The Sick and Tired

Some of my happiest days were when Ginger and I were first married.  Part of the reason was her job as the head counselor at a group home for mentally challenged adults in Charlottesville, Virginia.  It was called Independence House.

Ginger is the only person I’ve ever actually seen do a miracle; several of them, in fact.  Over the years I’ve seen her as a teacher take children everyone else has given up on and give their lives back to them.  That is why my favorite picture of her, which is in my office, shows her with one of her students.  Her work never ceases to point toward God for me, which is what miracles are meant to do. 

Charles was one of those miracles.  When Ginger met Charles he was a resident of a state institution.  All of his test scores showed that he was beyond the parameters of Independence House, that he did not have would it would take to succeed, that institutionalization was in his best interests.  He had trouble communicating due to a stutter.  He limped.  He had a pretty low IQ.  Ginger, however, saw something beyond all those objective measurements.  It was something she sensed intuitively.  There was something about Charles.  She took a risk, and Charles came to live at Independence House.

There were many endearing things about Charles.  One was, stutter or not, he was a conversationalist.  Once in the car, he obviously had something on his mind and asked Ginger, “Ah-ah-ah-ah, Virginia, you been to college?”  Virginia, by the way, is not her name, but it was Charles always called her.  I have called her that, too, ever since. 

“Yes, Charles, I’ve been to college.”

Charles, who had lived his entire life up to that time in a state institution for people who were then labeled “severely retarded,” had the answer to his question.  “Ah-ah-ah-ah, I guess that’s why you’re so high functioning.”

Charles had a ferocious work ethic.  Shakey’s Pizza Parlor hired him to bus tables and wash dishes.  He called it “Shakey’s Peaches.”  I don’t know why.  I think it was connected to his sense of humor.  And I think his sense of humor liked to keep you guessing whether he said what he did because he was disabled or because he was being funny.

And Charles could pray up a storm.  His prayers were a lot like sermons.  One night we were at Independence House for dinner, as we often were.  It was Charles’ turn to say the blessing.  We bowed our heads.

Charles began.  “Ah-ah-ah-ah, Oh Lord, we pray for the sick and tired.”  He went on.  And on and on and on.  Before he finished he had recited in one way or another most of salvation history.  He ended on a note of heartfelt thanks.  It was a grace before a meal, after all.  “And Lord, we just want to thank you for Moses . . . who cut down the cherry tree.  Amen.”  That would be “Amen” with a long A, not the timid way Episcopalians like to say it.  When Charles said Amen, he meant what it means—so be it! 

Now, at the time, I confess that I thought Charles had merely interjected an expression he had heard along the way somewhere, perhaps from one of the staff at the institution, “sick and tired,” into a rambling prayer that pulled together a lot of different sources for inspiration.  I have come to believe, though, that imploring God to help the sick and tired had a lot to do with the quality Ginger saw in Charles that most people missed.

Charles was sick and tired.  He was sick and tired of living in an institution.  He was sick and tired of being dependent.  He was sick and tired of being treated as an inferior.  And he was sick and tired of being viewed as somehow less than fully human.  And being sick and tired, I’m convinced, is what gave him what it took, something admittedly mysterious, something miraculous, to change his life.  He did it in spite of having been dealt a pretty poor hand.  He did it in spite of what everyone expected.  Somehow, mysteriously, indeed miraculously, Charles took his expectations for himself from somewhere else.  Again, miraculously, he found just the ally he needed in Ginger, I mean ah-ah-ah-ah, Virginia.  

Somehow, I think, the sick and tired are particularly open to God precisely because they are sick and tired.  Everyone once in awhile, you run into someone who takes being sick and tired and turns it into incentive.  That’s why, Oh, Lord, we pray for the sick and tired.

Peace,
+Stacy