As Brandon eats his chicken noodle soup, we put a hat on his head. Someone hands him a pair of those warm socks, and the new guy wraps a warm blanket around his shoulders. Snot drips from Brandon’s long nose.
Viewing entries tagged
mental illness
They told him to load the dirty dishes into the dishwasher and to empty them when they finished washing. Chuck is a bit OCD, and it bothered him that sometimes dishes came out with cooked-on-crusties.
He’d stand on the front sidewalk and smoke a cigarette, and he’d talk. Not to other customers. To himself.
One night he got confused. His mind doesn’t process things well. He was pushing the four wheeler through the long parking lot (where it would have been okay to ride). He got to the intersection of two main streets, climbed on it and rode it through the intersection. A police car was sitting right there.
Frank smiled. Then he asked, “Does your iced tea have healing powers?”
Some days I cry. Some days I get mad. Zach is one of so many we know who fall through the cracks. There is no place for him.
Little Mary was a prostitute—not the street-walker type—well maybe sometimes, but not the leopard skin, mini-skirt and high heels type. For Mary, sex was a currency, as is the case for so many women living in poverty.
The policeman stepped out of his car, and the young man who had called breathlessly rattled his complaint. “These guys are gonna beat me! They threatened to hit me! I didn’t do nothing to them, but they’re gonna kill me! Some of them are Juggalos and some of them are Crips. They’re gonna kill me!”
One of the more frustrating elements of ministry at Joe’s is the complexity of the roots of problems. We daily encounter these plus the worldview and value system that is inherent to generational poverty. Add to these the ingredients of drug addiction and mental illness, and otherwise simple needs become recipes for extreme frustration.
I was sad. The semi-lucid moment had passed. It was clear I wouldn’t learn anything more about Bill today. We couldn’t even converse anymore. He just kept repeating the same thing over and over again.