A Crisis of Confidence

...the match that ignites the flame

“Moment to moment each of us try catching the cloud that holds back the sky…”
- Rod McKuen

A homeless woman gets rescued from her campsite in Los Angeles during the Pineapple Express Storm this week - Associated Press

My mom always believed in me. She believed I had a good heart. But I didn’t always feel this way.

For all the years in America with “just the four of us” what would I have possibly done without her? What do you do alone in a country that is not your own? How does it feel to look around and know that you came from a wealth of people that you cannot see anymore or touch?

I don’t think I ever realized until now, at 63, mom at 87, how much it has meant to me that she was the one who gave it everything she had so that I would never suffer through a lack of confidence.

Mom was the one who never believed I couldn’t.

Mom was the one whose arms were so outstretched she had enough room to catch 10 of me.

Mom was the one who wrote in the books she gave me, hints of talent I never thought I had.

Mom was the one who took care of the house, my brother and I, kept to a schedule like none other, drove us everywhere, gardened, proudly walked through neighborhoods selling Avon, and snuck moments of time to write, while also supporting my dad’s work and creativity. Mom could write a poem in a minute and recite any old childhood song to my children in a hot flash, keeping them at full attention.

I’ve often wondered what I would do without her.

In these last few years I had a crisis of confidence. The match that my mom kept hidden in a drawer was lit. She couldn’t save me from opening it. My world went up in flames and took away what little confidence I had.

In order to meet life’s challenges, feel useful, participate, experience the joy of purpose, build positive relationships … we need confidence.

Later in life at the age of 32, I found my confidence in my new-found belief in God. It never meant I wouldn’t go through more confidence challenges, but for me, my faith has been an anchor in the storms. The world is a temporal place and at any given time we can go. I choose to go from this life knowing I drew from a belief that I was Loved and that I was set free in Him. Free to live out the purpose I was created for and free from believing that I was anything less than a loved child of God. There can be days I doubt this too.

Confidence does not come from getting glory or from proving yourself, but rather it’s from a willingness to be weak, to focus on a greater purpose, and show love for other people.

Since the pandemic, school closures rendered children and teens more alone than ever. For our future generations confidence was slowly dying and many young people did not survive. The elderly were shut in without a single visitor, many dying, not just from Covid, but also from severe loneliness. All confidence was lost on these two groups. It will take years to rebuild and it took years off of their lives.

I have spoken of the homeless, drug-addicted communities in my writing. Spoken of those with mental illnesses that can still retain a God-given sense of confidence with the right support. Matches were lit years ago as facilities were replaced with Thorazine, eventually a “war on drugs,” then legalized drugs, needles and hard concrete. Affordable healthcare became less about listening and more about prescriptions. Whole families suffering from a crisis of confidence.

But if we are to be confident, shouldn’t we have confidence in our higher authorities?

Today, I am confident that if governments and one-stop-shop medical institutions would show a genuine care for the people they say they actually care about, rather than bandage wars against the people for the gain of financial profit and power on every level from picking and choosing wars overseas, free illegal drug markets to prosper through open borders, to wide open borders (rendering both the people coming and those already here even more suffering and lack of confidence). Where do they go? where do they work? How do they raise their children? in an airport? on a sidewalk? How do we push people down the line of help that have already been here suffering? How do our own poor communities get shoved aside, losing confidence in a better tomorrow.

I remember the old wobbly man, dressed in baggy pants, worn shoes, a vest with war emblems, dirty jacket, and a Vietnam Vet hat on his head, cane in hand. It was 2014. We were at a cool old bass guitar shop a few side-streets off the main in Pioneer Square, Seattle, Washington. My husband, John, like myself with cameras, got very involved in conversation, so I stepped outside to see if there was any street art in the alleys nearby. There was just this man. I watched as he began to dig through a large trash container. He kept going down the alley away from me. Perhaps confident he would find something to eat.

I didn’t chase him down. I often stop to see if I can do anything like buy socks or offer a meal. I had him on my mind the rest of the day.

When we got back to downtown Seattle, I was anxious. The day before, after we had checked into the hotel, the sidewalks were full of mostly young agile men smoking pot leaning up against walls. It had become legal and the young flocked to the city. If you slightly looked their way they would begin to run along side of you, asking for money, saying things as they tap tap tapped your shoulder with a pointy finger, “I know you have a dollar, come on, you have a dollar, how about five?”

It happened again.

This time I turned to the young man who looked like my son and told him to “go home.” He was stunned. I said, “do you have a home?” He said “yeah.” I said “go home then and make something of yourself.” “Go home and make a way, make amends.” He was silent. I proceeded to say, “do you know what you’re doing?” “there’s an old man in Pioneer Square. A man who fought wars for people’s freedoms. He’s digging through the trash because you are taking all the freebies and handouts and you are able bodied to find your purpose in life.” “You are better than this.”

I have a friend, in the South, who lost her confidence and ended up losing everything. She has lived in a car for nearly three years with her dog. We have been longtime pen-friends. She tells me stories of applying five times no less for food stamps only to be turned down as she watches really nice cars pull into the food bank. This week she was told that there was no food left as they got a slew of new people there solely for Super Bowl snacks.

There is no good and worthy system that man doesn’t corrupt and our government fuels the corruption. Fuels a lack of confidence.

I wondered why the poor black woman who was physically thrown out of an eatery in New York City, wearing nothing but a sheet tied in a knot around her breasts, completely naked, wide open in front, was allowed to live on the streets like that. Cruel. My youngest was in the city going to university and we often walked miles talking, me hunting for street art. School was out in Chinatown. Children were being hustled past the woman, heads down. As we watched in horror from across a busy street, I prodded. “Is this how humans are meant to live?” knowing women have it harder on the streets. They are assaulted on a daily basis. He had only textbook answers that made no tangible sense. Now he works with the mentally ill in San Francisco in an uncommon small 15 bed facility and believes in the idea of a responsible family member having autonomy over their loved one so that they can get the help they need. This was a 180 turnaround of thinking and textbooks. But there is none. No real help is coming. It’s like winning the lottery for a family to advocate their loved one into a facility like my son’s workplace.

So today, I realize that my confidence is rooted in Christ and that there is eternal freedom in that.

When I am climbing the tallest mountain and my rope begins to fray, I want to look down at the river below with confidence and see heaven above me.

May every thing that exalts itself above God be crashed to the ground so that we might open our eyes to the suffering of His children everywhere.

May the flame that can ignite a crisis of confidence burn into the minds of local, state and world leaders. Break them like the broken. Bring them to their knees.

To do better.

Jeremiah 17:7-9

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