conversations on the fringe

It was the Sunday of my installation at church. I was so nervous.  I was being installed as a ministerial intern!  Me?  This broken girl, how in the world did I ever think God could use me?  My palms were sweating and I wished as I had so many times for God to show me His plan.  And then in she walked.  The door opened and Shannon was there.  She looked more nervous then I felt. I jumped up and I asked her if I could give her a hug?  She didn’t even answer, she just wrapped me up in a hug and I could feel her shaking.  “I came,” she whispered into my hair. “I am so glad” I told her, we can sit and be scared together.

Now she comes to church sometimes, and others she does not. When she does not come she always tells me when she sees me next, that she was just too scared that day to be around people. I always tell her that I understand and that so does God.  At Christmas, she came and she brought me a gift.  I will never forget the card.  It read simply; thank you for loving me.  I have not felt loved in a long time.

What if I had not kept trying?  What if I did not have these tattoos? What if I had allowed her silence to keep me away?  I sat in church that day of my installation and asked God to show me His plan, and then He did, in that card from Shannon.  I have not felt loved.  How many people walk through life feeling unloved and unlovable?  How small of a thing to allow someone to be seen.  What a gift that I am being given to show people the dignity of being loved as they are.

I love my time with her now. I love when she comes and sits in church with me. Or when I get the opportunity to carry my lunch tray over and sit with her.  She shares her life with me; the stories come rolling out in her soft, gentle voice. She tells me about her hopes and dreams.  She tells me about her family and her apartment that she loves.  She tells me when she is struggling and when things are going well.  And always now she meets my eye.  

Shannon has three sisters.  All three sisters have mental illness; Schizophrenia, schizo-affective disorder, and borderline personality.  She loves her sisters and she worries about how they will continue to make it. She carries a lot on her shoulders.  I have finally heard her laughter, and it is the sound of pure joy. She has confided in me that she loves to sing, and she dreams about feeling “well” enough to sing in the praise band at church; A simple, beautiful goal.

People are made up of so many pieces.  Their stories are vast and wide and they are bigger than the label of “mentally ill”.  That is not the beginning or the end of the story, it is merely a part.  And every human has the innate desire to feel loved; and to be loved where they are, as they are.  We are all so afraid of falling short; of not being enough.  We all have that voice inside of us that tells us we are unlovable; some peoples are merely louder than others.

Karen Cassidy (stmichaelcas@gmail.com)

Karen is a mother of three amazing adult children. She works for a non-profit organization that serves some of the most marginalized and vulnerable individuals. She is passionate about people and believes every person has a story just waiting to be told.

There are some people that you meet and you just know they are a gentle spirit.  I knew this the moment that I met Shannon.  But it was more than that.  She was like a deer you approach slowly, you just know when you meet here if you rush your way in then she will flee.  I tried so many times to talk to her during our lunch program.  I was met with silence and the most minuscule of nods.  I figured out pretty quickly I would need to change my approach.

I grabbed a tray of food, and I went to the table where she was sitting.  “ Listen,” I said, we don’t even need to talk, “I am just going to sit here and eat with you  if that is OK?”  Smallest of nod to let me know that was OK.  As I was eating I noticed her studying my wrists.  Finally she whispers to me, “You have tattoos?”

“Yes” I respond.

“They allow that?” She asks.

“Well,” I begin, “I kind of came with them, and so they are stuck with them! But the Salvation Army just loves me where I am, as I am, tattoos and all.”

“I have tattoos,” She confides in me.

“Would you like to tell me about them?” I ask….and she does.

That is what it took.  My tattoos.  The part of me I worry the most won’t be accepted, is the very thing she needed to see to tell her that I could handle her story.

Once she began to show me her tattoos, her story rolled out of her.  She grew up in the church, she wanted to be a pastor.  But then one summer in her late teens at a church camp, she suffered her first breakdown, complete with auditory hallucinations.  Her life was never the same.  The voices and breakdowns came in rapid succession.  The medications leave her feeling flat and depressed, but without it she is afraid of everything and everyone.  The medication has caused morbid obesity.  She only wants donuts, she laughs at herself over this.  “I wonder sometimes which is worse, feeling nothing, or feeling everything.”  I tell her I can’t imagine having to choose one or the other.  “I miss church.” She whispers.  

I ask her to come and sit with me on Sunday.  She tells me she is so afraid.  I confide in her, I get scared too!  I am in a new place, living a life that I had never pictured for myself.  I feel scared every day.  This seems to reassure her. “Maybe”, I say, “Maybe we can be scared together”.  She meets my eyes for the first time; her bright blue eyes are so full of life and hope.  “Maybe we can,” she agrees.

So many people are just waiting.  Waiting desperately for someone to hear their stories, they walk through life feeling so alone and so full of words they just can’t express. Waiting for someone to reassure them that their words matter, that they can be heard and still be safe.  Waiting to not be scared.  What if we don’t insist on hearing it?  What if instead we just sit with them, and allow them the safe space to speak?

Karen Cassidy (stmichaelcas@gmail.com)

Karen is a mother of three amazing adult children. She works for a non-profit organization that serves some of the most marginalized and vulnerable individuals. She is passionate about people and believes every person has a story just waiting to be told.

He came to church the first Sunday I began my internship. I will always remember that both of us began together.  He raised his hand at prayer time and asked for prayers for a safe place to live, and he said he wanted to thank God for the shelter that gave him a cot to sleep on.  He kept on showing up to church.  He kept on showing up for our hot lunch program every day.

Young.  Only in his 30s.  Handsome. Smart.  Soft-spoken with a Jersey accent.  Strong.  Deeply introspective and insightful.

And yes, also homeless.

Also schizophrenic.

He spent much of his 20s in a state facility in New Jersey.  He wants desperately to have a different life.   He takes his mental health seriously.

This Christmas he rang bells for us – standing outside at the kettle in the frigid temperatures and the relentless snow.

He took his job so seriously, that he would call me asking me if he could take a bathroom break.

Recently he was at the lunch program when someone asked him why he could not work.  You are an able-bodied young man they persisted.

They were not watching his eyes while they were questioning him.

They did not see his spirit being diminished and that wall that goes up when a person with serious mental illness feels attacked.

I watched him deflating in front of my eyes.

I watched him retreat within himself.  

He stared straight ahead and I knew we were losing him inside of himself.

“Let’s walk into the hall,” I whispered and miraculously he followed me.

“Do you want to tell me what is happening?” I asked.

He looked at me with so much pain in his eyes- “Karen, why don’t they understand?  I know my disability is not obvious like a man in a wheelchair. But it is not less real.  

I have to fight every single day to keep the voices away just so I can function.  They want me to listen to them.  It takes all my energy to not let them take over.  I want a good life.  Don’t they think I want to have a job and know what it is to have a paycheck?  But I can’t.  I have tried.  I am so hurt.  I don’t know what to do.”  He breathes out, exhausted.

We talk a little more, and I sit with him for a bit. I assure him again and again that I see him.

He taught me so much that day about integrity; about showing up and standing up no matter how hard things get.  He reminded me that not all disabilities are going to be obvious.  We have to come alongside of people; we need to be a safe place for their stories.  We need to truly know who they are.  We need to encourage the progress…no matter how small it may appear to us.  

We need to create relationship and we need to see one another.

Karen Cassidy (stmichaelcas@gmail.com)

Karen is a mother of three amazing adult children. She works for a non-profit organization that serves some of the most marginalized and vulnerable individuals. She is passionate about people and believes every person has a story just waiting to be told.