Here is how quickly your world can start to unravel around
you:
·
You nurse your mother through her final days
during the summer.
·
Your sister is diagnosed with breast cancer and
is scheduled to for a mastectomy in February.
·
Your significant other suffers a fatal stroke at
home and paramedics are unable to save him. In the process, the front door of
your home and the stovetop are damaged.
·
Six days later, your sister comes home from the hospital
after her mastectomy and suddenly dies.
·
By the way, you are also disabled with Multiple
Sclerosis, and live in a remote part of Whatcom County. You have now lost a
significant part of your financial support as well as all of your emotional
support systems.
·
You are unable to continue having a phone, due
to money issues.
·
Your car dies and you purchase another one from
an acquaintance. Unfortunately, the tabs are over a year old, and you get
stopped by the police and your car is towed. You have no money and no one to
call, so you walk a long way home.
·
You take what little money you have left to get
the title and registration updated for the car, now you have to go to court for
the ticket you received.
·
In the meantime, you are being charged $45 per
day for the impound fees. You have come up with almost half of what you need to
get it out, but if you don’t get the rest asap, the fees will become insurmountable.
At this point, the woman sitting in front of me is fighting
back tears, because the totality of all the bad things is finally pressing her
down. Also at this point, our Assumption Financial Assistance kicked in and
paid for the rest of her impound fees so that she could start to breathe again!
What is the point? The point is that we often see ordinary
people to whom bad things/luck have happened and their world started falling
slowly apart. The little request for diapers may hide the despair of unpaid
bills, a missing husband, a lost job, a broken down car….any of the
circumstances that send lives spiraling out of control. At Hope House we try
very hard to “see” past the simple request and meet the unsaid needs, if only
as a sounding board (which is what the woman had asked me to be that day).
I’ve said it before, sometimes the needs are not visible nor
physical, but emotional or spiritual.
