How to find your bliss.....in really tough work.

There have been better days......

I thought I was going to hire two interns. Well, I actually did hire them on Friday. Two delightful intelligent young college students came to my office last week. I was impressed with them. By Monday noon of this week, one left in tears, the other said after reading a brochure on domestic violence that she was not the right person for this work, and she left too.

The truth of it is that my work deals with hurting people every single day. It is not easy work, rarely joyful work and sometimes I want to leave in tears too. My work as a Victim Advocate means that I speak for and work with victims of crime....crimes as simple as a theft or as complex as domestic assault, child abuse or even murder. 

I read an interesting quote by a poet recently: "You think an artist's job is to speak the truth. I think an artist's job is to captivate you for however long we've asked for your attention. If we stumble on the truth, we got lucky. I don't get to decide what truth is. I write poetry and that's how I enter the world."

I don't get to force people to make the right decisions for their lives. But if they give me the attention I ask for through my work, we might stumble on the truth for their future together. They have to acknowledge the truth of their lives....that they are perhaps staying with a man that is abusing them and they are staying for many different reasons: they need his paycheck, they think they will be lonely, they have children together, they do not know any other way of life. If I can look in their eyes, and if I can convey to them the love of God through that connection, sometimes they stumble on the truth: that there are options....they can leave the abuse for something better...scary, different, but maybe better. 

I don't blame the interns for leaving. For not starting. 

I wonder what truth they stumbled on?