Ravenous Needs

Sometimes God speaks to me from the most unusual sources. I guess that’s because He can’t depend on me to go searching in the right places most of the time and must therefore get to me where He can.
I read a movie review on my Netflix E-news this morning. Yes, I know. There’s a lot of stuff going on in the world that’s way more important than what I will see on Netflix News (evidence to support latter sentence in former paragraph). But it is what it is.
Here is the sentence that smacked me on the head:

Watching an audience cheer Diary of a Mad Black Woman is like watching hungry people feast on rancid garbage and tell themselves that it's delicious because their ravenous need has devoured all awareness and judgment.

Yikes.

God grabbed hold of my brain and turned it back to yesterday. I had woken up several times in the night thinking about what I’d experienced in the apartment of a young boy I know. His name is Anthony. Anthony, Jeremy, Miguel, and a couple of other kids broke into Dakota House and stole a bunch of stuff. Snacks mostly—Capri Suns, Flaming Hot Cheetos, Sour Warheads—you know the stuff--and toys we use for memory verse prizes…all things that we would just give to the kids, so the theft was ludicrous as well as disappointing.

Bobby, Irisa (my staff) and I paid a visit to the homes of these boys to speak to their parents and to try to deal with this infraction in a way that would actually give us more time with these boys: making them work off their debt by doing work at Dakota House. Our goal was to teach them about accountability and consequences, keep them involved with us, and show them love that does not go away because you have behaved badly.

While we did what we had set out to do--I was very proud of Bobby and Irisa—the parents’ behavior stunned and disturbed me. I sat on a filthy couch smelling of beer, vomit, and cigarettes, and looked into the eyes of young boys I love, while their parents berated them mercilessly. These parents—several of them high on crack while we were talking to them--who sell their food stamps to buy drugs and let their kids go hungry, and who are all sleeping with one another (when they are out of jail), and spend their days following their lusts wherever they lead them, spoke such ugly words over their children it was painful to witness. “You’re a moron”, “God, you’re stupid”, and “Why did I ever have you?” are some of the phrases I can bring myself to put in writing on this site.

The parents were all looking at each other asking themselves, “How could they do this to us? Don’t they see how good they have it?” One father actually said, “You don’t deserve parents like us.”

Word to that.

I tried to gently explain to the parents that what they tell their children they are is what they will believe they are. I advised them to speak encouraging words over their kids. I tell them I am learning some of this in my own therapy and we all have wounds from things said to us. They look at me as if I am speaking Croatian and have a chicken sitting on my head.

Okay I just read what I have written and realize I am angry at these parents and not being very compassionate with them. ‘Judgmental’ is a word that comes to mind. But I won’t delete it because it is how I feel. It is what it is. My new saying.

So fast forward to this morning. Coffee cup in hand, I stare blearily at my monitor. Ravenous needs that devour all awareness and judgment. Then I realize God is trying to tell me something.

Those parents are just my beloved Dakota House kids grown up. They have a ravenous need to lash out against their anger, to numb their pain, to fill the emptiness inside them, to feel something other than their own misery. These are people who as children were locked in closets for days at a time (true story), sexually abused, neglected, beaten, and abandoned. Their ravenous needs have blinded them to the fact that they are doing the same to their own children. They gorge themselves on rancid garbage and expect it to fill them up, but their systems--that are in fact designed by God--are rejecting it and they are throwing up all over their kids.

These concepts are not new to me. Not to you, either, I am sure. But sometimes I need to be reminded. And sometimes I need to pour some stuff out of my heart because it is just plain too heavy.

Jesus--help me to not only have compassion for these people whom you love but to take a look at my own ravenous needs as well.

J.

P.S. All of the boys showed up at Dakota House later in the afternoon for their consequences. They cleaned up trash in the alley, scrubbed out the fish pond, cleared away hundreds of dead cockroaches, and organized the garage. They left with Warheads in their pockets and the promise that they are still loved in their hearts.