A while back Manny and I worked at a food pantry full time, and one of the services the pantry provided was helping the elderly.
One day we were told about an older dutch lady whom the authorities had visited as a well-being type of visit. We were asked to try and help clean her home or she would be evicted for safety’s sake. This lady, whom I will call Mary, for privacy, was a hoarder. She lived in an old run down trailer with her many cats. She was not poor, because she also hoarded her money.
When you walked into her place you were instantly overwhelmed with the smell of ammonia from cat urine and could barely put one foot in front of the other to walk because of the amount of clutter and trash she had surrounding her.
But there was a reason she lived the way she did.
She had horrible pains from her past.
During WWII she lived in Holland when the nazis came into her town. Things were taken from her parents home, and she personally was beaten by the nazi police. Mary, had a thick dutch accent and would cry as she would tell you her story. It had sooo wounded her that when she would talk about it, she would lower her head and crouch down as if she was a little child being hurt once again.
It tore at the very core of your heart…
This memory/wound caused her to make a vow that she would never allow anyone to do this to her again. Never.
So, she gathered things around her and refused to throw them away. When we arrived on the scene to try and help, she would tell us why she NEEDED that piece of cardboard/trash and she could literally tell you where the cardboard/trash came from and how she intended to use it in the future.
Every, single item Manny picked up and held in front of her, she refused to allow it to be thrown away.
Even when we explained to her that if she did NOT clean up the authorities would come in and remove her and her cats and place her in an assisted living facility, (the VERY THING she was scared of happening to her,) she STILL rebuffed our help.
We had come in too late. The stones, mortar and cement of trepidation had long ago built a wall around her heart and soul so wide and high that no amount of reasoning to tell her she was hurting herself would work.
She was gathering trash around her as a means of control. She thought if she could hold onto what she felt would help her she would never be hurt again. But in fact, just the opposite was happening. Because of her fear of losing control she was in danger of losing it all. And try as we might to explain this to her as gently as we could, she wouldn’t listen.
We finally had to call the lady who was in charge of her case and tell her that Mary would not let us in and let us help her.
Fear had sooo gripped her heart at such a young age that its sway over her was greater than any logic to convince her otherwise.
She may be an extreme case, but honestly, every single person that has ever been wounded does exactly the same thing.
We are all the walking wounded. And we all learn to compensate for our wounds in one way or another. Everyones’ crutches and canes look different, but they all serve the same purpose; to cancel out, or neutralize the limp from our pain, and to make it appear as if we were never wounded in the first place.
We compare our wounds and limps to the next guy and try to justify them by saying; “At least I’m not a HOARDER...”
As year after year passes in my life I have stopped pretending. I’ve stopped pretending that my life is perfect and my scars aren’t real. I have long ago burned my masks of pretense and stopped trying to impress people that aren’t my true friends to begin with. I keep paring down my friends. From 25 to 10 to 5 to just a small handful. If I catch myself trying to earn someones favor or impress them, then I stop and evaluate exactly why I am feeling that way.…is it a self imposed fear-of-man? Or is it because I realize in my heart of hearts, they are not a true friend that will accept me warts and all..
I think and pray about Mary and our brief encounter. I hope she is doing well and is getting the help she needs with the intervention that had to take place by people who cared…
But I realize that I am no different and probably Less-Than her. She probably is Greater-Than me in God’s Kingdom, for the horrible and great pain that she endured and actually lived thru.
But never-the-less, I am done pretending that I am perfect and that you are perfect….and I will trust God with all my wounds and brokenness.
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A Woman's Heart 