Frustrated, down, and a little angry.

We have spent the past two years living below the poverty line with my family, not necessarily by choice.

The first year was spent on Austudy while I completed a Diploma of Community Welfare Work/Mount Louisa Counselling in an effort to make a career change for the positive — a career that could engage and make a difference in the community. You can read about my decision to study welfare over theology here. Whether naively or not, I did pray and hope that this would lead to an entry level job in the welfare sector.

Since then, we have spent the last year surviving on Newstart or unemployment benefits, while applying for many, many jobs. I use the term survive for a reason. We have survived with the help of some of friends and the generosity of our families and the Government’s family benefits. It has not been easy, and we have come close to having the electricity cut off of similar on more than one occasion, but through prayer and luck we have survived.

This is both a blessing and a curse.

A blessing in that we have come to understand and appreciate we don’t need much to live on and that much of what we thought we needed is in fact clutter and useless. I am praying that we teach the kids these values — but sometimes it is an uphill battle as the consumer driven mentality of “mine” and “need the latest” are evident in their behaviour and language. Living like this has lead Jen and I to identify much closer with the guests and friends both at the community meals we serve at, and with many of our neighbours. When someone laments about Centrelink we can identify, when someone complains about dealing with the power company, we know the anguish and pain.

The curse is that it is hard on Jen and I, and even harder on the kids. I would love to take them to the movies more often, not baulk at throwing a party for their birthdays, or even take a holiday without worry. And it grieves me to the core when Jen comes home depressed and angry that she had to stick to a tiny budget for food this week, and miss out on a special meal or something we need. When they take a collection up at worship, we often have nothing to put in, and we rationalise that we give in many other ways, but I would love to contribute more.

I have a support page that I set up at the start of this year in an effort to move off Unemployment Benefits and rely on the church to meet my family needs while I ministered to the community and those I meet daily. I sent an email out to many of the churches around and did receive a one off donation of $200 that was thankfully and graciously accepted. But, that was it. In fact out of the 200 or so emails I sent out only one person responded to say that they would pray for us but couldn’t financially support our ministry.

And, as far as applying for jobs, that is an ongoing and increasingly depressing endeavour.

I have had a myriad of interviews, with many jobs I would love to have gotten, and did not get for supposed lack of experience — a blatant disregard of the volunteer work with the community and homeless each week for the past several years (I also think there is an unwritten snobbery about where you have studied). But what makes it worse, I am applying for positions that I would now love just to help the budget — applying at such places as McDonalds, Bunnings, Target, Coles etc, as well as the few community services positions that are suitable for me to apply for — and getting either no reply or a brief thank you email or letter. I know what skills and experience I have and grow very frustrated that positions I know I can do, I am not even being considered for. Ironically one of the things I have been toying with has been running a series of workshops for unemployed people on self-esteem and offering group sessions to discuss how it is affecting them.

These past two years have not been spent, sitting doing nothing. I work each week with two community meals and the many guests that come each week, some homeless, some not, all with incredible amounts of pain in their lives. I have counselled folk, advocated for folk at agencies and Centrelink, visited folk in hospital, cheered for guys who break the drug cycle, run a discipleship lunch for some of the folk each week, prayed and anguished over all the guests, and especially those whom I meet who are homeless and sleeping rough, or a woman and her children on the run from domestic violence. That all anguishes me, driving me to prayer and action. This past year I have been studying, by correspondence, a Certificate IV of Alcohol & Other Drugs — equipping me to deal with more of some of the issues that come up with greater insight (I have also learned that I don’t like correspondence as a style of learning).

It is this anguish and a calling that has lead to start Holy Fools — the recognition that the church (collectively) is not doing enough to meet the needs of homelessness, poverty and community, and that there is a large gap between what is done and what the agencies provide. There are many other folk who agree and have joined Holy Fools to form an active ministry that we are planning on getting charity status for it. But, this is going to take time, prayer and patience to develop.

There have been many times over the past two years that I have succumbed to depression, anxiety and frustration. My heart has broken many, many times. I pray, repent, pray harder and wonder why I cannot get a job or support. I can’t go back to doing graphics as a job — the technology has gone beyond me, and my skills are rough.

So, after all this ranting and writing (in which I lost a couple of paragraphs — thanks WordPress! Turns out it was a plugin that I had just updated!) what I am saying?

I need prayers, we need prayers. I would like support to continue my ministry and development of Holy Fools, but need an income, a job!

Here’s a link to the Holy fools website — still in development.

My CV is available for download here — perhaps someone out here can either support my family or offer me a job.

Thanks for taking the time to read all of this. Not sure if this will help us or not, but I wanted to put it out there and be honest about how life has been in 2009. I pray 2010 is much, much better not only for our family, but our community and the World.

Possibly Related Posts

• November 15, 2009 — Holy Fools update (0)
• July 7, 2010 — From Chelsea C of C… (0)
• April 7, 2010 — Car Update – Some Good and Bad News (1)
• March 29, 2010 — Our Housing Crisis Day 31 (2)
• March 13, 2010 — Our Housing Crisis Day 15 (3)

Tagged as: Community, Family, Finances, Homelessness, Personal, Poverty, Prayer