by Audrey Metz
“Where are you in your journey of being with ‘the least of these’?”
That is a question that makes me a bit uncomfortable because I haven’t gotten very far. I’m further along the road than I was a year ago, even six months ago, but any progress I’ve made has very little to do with any maps I drew up or any goal I set for myself.
I believe that God got me moving out of my comfortable space in Florida–away from weekly card games with friends, lunch after church with friends, movies with friends, shopping with friends–and brought me here to a place where I am challenged to live more responsibly, give of myself more freely and follow Christ more purely than I’ve ever experienced before.
Although I am a person who loves solitude, I chose to accept an invitation to live in community with five strangers: to share chores, to share food bought from a common food kitty, to share one phone line–all that, and still be compelled to try to love them and live in peace with them. Six months ago, I would have believed all of that to be an impossibility.
Add to that, in a city where crime and poverty are in your face, I walk to work and revel that I am here. Why? Why do I love this place so much? Why am I content to work in an addictions unit, not drawing any salary, never being quite sure what my place here is?
I only know that God brought me here. So why I’m here is God’s problem. I know that I’ve been changed by being here. I want to be with the people I’m with–in the house where I live, on the sidewalk with people I recognize now and then, at work where I struggle to be helpful and relevant to my co-workers and the clients.
Now, when I see the man with the warm brown eyes softly asking people who pass by “for a little bit of change,” I no longer avert my eyes or just ignore his plea. I don’t give him money, but I give him what I learned from one of my housemates. I give him a little piece of his personhood–looking him in the eye and saying, “Good morning, Joseph!” Sometimes I think I detect the smallest glimmer of a smile. I pray he knows I care.
As for my place in the addictions program, a client lifted me the other day when she said, “Audrey, you’re just here to love us, aren’t you?”
I want to remember that and grow in that every day for the rest of my life. Yes, I’m here to love. I can do that!
Audrey Metz worked in the Intensive Recovery Program of Samaritan Inns, managed Potter’s House Books and was a member of Friends of Jesus Church while living in DC.
