Several weeks ago, my path took a radical 180 and I found myself returning to a job I left several years ago. When I informed a very close friend of my unexpected return to being a probation officer, his reaction somewhat annoyed me because he was excited. See, I hadn’t wrapped my brain completely around this swerve that created whiplash in my life, and I was not interested in hearing all the enthusiasm…at least not yet. My friend responded that he was excited because he loved reading all the stories I would write on this Blog inspired by conversations with my probation clients.
Selfish bastard…just concerned for his own happiness.
Well, here I am not two complete weeks into my return to the job I left with no desire of looking back…and I woke this Saturday morning thinking about a guy I met yesterday for the first time.
UGLY ON PAPER
Prior to meeting this guy for the first time, I took some time to read up on his file. I don’t normally look this deeply into a person’s file before meeting them the first time because I don’t want to be skewed by what I read. Police reports and criminal history reports can have a way of telling you a lot about a person’s worst moments of their past…but they tell you nothing…”NOTHING!”…about who the person has the potential of being. However, this guy has been on probation in this case since 2018 for a DUI with multiple priors, has been revoked and reinstated multiple times on this case, and I’m just watching over the case temporarily until the regular PO returns…so this guy just needs to get his crap done or go back to court…right?
Wait! Did you catch that? I’m already skewed by what the paperwork reports…
The guy hasn’t even stepped into the office yet and I’ve already got an “attitude” about how the appointment needs to go. These thoughts, opinions, assumptions, and all the emotions and body language that go with them, will no doubt alter the atmosphere in my office when this guy arrives…and they will skew his first impression of me as well! This appointment could very well determine the course for how things play out between he and I while I carry his case!
THEN HE WALKS IN
I got the call that he was in the lobby waiting for me, so I walked out and called his name. As the man stood and turned toward me, I noted he was a short man with a thick unkept beard, wearing a beanie, tattered sweatshirt, baggie sweatpants, thick athletic socks and flip-flops…in 20-something weather on this late January morning.
We walked back to my office as I carried the mindset that this guy has zero-motivation to be successful (based on what was on paper). I went directly to the point with this guy…going on 4 years of probation, three revocations, and he’s continuing to miss drug tests.
I say all this for several reasons…I worked no magic to turn this appointment into something special…I was leaning a bit toward the asshole side on the “spectrum”. However, I soon realized I was dealing with a very broken person. The guy reacted with embarrassment and shame about the “facts” I laid out on the history of his case, and he softly responded that he was trying to be successful this time around. I asked for examples, and he began to list off the community service and the treatment groups he had completed. My heart began to soften…
We then began to talk…and when I say “talk”, I mean that I wanted to hear more about his story. I learned the man is barely getting by in this life financially, has some significant and long-standing mental health issues, has some physical issues that led to his having to wear flip-flops in January because of swollen feet, and has three children living within 60 miles that haven’t spoken with him in over a year…and that’s just in a nutshell.
Don’t get me wrong here…I’m not going to allow a person to take a “victim” position because I’ve always seen the victim position as one of powerlessness. I wasn’t going to allow this guy to remain powerless over his circumstances…but I found myself having compassion for the hard life he has had, even if his choices complicated things severely.
ONE PERCENT, ONE DEGREE, AND ACCUMULATIVE ADVANTAGE
or disadvantage…
Let me step away from this man’s story for a moment here. In my first week back at probation, I shared several things with my coworkers…many who are new since I left two years ago. I’ve shared concepts I’ve written about in this blog…concepts such as “one-degree off-course” and the “aggregation of marginal gains”, (see https://hoosierdaddy101.wordpress.com/2022/01/11/got-to-start-somewhere/), and this morning, I thought about the concept of “accumulative advantage”, but in this man’s case it may be better to say, “accumulative disadvantage” because the concept works both positively and negatively.
Let me talk more about “accumulative advantage” for just one moment. As I got the definition from James Clear’s book “Atomic Habits”, the term is defined as this:
“When a small advantage at the beginning, becomes a little difference that leads to an opportunity that makes a bigger difference, a bit bigger. That edge in turn leads to another opportunity, which makes that initial small difference even bigger.”
Think about a small advantage that places one person in the right place at the right time for an encounter that leads to a larger advantage. So many other examples I’m sure, but now, let’s look at the flipside. Let’s replace “advantage” with a term such as “setback”, and replace “opportunity” with a more neutral word such as “circumstance” and see how this sounds:
“When a small setback at the beginning, becomes a little difference that leads to a circumstance that makes a bigger setback, a bit bigger. That edge in turn leads to another circumstance, which makes that initial small difference (setback) even bigger.”
Can you read that and see how things can snowball in a negative way and put a person’s life so far off of its initial trajectory that a person has no idea how to get back on course? Again, no victims here…but the reality is, some people just don’t have the tools in their tool belt to get back on course after big hits in their lives…and this can lead to poor choices being compounded over a lifetime.
BACK TO THE OFFICE
This man setting in front of me yesterday…this man with many prior DUI’s, with mental health and physical health issues, a man barely keeping his head above water financially…a man who long ago stopped dreaming of what he wanted to do with his life and now simply tries to figure out how to survive “today”; the thought of him hit me hard this morning.
KNOWING HIS STORY
Who has time to sit and learn a person’s story in this day? Yet, that is exactly what we need to do…somehow, someway. As a probation officer, I do get the privilege of getting to know a person’s story, and in this case, I found myself sad at the struggle his journey has been through this life.
My heart hurts for people out there that have sustained such damaged (from their own choices, or from their responses to harm that was caused to them undeservingly) they have no idea how to get back on the life track they were created to travel.
ON THE STREET CORNER
For whatever reason this morning, the image of him resonated in my mind along with the thought that I would not be surprised to see him (or so many with similar stories) standing at an intersection holding a sign. What these people don’t need is a handout…but they do need a hand-up.
DISCLOSURE: This is where I get spiritual…
I state this warning more for those followers on my blog. I’ve focused a lot on self-improvement concepts recently and found an increase in those who now follow my blog. I’ve stayed away from being preachy…mostly because I’m wrestling with where I stand on some things. I’m not really a part of any church group although there have been sightings of me at church with my wife at Christmas and Easter. I’ve grown turned off with the religious experience in the evangelical church which I was a part of for decades…
BUT, I’ve not been shaken from my belief that had Jesus not done what He did…for me…my life would be toast! My prayers over the past few years have simply been, “Lord, please don’t let go of me through all this questioning I’m doing…”
But this is where I will begin to insert my Lord Jesus into this conversation…
END OF DISCLOSURE…AND BACK TO THE GUY ON THE STREET CORNER
So back to all those people on the street corners as I wrap this up…
The guy in my office was in his late 50’s and could have been in high school during the same years I was. Do I just think differently here or do others sometimes wonder what happened in a person’s life to make them end up where they are?
Think about the next guy you see on a street corner… Ask yourself, “I wonder if when he was in 5th grade and the teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up… did he really say he wanted to be homeless, addicted to some form of drug or alcohol, in poverty, struggling with mental health or other health issues…” Do we really think this was a person’s goal in life… or has life stolen something significant from them?
ORIGINAL DESIGN
I firmly believe we were created with an opportunity to choose life, and to be all that we were created by the Living God to be…for our complete fulfillment and for His glory. But along the way, there is one who opposes this gift of life…one who came to “steal, kill, and destroy”, and we see the evidence of him all around us…and on the street corners of our communities.
My heart hurts as I consider the brokenness in the lives of people, of families…and it leads me to believe I must do my part. What that is exactly is uncertain, but it begins with a vertical-conversation between me and my Lord.
I’m not the guy who is ever going to tell a person they need to get involved with a church…I may never again walk through the doors of a church…but maybe I will…time will tell. What I will say is this: it all begins with a relationship…with a conversation. Maybe that conversation is as simple as, “God? Are you there?”
About two months ago, I published a post titled “Opportunity and Opposition” (see: https://hoosierdaddy101.wordpress.com/2021/12/02/opposition-opportunity/). I firmly believe that we were created by God to embrace great opportunities in this life, but I also believe that with those great opportunities comes much opposition.
As I think about the guy on the street corner…as I think about the guy in my office, I want to see them through the eyes of God. I want to see the diamond-in-the-rough; I want to see the incredible gift God has placed within each of these broken people…just waiting for someone to notice their value, to call it out and call it forward.
HAVE I GONE OFF TANGENT HERE?
I’m not sure…but when I woke this morning and had the image of my client come across my mind…a flood of emotions filled my heart. I didn’t mean to get preachy, but God has created each of us as a gift to one another…and we do have an enemy who would rather those “gifts” be “curses” in our lives…and he’ll do everything he can to distort the truth.
It’s easy to love the beautiful and the loveable…but we were called to love the unlovable as well…we were called to love those who’s beauty is hidden deep within layers of hurt and destruction…but the beauty is still there!
That’s it…just needed to process all that came out of me thinking about the guy I met yesterday.
But in this, I wanted to give honor and praise to my Lord Jesus…because in many ways, I’ve gone through brokenness…and he’s brought me through it all. He told me he would never leave me or forsake me. Thank you Lord…for not letting go of me!