One thing after another.

 

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.