St. Mary Euphrasia

Greetings! It has been 6 weeks since my last blog, so for those of you who actually missed hearing from me I apologize. To my defense I have been quite busy with moving home and starting a new job. I am now a youth counselor at Maryhurst (http://www.maryhurst.org/). Maryhurst is a treatment facility for kids in the foster care system who have been abused and neglected. It is a place for “those in greatest need.” This may seem like a career change from my earlier church work (why did I get that M.Div), but I am actually learning more about who God is and who God calls us to be than I did at seminary.

I work in a dorm with 12 teenage girls. Life in the dorm is essentially managed chaos. Our goal is to provide structure, support and safety for these teenagers, so that they can learn how to express their emotions appropriately and make good choices. Our girls are fun and hilarious. They are also angry and wounded. When a girl is being unsafe, we sometimes have to physically put our hands on them. I have never had someone threaten to hit me before and actually mean it. I have never been in a physical struggle with a person when we were both using every ounce of strength we had. With all the training and all the support people can still get hurt. Once the point of crisis has passed there is an unbelievable time of softness and connection. The girl who was calling you every name in the book, bitting, hitting, or pulling your hair 2 hrs ago, now wants your care, support, and affection. It is so amazingly counter intuitive, but it is what these kids need. They need you to set limits. They need you to hold them accountable. They need you to forgive them. They need you to comfort them.

This weekend one of my girls fell and hurt her knee. We called the go-to and they said she didn’t need to go the hospital. She needed to stay off it and put ice on it, and we would get her in to see health services on Monday. At the time it seemed like a logical decision. As I reflected on the weekend however, I remembered a time when I got hurt. I was 13 and broke my ankle jumping on a trampoline. My Dad physically picked me up (an amazing show of strength on his part). He immediately carried me to the car and took me to the hospital. These kids deserve that overwhelming, ridiculously over the top show of love. They need to know that they are safe and cared for. We can’t always provide that immediate over the top show of protection and care, but we can ride out the storms with them. We can stay present as they hate us and love us and need us all at once.

I have no idea where God is directing my life. I really don’t know what it will look like in 5 or 10 years. But I know I am in the right place for today. I can’t see the whole picture but I know I am learning some very important lessons.


In honor of Maryhurst and the work that we do, here is a quotation from St. Mary Euphrasia
"Whatever may be your trials, you must never be disheartened, but raise your thoughts and eyes to God, placing your confidence in God . . . . Be strong in soul and generous, setting aside love of self, and if the opportunity occurs, do not hesitate to perform even heroic acts of virtue. If we only use the tips of our fingers or hardly wet ourselves with a sponge when we wash, can we expect to be really clean? To learn to swim we must not enter the water little by little, but throw ourselves into it . . . .