{"id":16511,"date":"2017-11-08T17:01:32","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T01:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/?p=16511"},"modified":"2017-11-08T17:01:32","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T01:01:32","slug":"there-has-to-be-a-better-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/there-has-to-be-a-better-way\/","title":{"rendered":"There has to be a better way"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note:<\/strong> The following reflection was shared with us by Rev. Karen Davison, proud mother of its author. First United Methodist Church<\/a> of Aberdeen’s partnership with\u00a0Revival of Grays Harbor<\/a> in providing services to the homeless population was recently featured in The Daily World<\/em>, a newspaper serving the larger Grays Harbor area. Program founder Emily Reed shares that First UMC was the only area church willing to host the program.<\/p>\n

Click here to read The Daily World’s<\/em> story.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Reflection by Kim Lively<\/strong><\/h4>\n

There has got to be a better way to take care of people with mental health needs.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a homeless woman who comes into the shelter when we\u2019re open (nights below freezing, and nasty weather fronts), and she clearly has mental health needs. This woman\u2014I think she was a high school classmate of mine\u2014rants and yells and acts out in other ways, and (as a point of last resort) we sometimes have to call the cops to have her removed from the premises for the night. Other times, she\u2019s perfectly lucid. We\u2019re never sure which version of her to expect.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Kim Lively organizes donations to the Cold Weather Shelter hosted at the First United Methodist Church in Aberdeen, WA.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We don\u2019t have our own separate facility yet because we don\u2019t have the resources right now. We use the basement of the only church in the county that was kind enough to open their doors to the neediest among us. Unfortunately, this means that we\u2019re usually only able to open for the night, and have to kick them out in the morning.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s heartbreaking to have to kick these people out in the mornings because you know they have nowhere to go. But this woman in particular, when she\u2019s not in her right mind, physically and verbally refuses to leave. This morning was one of those days.<\/p>\n

We had to relinquish the area to a church group that uses it each Monday morning, which meant that everyone needed to be packed and gone, and we had to have the lower floor cleaned and ready for the next group. Everyone was gone; the area was cleaned; and we were ready to lock up and go home.<\/p>\n

But…this woman had to use the bathroom.<\/p>\n

You see, when you\u2019re homeless, you don\u2019t have running water. You don\u2019t have a secure place to leave your things, so you have to carry all your things with you all the time. And you don\u2019t have a bathroom or a shower. Being homeless robs you of even the most basic human dignities.<\/p>\n

Everyone was supposed to be gone, but she forced her way back inside to use the bathroom, and I didn\u2019t have the heart to force her out because her only other option was to go outside.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Revival of Grays Harbor founder Emily Reed (red jacket) stands with staff and homeless visitors at First United Methodist Church in Aberdeen. (Photo Credit: Louis Krauss, The Daily World)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When she refuses to leave, her friends and the shelter staff do everything possible to get her to leave peacefully and of her own volition. This often involves someone getting her to go outside with them for a smoke. But…she\u2019d just had a cigarette, and wasn\u2019t having it. So one of her homeless friends tried a different tack and said, \u201cDo you wanna go outside and get high?\u201d<\/p>\n

But no, she wouldn\u2019t leave the bathroom until she was good and ready, so her friend left, and I stayed outside the stall to make sure she left when she was done.<\/p>\n

She chattered nonsensically for a few more minutes, to no-one in particular; I just happened to be there to hear it. Then she said something that really broke my heart.<\/p>\n

“I don\u2019t want to get high. I want to get well.”<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t want to leave without her medicine.<\/p>\n

But…we\u2019re not a medical facility. We can only offer a warm, secure place to sleep so they can live to fight another day; then we have to send them away each morning to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n

There has to be a better way. People shouldn\u2019t be thrown out like garbage because they\u2019re sick and can\u2019t afford to pay for the health care they need.<\/p>\n

People aren\u2019t garbage. They\u2019re human beings. We need to do better as a country, as Americans, to take care of our fellow human beings, so they don\u2019t end up in the gutter with Arby\u2019s wrappers and empty packets of McNugget sauce.<\/p>\n

“We need to do better. We need to find a better way.”<\/p>\n

\n

Kim Lively is a retired Air Force veteran (Master Sargeant) who has returned to her home county to seek ways to help people. She serves as volunteer Board Member for Revival of Grays Harbor, a nonprofit organization that, among other things, operates a Cold Weather Shelter in conjunction with the First United Methodist Church in Aberdeen, WA.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“There has to be a better way. People shouldn\u2019t be thrown out like garbage because they\u2019re sick and can\u2019t afford to pay for the health care they need.”<\/p>\n

Retired Air Force veteran Kim Lively offers this reflection borne in her volunteering experience with a program hosted at Aberdeen First UMC which serves a homeless population with no where else to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":16515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15,6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16511","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-justice","8":"category-conversation"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/lost-nb.jpg?fit=1200%2C627&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-4ij","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16511"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16517,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16511\/revisions\/16517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}