Spring, Sprang, Sprung
Spring: Days start getting longer, flowers begin to bloom, and warmer weather allows us to spend more time enjoying the outdoors.
Sprang: To become suddenly very active and energetic
Sprung: To disclose something to someone suddenly or unexpectedly, without proper forewarning
The three pictures below visually represent the presence and actions of the words spring, sprang, and sprung that have occurred in our work lately.
The images show only a glimpse of the ability of those we encounter who are experiencing extreme mental, physical, and spiritual anguish and chaos to seek out, discover, appreciate, and embrace the beauty that still exists around them.
The past few times that we have visited with one of our clients who is severely mentally ill, who has experienced extreme abuse during their time of experiencing homelessness, who is judged harshly by others, who has past traumas that cannot be expressed to us clearly due to the detriments those traumas have caused them mentally, and who exists in extreme isolation in the middle of a populated area, they have had these beautiful floral arrangements that they have made from flowers they have found nearby. We now look forward to seeing what new arrangement will be in place on our next visit. And we can’t wait to compliment them and speak to them about how beautiful it is. The change of expression on their face lights up brighter than the flowers! They then speak of how they love to find things that they think are beautiful and how having those things to look at brings them such joy, uplifts them, and gives them energy! What a gracious gift it is for us to receive the same things being said of us. How our presence with them creates those same feelings! And to hear of how some of these things they find that are beautiful only last for a little while before they go away, but they’re grateful to have found them before that happened.
This past week has been full of the aspects of this work that are beautiful. Many of those moments have occurred because of slowing down, taking the extra time to seek out, discover, appreciate, and embrace. We must hold onto and appreciate these beautiful moments, because there can be long droughts filled with bad moments, mundane moments, transactional moments, and moments where you want to give up, and clients want to give up. It’s the moments of beauty that we have to remember that make going through all the other moments worth it.
One of our community representatives, what we now like to call our ROC volunteers, said to us after a day of beautiful moments:
“Wow, today was full of a lot of productive work and good connections! Not a lot of the usual transactional encounters.”
We responded by saying:
“Yeah, it doesn’t happen all the time where the real impactful work gets done, but it takes continuing to get through the mundane days in order to experience the rare spectacular days.”
The beautifully spectacular days are when you ask someone if they need a hug and they spring forward to receive your embrace, and they are able to have a much-needed cry. They are then able to tell you of their need to get their disability started again. You then connect them with a paralegal with a disability attorney.
The beautifully spectacular days are when someone you have known for 7 years springs into telling you how awesome it is that you are still reaching out to them after all this time, and you both tear up while responding by saying it is because of the awesome people that you continue to find, such as themselves, that continue to keep you coming out!
The beautifully spectacular days are when you have 5 people that have sprung into action and at least begun a conversation with you about wanting to go to rehab or made the call to recovery navigators to begin the process of getting into rehab.
The beautifully spectacular days are when you are sprung upon someone who you haven’t seen for over 8 months, and they tell you that they are now in a sober living house, working a full-time job, having taken care of all their legal issues, and having zero desire to ever experience homelessness again.
The beautifully spectacular days are when you find so many people in an area of town that you have struggled to locate people for a few months that you almost run out of the supply bags you brought with you for the day. It is sprung on you by a new person you haven’t met before that their dog has been missing for 3 days. They are looking to you desperately to try and help them find them. You then spring into action and reach out to one of the animal control officers at McKamey. They say the person’s dog is with them. They then arrange a plan to bring the client’s dog back to them. The client becomes so thankful that a hug is sprung onto you. As you’re leaving that group, you have this really neat fossil sprung into the van by another grateful client.
The beautifully spectacular days are when you go to see a formerly homeless client of yours at the same apartment you helped them get housed in three years ago, and a surprise is sprung on you when you arrive. Along with the one client out the front door of the apartment follows a second client who you haven’t seen since you assisted them in getting housed in the same apartment complex about two and a half years ago. More hugs of gratitude are sprung upon you! As you turn to leave, one of them says, “It isn’t perfect, but it’s a whole lot better than where I used to be!” Your heart can’t help but swell as you respond with, “I can’t tell you how good it is to hear you say that!” Knowing the numerous ways you had to fight and advocate with seemingly everyone that got in your path three years ago to make a statement like that possible!
We ran into our partner at White Oak Bicycle Co-op the other morning, and they asked us:
“What does the rest of your day look like?”
We said:
“Well, we don’t really know yet! We will find out when we get to wherever we are going. That’s the beauty of what we get to do!”
#ROCAndRoll
#SpringSprangSprung
#TheBeautyOfItAll
