Compassion means to suffer with. Simply giving a handout is not really suffering unless you can count missing out on a five-dollar cup of coffee as suffering. To be a poverty warrior it is critical that you decide if you are really open to suffering with these men and women. Breaking addiction is painful. Are you willing to walk through that pain with them. Relapse hurts deeply. Will you hurt deeply with these men and women. Understand if you begin down this road you must persist. Steadfastness will be required. Understand that if you become overwhelmed and quit that these men and women will have a new tortured feeling of rejection that they will need to deal with. I don’t want to be the source of ongoing pain. However, I also understand that if I choose to not have difficult conversations I am adding to their pain. Those conversations inflict intentional pain like a surgeon.
Recently my granddaughters were staying at my house with their parents. One of the girls was simply not used to being in the country, a place with no fences. She sensed the joy of freedom and was consistently wandering off. What she did not understand was that there were dangers that she was unaware of out there. She was small and the odds of getting hurt were high. Her daddy sat with her and talked to her. He explained that he loved her, and he wanted her to experience the joy of the wilderness, the wild animals and more. Her eyes grew large with joy. He went on and explained that sometimes wild animals feel threatened and might endanger her. He did not want her to get hurt so when she wanted to explore, she needed to take an adult with her. The basic formula that he was teaching was the algorithm of if you wander you might get hurt because you are still small.
Today many are not taught much about the consequences of our choices. If I use drugs, it is less likely that I will accomplish my dreams and nearly impossible that I will keep my dreams if I stay in my addiction. If I do not learn to control my anger I will lose jobs, relationships and maybe even my freedom. If I do not seek help for my anxiety, I will be a prisoner in my own head. Are you willing to feel the pain of teaching these lessons. Then are you willing to suffer with them when they ignore your advice and get hurt. Are you willing to do this countless times and keep reminding them of the lessons? That is what real compassion is all about, that is the duty of the poverty warrior.
In my own heart this is difficult. My heart hurts when I watch them move into an apartment and then isolate for a very long time. I cringe when they report that they lived on dog food for a season, that they considered suicide because they were feeling purposeless. They commit to living a new life and they really mean it for about a week or two. Then they return to what they know and do it all again. Still, I love them and ride the storm with them. That is compassion.
