“I’ll be with y’all in just a few minutes,” said Jenny from her way-too- tiny kitchen. “I’m diabetic. I have to eat when I take my medicine.” No problem – that was my reply.
It was really more of a dazed response, as I was still trying to get a handle on what I had just walked into – a hoarder’s dwelling. I found myself inside this woman’s apartment as part of the church mission trip that I took part in last week. I was one of four adults accompanying 25 youth to the Winning Our World (WOW) Urban Ministry program in Knoxville, Tennessee. It’s a spectacular program, really. Each day we were assigned to affiliated agencies or organizations – such as the Salvation Army, Knoxville Area Rescue Ministries or area nursing homes – to offer up either some companionship or some elbow grease, depending on the needs of the organization. Those assignments rotated. My first day there the luck of the draw was on my side. I delivered meals on wheels in the morning and did crafts with nursing home residents in the afternoon. No sweat there. But at some point I feared that an assignment would come where I would be pushed out of my comfort zone. That time came on Wednesday – the day I was assigned with a few others to go clean Jenny’s apartment.
The manager of the property, a subsidized housing complex, informed us that Jenny was on “probation” because she was having trouble keeping her unit up to par. Thus, she needed our help.
When I entered the small efficiency apartment, I saw stuff – mountains of stuff. So much stuff that I didn’t know where I could possibly start. With stuff piled high on all the surfaces, dusting was out. One young lady in my group made her way to the bathroom with the intention of cleaning there. She set out to clean the toilet and the sink, but the bathtub was out. It was piled to the hilt with dirty clothes. Jenny explained that she used the bathtub to do her laundry.
I and one other boy in my group grabbed brooms and just started sweeping parts of the narrow path that snaked through the apartment. It was about the only part of the floor we could see. As I was sweeping my way toward the kitchen, I spotted a diploma sitting on one of Jenny’s shelves. She had received some sort of schooling as a med tech long ago. Okay, so she had some education. How in the world did she get here?
Jenny finished eating in the kitchen and came out into the main apartment area to join us – not an easy task for her, I would suspect, given her size. Morbidly obese, she volunteered the fact that she weighed 425 pounds. I guess it was something that she was able to move around at all. She settled herself into a chair in her living area while I worked my way to the kitchen that she had just left.
Okay, I’ll work on the kitchen, I thought. I swept what floor that I could in the kitchen area. Then I started looking for what else might need to be taken to task. I noticed the top of the refrigerator. It was covered with a layer of dirt. Ah-ha! There’s a surface I can clean! I started to take things off the top of the refrigerator so that I would be able to wipe it off.
That’s when I saw them – cockroaches. They crawled up the wall in back of the refrigerator. They crawled under the cabinet over the refrigerator. On occasion one or two would scurry across the top of the refrigerator. That’s when I realized that what I was trying to clean off the top of the refrigerator wasn’t dirt, but cockroach droppings. Yuch! With each wipe of the surface, I prayed, “Please Jesus, don’t let one of those cockroaches crawl over my hand.”
I swatted and stomped the roaches that I encountered and went about wiping down the refrigerator top. I figured if I accomplished nothing else, the top of Jenny’s refrigerator would be clean (and sanitary) by the time I left.
I suppose my reaction to all of this could have disgust. It was true that I couldn’t even begin to fathom how this woman could allow herself to live in such filth. I could have chalked it up to her lacking smarts or simply being indifferent to her situation. But that would have been the easy assumption.
As I conversed with Jenny, I quickly concluded that she wasn’t stupid. She was friendly, intelligent and knowledgeable on a wide range of topics. She was articulate and could talk about anything from music to professional sports. She was sweet and took an interest in the lives of those around her. In fact, she was intrigued about our roles as Christian mission volunteers and how far from out of town we had traveled that week to serve. Jenny was especially interested in this, as she herself was a devout Christian.
As we got to know Jenny in that short couple of hours, I realized that I was more perplexed than disgusted with her situation. I wondered how on earth somebody as bright and personable as she could have possibly ever ended up in this situation. Was it the physical strain from the obesity and associated health problems that hindered her capacity for keeping house? Or maybe there were emotional issues . How I wish I had a couple of days to just sit down and talk to her. I wanted to know her story.
But alas, there was no time to learn her story beyond the pleasantries of that couple of hours. We did manage to get part of her bathroom clean. Some of the floor got swept. A few things were wrapped up and loaded into crates and boxes (just to make room for the new television that she anticipated that she was going to get). And then there was the top of that refrigerator, which I left in pristine condition. Unfortunately, it would only be a matter of time before the cockroaches will crap it up again. But on that day, it looked nice.
As the time came for us to leave, Jenny asked me to reach into the refrigerator and pull out four bottles of chilled bottled water. There were four of us working in her apartment, and Jenny had chilled those just for us – a token of her appreciation. She especially wanted us to have them because she felt bad that her air conditioning was out and that we had to work in her apartment without air conditioning. We graciously accepted her gift.
As we were packing up our stuff to leave, Jenny did make one request. “May we pray together?” Of course, we all replied. We bowed our heads and let Jenny take the lead.
Jenny’s prayer was beautiful. She prayed for us, our mission work, the young people in the group who were learning the value of giving to others, and for safe travels back home for all of us. At no time during the prayer did she even mention herself. Nothing self-serving there. And the prayer’s intensity was evidence of Jenny’s overwhelming faith – a faith that intrigued me.
If I were in her situation, would I have such faith? Or would I be bitter? I imagine myself with virtually nothing, living in squalor, struggling to battle obesity and chronic disease in unsanitary conditions with God knows what kinds of critters crawling throughout my residence. Yes, this is pretty much Jenny’s predicament. Yet she has not turned her back on God. Instead, her faith is as strong as any I’ve seen. What keeps her going, I wonder?
I’ve often asserted that we learn to love God during the most difficult times in our lives. That is, after all, when we need Him more than ever. Maybe Jenny’s hard times have formed her faith. Maybe her faith is all she has.
Bottom line is I really liked Jenny. I still wonder how things will turn out for her. I’ll never know, but I at least know that God is with her. Even more important, she knows that God is with her.
As I reflect on the experience, I admit that I wasn’t prepared to walk into that apartment, and I was unsettled by what I saw. But amidst all the dirt, cockroaches and countless piles of junk, I found a beautiful diamond. A diamond in the rough? Maybe it’s better to say a diamond in the stuff – lots of stuff. But it was a diamond nonetheless. And it was Jenny.
