Broken People

"The lone wolf will have to learn how to do it on her own. She does not have a wolf pack family she belongs to. It's not that wolves are cruel or kind, it's the harsh environment they live in."
(PBS Nature 1-17-18)

(Bear with me through this post as it's long but will get better as you go along.)

"Others aren't that interested in a broken person." "So you just felt alone in a lot of ways?" "I was alone."

CBS Sunday morning interview with actress Sharon Stone 1-14-18
A stroke in 2001 almost took her life. Yet Hollywood didn't want her back because she was broken. Even an amazing recovery, she was still not seen as "good enough" to come back..

That interview struck a deep chord within me.

I've always been a broken person. No doubt of that. I profess the faith in Christ yet I still feel incomplete. Why? I feel like I'm mundane. Like my life isn't a waste because it's not that, but that it's irrelevant in that I'm a nobody. Mundane. I feel like I'm doing no good in this world impacting others. I fear when I die and face judgment day that I'll hear that I want good enough, did enough in my faith so therefore I'll get spat out like lukewarm water.

The world spits people like me out. It always has. I'm defective, abnormal, not smart enough, too lost, hopeless to learn, damaged goods, unloved, unwanted, co-dependent, have anxiety.... Need I add more labels?

I am, or at least was a broken person. I know Christ put me back together yet why do I struggle with where I'm broken? With the scars that remain? With the wounds that haven't healed yet? Heck, I'm sure I have wounds I am unaware of.

Case and point, I was in my eighth placement when I accepted Christ. Some of where I had been I had been more than once. October 1996 I had been at my last group home for a little while. I was ward of the state. Indiana owned me. Yet that first year at the group home was one of the best of my life. Several events happened that first year in that changed me forever. Yet it wasn't easy being in a house full of other girls that you had to at least tolerate. It was also the first year I found at teacher who refused to give up on me. Two of them actually. They were the first ones to not give up yet it took me till late 8th grade and really, early 9th to find someone who wouldn't. They were my band director and a math teacher I had. I also had her for one other subject. One staff member at the group home made a scrap book for me but all too often, I felt like they wanted nothing to do with me either.

Nobody up to that point wanted anything to do with me. They only did because that's what they were paid to do. Even when I was sent away to placements each time, I was just merely tolerated. Another point. The last "psych ward" I was at, I was 13. All of the girls on there had what they called PCP's. Not Primary Care Physician (Though we had those too) but it was more like Primary Care Partner or something like that. Everyone on the boys and the girls side had one who was willing to take them on. Nobody wanted me. Not one. I would ask staff if they would be my PCP and all said no. Other girls got to go out and do things with their PCP if their level was high enough but even when I was on the highest level, nobody had anything to do with me. One lady who worked on the adult wing adjacent to mine about a month before I got out became my PCP. She told me she did only because she felt sorry for me that nobody else would. Though I rarely ever saw her because she did work on the other side of our wing but also because she worked night shift.

Story of my life.....

Yet graduating high school, all I wanted to do that day was look at everyone who had ever or still was in my life up to that point, give them the bird and say, "Proved you wrong, didn't I?!" (I wouldn't do that now but at 17, almost 18, I sure wanted to.)

Yet people still don't want to have anything to do with broken people. Broken kids become broken adults, one way or another. So instead of trying to reach out to these broken kids while the kids still have a chance people would rather not be bothered. They would rather focus on the kids who are doing well, popular, the star on the team, etc. The kids who are the black-sheep in society are largely ignored at best and at worst, wind up dead. Just look at the amount of older children especially in DHS care with nobody willing to adopt them. So many kids age out of state care with nothing to say for it, and often either they learn to fly or they wind up dead, prison or homeless. Many of them are black-sheep in the eyes of society, often by no fault of their own.They are black-sheep simply for existing. Some are lucky to get adopted yet many are not. The older the child is, the less odds they have of ever finding a family that will love them. Sometimes the kids who do have a family are still a black-sheep to not just that family but to everyone else around them. So many excuses for why yet still excuses. No child deserves to be treated like that.... NONE!

Yet so many are blind to see it and or intentionally refuse to see it, let alone do anything about it. Why? Sadly even many who profess to follow Christ do this. Yet that's the opposite of what Jesus taught. Aren't we to be like Jesus? Would you rather be a Pharisee instead?

I still am a black-sheep but now I try to embrace my isolation and life of being "scum"to most everyone else. By being that, I don't have to live up to expectations like those who are in the limelight do. I get broken promises still all the time of people saying they will be there for me, mentor me, be "a mom to me" yet every single time, they all run. It never fails. As soon as they see anything, and I mean anything within me, all I get is excuses on why they can't call, text, meet or whatever. I'm poison to them.

My first Easter playing my flute again after not playing in over six years. Had not played a piccolo in just as long. This song was one we were doing. One evening we were doing rehearsal and the one other flutist was late so I had to play the piccolo part. I was not prepared and botched it bad. I was called out in front of everyone for it. Just after I got called out, the other flutist arrived and said she can handle it and everyone waited on her to be ready. It was after that night that I put the piccolo up forever. I gave mine away and have not played it since, minus one time I borrowed it. It was also that day I decided I will never play first part again because apparently I'm not good enough anymore and if I was going to botch something, I refused to look like a fool for it.

See the struggle? If I'm poison to all around me, then why does God not see me as that? Why has God not brought a "Paul" to me if I'm not poison? Everyone else who has said they will be a "Paul" gave up and ran. ("Paul" explained) It has NEVER failed....

Makes me wonder though too.....

"I don't wanna teach these bad kids!" That was a statement I heard recently said from a teacher about teachers being given options in what classes they will teach. Often they don't want to do certain classes and will say it like that. Now, in light of that overall schools have come a ways in isolation vs inclusion when it comes to kids who need special education needs on various levels. If you put my generation next to the generation of my children, education in the realm of inclusion has progressed. Yet if we still look at the "trouble" or "stupid" or "disabled" kids as kids that people don't want to be around and or teach, then we still have a LONG way to go..... 

We've come a long way from the lock-up rooms in classrooms and teachers smacking yardsticks on desks making fun of kids for whatever they can come up with. Or have we? "Zero Tolerance" is anything but.... Bullies get away with everything yet kids are dying by suicide every day. Even in Australia, kids are blamed for how other kids treat them. There's no accountability.... Okay, there is some accountability but nowhere near enough! Often it takes a story going viral and or being blasted on the national news to garter any attention, and often it's too late for the victims.......

Even adults avoid each other, through cliques and what not. Think high school. Seriously! It happens even among the old people. Just open your eyes and look around you in any social gathering. You see it don't you? You are either in or out. I say STAND OUT!


We can encourage kids to eat Tide pods in a challenge fad but we can't encourage kindness and compassion among our own species?!?!?!

We got a serious problem people.....


"Outcasts do not bring their problems on themselves. People want to pretend that if a person has no friends that it is a person’s fault. But it isn’t. Feeling invisible and insignificant is something that no person should ever feel." source Yet so many do....


We as a society are only getting colder to it too...

My teacher once told me if I made it less obvious that I had one hand, more people would like me.
~ Megan C. ~ source

"she faces a world where most people do not presume competence. A world where people will talk to her as if she were a child, with condescending and patronizing attitudes meant to be “nice.” I am afraid the friends she has will be celebrated as “extraordinary” because they have befriended the kid with a disability and not because she is the friend who is funny and kind and fiercely loyal." source

The mom said she wished someone, anyone had ever told her this: “If she ever gets teased because of her disability, I will make sure she knows how valuable and wonderful and gifted she is, no matter what people say.” I wish the dance studio had said, “Sure, bring her over so we can watch her in class and see how she does.” source




"We know people with disabilities have higher unemployment rates." source



Two examples shared on the Mighty said,

“People still assume and think that I’m not capable of anything! And if I try to tell or prove them otherwise they ignore me anyway. And I am 33, got Tertiary Qualifications but can’t even get employed because I’m in a chair and don’t look ‘normal’ to the world.”
— Lize K.
source

” I [use] a wheelchair. I’m proud to say I have my high school diploma and a college degree. However, when going into a job interview, do they look at my credentials? Big fat nope! They look at my wheelchair’s credentials! Which is odd, being that my brain is in my body, not my chair.”
— Rebecca S.
source

The words that stuck out the most were:

"How is my daughter supposed to shine when she lives in a world that continually tries to snuff out her light?"
source

It's up to us to act like Jesus taught. We were COMMANDED to be like Him. To LOVE like He loved. To have compassion and mercy and grace on others. Yet even we are like "every man for himself" which is NOT what was taught! So, do we REALLY follow our faith or do we make up our own rules?

"When people think you have it all together no one ever checks on you to see if you need help. So you feel alone and like your drowning but you just keep on faking that smile like everything is ok."
~ Kim O. ~



Yet even then some people still have nobody.... Be that somebody for someone.

I took one of those spiritual gifts tests recently. Mercy was the highest followed by Faith and third tied with Encouragement and Discernment.

Yet I know I was created with a purpose. I may not know really what for till my death but I'd like to at least bring meaning to those around me. I overall live an isolated life. Especially in recent years. Yet I can see where those four fit me. This journey of mine, from how rough it started through childhood to my early adult years to the special needs parenting journey now has taught me most of all, compassion through the stories of others. The desire to know why people tick the way they do, the desire to have my story help someone else, even if I don't know it has. The desire for my kids to know I did the best I could with everything I had to give. That I never gave up.....

I teach my kids how to treat others, how to have empathy and compassion, especially for those "worse off" oh and I spend hours helping my school age kid with homework and reading. She's on honor roll and has been almost every single grading period for years now. I've been told by several medical professionals throughout the years that my school age kid would always struggle in school. Yeah she struggles but thanks to her IEP and hours of work at home, she's making it. I think I'm doing my job. My children have learned and continue to learn to defy the odds given to them. Their medical journey is complex and always changing yet they blow through all the odds and barriers that others put on them. When I get told that I'm one of the "rare" ones who advocates yet also researches for my own education, I take that to heart. My children are taught to do the same.

So maybe I really will hear, "Well done, my good and faithful servant!" on the day I face death.... Even if the only ones I impacted with my life are my two children and husband.

Blessings!

~ Special Momma ~