to say that Protective Services were bringing the children to her as M and B had a car accident and the police thought them to be drug affected. Seriously I wanted to get a big stick and smack them with it. Didn't they understand what it was they stood to loose? After a what must have been the longest weekend of their lives we end up at court Monday morning. It takes all day and I sit with these distraught parents, coping B's abuse because I know that it is not really me he is angry at, wiping M's tears and trying to get them to see it isn't the end of the world but thinking it might be. The worker who has worked with them since the birth of their baby sticks her neck out and advocates for them to have the kids back. I leave court exhausted but happy. M and B hug me as they go home to wait for their kids to return.

Then yesterday..................

M and B come in asking for food and stuff. I chat to M in th office about how they are and how we can help going forward she looks exhausted and is still very emotional. We put together some stuff for them and play with their baby girl who is seriously cute. B follows me into the office asking for a phone card. They leave hugging me and say see you Friday.............

My phone is gone also, it is almost certain that B took it whilst I was getting him a phone card as it was charging in the computer near where he stood. I am angry and sad, I cry and swear. Girls offer me money they've earned on the streets and one offers me a i-phone that was not bought at any apple store.

I am not really angry about the phone, its annoying especially as it is the second one I have had stolen. I am angry because I have helped these two more than anyone. Gemma rationalizes and bosses me about seeing a psychologist which I must and will do. But still I feel sad and angry- "Why steel from me? I help them. Thats it I am not helping them anymore!"

Sitting on the couch after the kids have gone to bed I hear the still quite voice and they conversation goes like this;

" You must love them with Great Love."

"Why should I? They don't love or respect me"

"Thats what Great Love is."

"but that's not fair and it is soo hard!."

"No but it is what it is- to love with no strings, unconditionally and continually despite what they do or say."

sigh "ok"

So there it is. To love expecting nothing in return is difficult, heart breaking and gets harder the more you get to know someone. But it is the core of what I believe and why I do what I do. So today I have made two resolves:

* To start seeing a psychologist that can help me stay mentally well, so I can continue to do what I do.

* To practice loving others as He has loved me- openly, with no strings and expecting nothing.

Foul Weather friends- for you my dear Olivia

An old and dear friend was killed yesterday and I am devastated. When my Tilly was little she spent so much time at his house that she called him Daddy Scott. He has left behind 3 beautiful girls and a wife who is truly the nicest woman you could ever meet. I haven't spoken to her because what do you say? I sent her a txt last night that simply said "sorry, we love you all."

I logged onto another blog that I haven't visited in quite sometime and there was the following devotion- It is perfect. I am going to print it out and give it to her when I see her but I wanted to share it with my fb friends who knew and loved Scott

How Can We Walk Through Life's Rain With You?

I wish I had a big red umbrella that would keep all the rain out of your life. I would hold it over your head and the drops would splash, splash and you would never even feel them.

But I don't have a big red umbrella...so I'll walk through the rain with you.

God doesn't intend for us to go through our storms alone. We all need our "foul weather friends" who will venture out into the weather with us.

There are two questions we must answer to not only survive but thrive through life's storms;

Who will walk through the rain with us? And will we let them?

Friends love through all kinds of weather. Proverbs 17:17 MSG

Devotional quote from the 365 Day Inspirational Calendar, Rain on Me based on the book, by Holley Gerth.

My dearesrt Livy and your beautiful little girls I love you all so much and will walk through this rain with you xxxx

Aliens living on planet earth

Imagine you are captured by aliens and transported to their planet dropped in the middle of one of their cities and then expected to live there, with no one to tell you how to act, what the social norms are, how simply to be normal, not excel, just not stand out from the crowed . On top of that imagine that everyone around you is waiting and believing you will fail. Your previous existence has labelled you for ever. From the very top politicians, to woman next door, they expect the worst.

Welcome to the life of people who are moving from the world of drug addiction to what they call the straight world.

The Life we all think is normal is completely alien to them. They do not know let alone understand our social nuances. They do not even know the first thing about living outside of crisis because crisis is all they have ever known.

Over and over again I here those who have never been addicted to drugs talk about how simple it must be- Just stop taking drugs and everything will be ok. In reality the actual act of not taking drugs anymore is the easy bit, and believe me it is not so easy . A girl was withdrawing from heroin where I work described it as every living cell in her body hurting and screaming for the drug. Just today another girl said "I'm on the done Louisa" "good" I say "No you don't understand I feel so straight now I have to deal with my actual thoughts."

We applaud those who move away and get clean and rightly so, but this is the beginning not the end. They are like small children in this straight and very confusing world of ours. One full of subtleties and unspoken, unwritten rules. And in reality does society really want them to fit in or do we want to be proved right that once a "bloody junky" always one?

Just like a baby they do not need our scrutiny or our negative comments but instead our compassion and understanding that what they are trying to do is massively difficult. They need us to celebrate each and every small victory along the way.

I am constantly reminded that I am only one or two decisions away from being where these fellow humans found themselves. I am not there to judge, but to love and sometimes I fail. I am sorry to those along the way to whom I have not loved like I could have, or to whom my expectations and lack of understanding of the enormity of the task, have hampered your recovery. I will try to love others as they should be loved: unconditionally, compassionately, and without and expectation of receiving something in return.