I had been working with "Gina" (not her real name) for two weeks when I asked her to come by the office to discuss her savings. This is part of our overall strategy to empower the women in our CCO Shelters.
Gina seemed preoccupied as she took her seat beside me. I began our conversation by asking if she had received her cash benefits for this month. She told me she hadn’t. I asked her if she knew of any reason why she had not. She told me she had no idea. Then she told me she tried calling her government-assigned case manager to find out what was going on and could never get through to him.
As she was telling me this I remembered she had not given me the manager's phone number when we did her intake. I asked her if she could give me the number now so I could try calling him to find out what had happened. She said she would have to get the number for me because she did not know it by heart. I told her that was fine and I would wait to finish our meeting while she ran upstairs to bring me the number. Then I went on telling her how important it was for her to receive this money to put towards savings so her family could get housing. I told her I was sorry that this obstacle had come her way and I would do my best to promptly rectify the situation then thanked her in advance for getting me the number. She told me she would do her best to find it but she couldn’t promise me anything.
I let her know if worse came to worse I would just look up the main office number on line and try to reach the case manager from there. She stood up slowly and turned to walk towards the door. In mid step she stopped and pointed to a small devotional I had lying on my desk and asked me if that was an Our Daily Bread? I smiled and told her it was. She told me that when she was in prison the chaplain would bring them to her and reading them is what got her through that long painful period in her life! Then she asked if I had any extra.
I told her I did not but she could have mine. She thanked me as I handed it to her then left to find me the number. It had been a good half an hour to 45 minutes when she returned and asked to speak with me in privacy. So we went next door.
I asked her what it was that she needed to tell me. She looked at the ground and asked me If she could lose her place in our program for what she was about to say. I told her I could only answer that question if I allready knew what she was going to confess. Then I encouraged her to just tell me what was on her mind so we could work through it together. After that she looked straight into my face and told me she had lied to me about the money and the phone number. She said she had received it and had spent every penny of it on a cell phone.
Earlier that week, when we sat down to work through her budget, I had told her a cell phone was not a necessity. She had agreed with me, saying "You are right, housing is more important."
She now looked at me sheeplishly and explained that she knew if I called her case manager I would find out the truth. So she felt she had to lie to me about not knowing his number!
Gina apologized and told me that when I said I would do my best to help her get the money as quickly as possible, she saw how concerned I was. "I realized you really are trying to help me, that you really care." She continued by saying how she wanted to tell me the truth right then and there, but she was too proud and afraid of the consequence. So instead she had planned to go upstairs pretend to look for the number she allready knew by memory then come back and tell me she had misplaced it.
At this piont I interrupted Gina to ask what made her change her mind? Looking down at the ground again with a slight smile she told me. "It was that devotional of the day in the 'Our Daily Bread' you just gave me." She explained that when she'd gone upstairs she needed something to occupy her time so I would believe she had actually looked for the number. She opened up the devotional for the day and the title read something like this: “ Conviction and True Repentance”! After this was said she looked up at me and we both began to chuckle.When I was able to regain my composure I told her what I'd hope someone would say to me. "You are forgiven, Gina. But! This cannot happen again." Then I commended her for coming back and owning up to what she had done.
As we both got up to leave, I said “ One last thing Gina." She turned toward me. "There’s nothing like the Lord to bring us back to repentance and their’s nothing like true repentance that brings us back to the Lord!”
She responded with great enthusiasm. “Amen!”
~ Ami A. Moss [posted by Jon Trott]
One "Daily Bread" dealing with Repentance and Conviction:
Repenting and Rejoicing
0 comments:
Post a Comment