March 30, 2010

Dear Readers,
A couple of weeks ago my wife, Dianne, shared with me a story she read from the daily Lenten email devotions from Goshen College. The story was so good, I wanted to share it more widely. I might even use it in my Easter sermon this Sunday. I hope it adds brightness to your day.
By Carolyn Schrock-Shenk, associate professor of peace, justice and conflict studies at Goshen College
I felt the heaviness of the room envelope me as I walked through the glass double doors, the security guard locking them behind me. It was 4 p.m. and I was the last person allowed into the local Social Security office. The waiting room was still full; two long, silent rows of people; faces etched with anxiety, fear and sadness; gloom wrapping them about like a shroud. This was the recession personified.
Almost immediately, my name was called and I moved forward to claim the appointment I had made three weeks before. A woman, perhaps in her mid-fifties, greeted me, then pulled up my “case” on her computer screen. She turned to me expectantly. With anxiety tripping up my words, I began to describe why we couldn’t possibly owe large amount of (alleged) overpaid disability benefits from years before.

She listened carefully, jotted a few notes, then pulled up more data on her screen. I waited, not knowing, trying to intuit what would come next.

I was astonished by what did come next. In the space of a few minutes and without an ounce of judgment, she replaced my anxiety with peace of mind. She understood why I was anxious, she said, but the next part of the process was hers to worry about. It was her job, in these next weeks, to figure out what happened and why; then she would work with me to decide how to address it. She promised to work with me until the end of the process. “It will be okay,” she said simply. “You don’t need to worry.”

I stared at her, almost undone by her compassion. Feeling an immense sense of relief, I asked her, “How can you be like this, working with sad and difficult stories every day, all day long?”
Her eyes brightened and she leaned toward me as if sharing a secret. “I love my work,” she said, with passion. “At the end of every day I go home and know that I made a difference for at least one person that day. What could be better?”

I was deeply moved; the power of her spirit transformed mine. If the people in the outer room embodied the distress of the recession, the woman in this cubical embodied the promise of abundance.

“Besides,” she then added, with a grin, “They don’t pay me nearly enough to be mean and grumpy.”