Month: January 2016

Life is measured in before and after

January 20, 2011 ended up cold and snowing; pretty much like it was this morning, as I sat and wrote this. That morning was cold but beautiful. The sun was out and I had to be in Nashville first thing to teach a class.
I drove to my newly self-appointed parking spot on the side of Albion Street.  I gathered the items I had brought for the mothers, diapers, wipes etc., and made my way back up the street to the facility where the mothers were waiting.

That morning I had also brought my digital camera because we needed a picture of me teaching for a brochure. As the class was ending and I had asked one of the mothers to take a picture while I was finishing up. teach meharry

I said my good byes and told them I would see them next week.

As I walked to my van I was talking to my daughter who was in college 90 minutes from Nashville. At 11:29am we said our good byes and by 11:32am, I was calling 9-1-1, because I had just been attacked.

Today is the 5th anniversary of that attack, and it still is a very real part of who I am.  As I sat down to do my quiet time this morning I realized that God has quite a sense of humor.  I started my quiet time by praying and my prayer this morning went something like this “God, thanks to PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act), I can’t get into jails and prisons like I used to under the victims awareness program, so why again did I have to go through the attack?”

To give the backstory to that prayer: 18 months after the attack, I was asked to speak to a group of men in an Ohio Prison. I went under the “Victims Awareness” program.  After I had finished my talk a gentleman approached me and said, “I was praying this morning for a sign from God that He was real and in you walked.”  (He actually knew of the 180 Program that we founded because he had been incarcerated in TN first).

At that moment I understood that God had to allow me to become a victim of a gang attack in order to be allowed to speak in that prison at that time.  But today it’s a different story. With PREA you have to be trained by each individual jail, prison, by that county or state, there are no federal trainings.  Just to give you an idea by the end of January I will have sat in 4 different PREA trainings just so I can continue to teach here locally.

So this morning 5 years later, I was having a pity party. Why did this happen? I opened up Philippians where I have been studying for the past month and I see this verse:

I want you to know brothers and sisters that what has happened to me actually served to
advance the gospel.

 

Today I am alive and I don’t take that lightly. Two women died at the hands of their domestic abusers within 30 days of my attack.  They had the same injuries I had. I do suffer from PTSD and some days are better than others.  Five years later, the right side of my face is always asleep and tingles or twitches. It is very irritating when I try to kiss my husband, but at least I am alive to kiss my husband.

Life is measured in before’s and after’s. I have a daily choice to let the PTSD that I now have control me or I control it.  This year I am looking for a new why?

I may not be allowed into the prisons and jails like I used to be, but God…  He gave me this platform. He allowed me to walk away with just a tingling face and PTSD, so today’s quiet time showed me that this happened to advance Gods Kingdom and now my job is to keep my eyes open for the new where, to answer the why?

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They didn’t choose to be Homeless

In November I started teaching the women at the local homeless shelter. I was excited to be a teacher of Job Readiness and Parenting. The Job Readiness class is about to wrap up and has been very successful.  The parenting class though has been a different story.

We started with week 1 and there were 4 women in class but 2 of them had their children with them.  When I inquired why these children were not with the rest of the children I was told “they are not allowed to participate in the activity with the other children”.

The 2nd week the children were once again in the class, I asked why the children were in the parenting class when a group had come to have a Christmas party with ALL the children.  The answer again was “they are not allowed to participate in the activity with the other children”. So I proceeded to sit down to teach and the 2 other women, whose children were allowed to participate said, “If there are going to be children in the class, then I won’t come”.  They stood up and left.

That night instead of teaching about parenting I told my families story of an unruly teenager. How we had her locked up before her senior year in high school and how she could have chosen to quit after high school. I talked about how she kept plugging away and did graduate just last year with a Bachelor’s Degree.  I told them about owning a pizzeria and what I learned there. We were all over the map with discussion and stories, but at the end of the night that group of pre-teens/teens asked if I would teach them about jobs, anger and getting along (basically these were the subjects we touched on during my talk).  I was so excited and got approval to come back the following week to teach the teens.

When I walked into the shelter that Tuesday evening I was ushered quickly upstairs to the kids room. They asked “now what is the lowest age group you want?”

What, excuse me? After comprehending that they thought I was here for all the children I said “I am here for just the two families and their children?”

To which I was told “I am sorry but they are not allowed to participate in any activity with the other children”.

As I sat there in this empty room I was overcome with all types of emotions… but the main emotion I felt was sadness.  I had let those kids down. I promised I would be back to teach them. I had the relationship with them, and now I was in a room with pre-teens and teens that had NO relationship with me so why would they listen to me.

I quickly decided that God had me here so I was going to make the best of it and figure out the rest later.

A few sat down at the tables, a couple in the chairs up against the wall, and one of the youngest came and sat on the built-in bookshelf right next to me.

We chit chatted for a bit and then we talked about rules and why there are rules.

We talked about anger and how we need to control it.  We also talked about things we could do when we got angry that did not include hitting someone or something.

We talked about fathers and relationships with their dads.  The youngest one sitting right next to me blurted out “I don’t have a dad, I have a sperm donor”.  My heart sank when I heard that, because I knew those were the words of his mother or mother’s family.

I realized that these kids were all angry in their own way.  Some have been labeled “trouble makers” and it’s easier to live up to that label than to let someone get close because they don’t know what tomorrow has in store.  They did NOT ask to be homeless. Nobody asked them if they wanted their life to have to fit into a locker.  Their mothers for whatever reason have chosen to live in this shelter. Their lives are always in a state of flux with no personal space to call their own.  If their mother gets angry at a rule she can yank the kids up out of their seats and storm out, not to be let in again til the next day.  If their mother happens to find “love” they could find their things at a complete strangers one night and back at the shelter the next because “love” didn’t work.  Some are in the shelter because their mother stated it was better to be homeless living in a shelter in Nashville than staying in Michigan or Ohio.

So what’s the answer? Relationships.

Healthy relationships with the moms and the kids.

And where will these relationships come from?  The church

If you are interested in becoming a part of the solution please contact us.  We will train you and your volunteers. We will give you the tools to allow you to be an in an equipping relationship and make sustainable changes in the lives of hurting families.