For Volunteers : Volunteer Stories

Isaiah Volunteering

By Rachel Mahoney

The night before I said good-bye to my students at Santa Maria Adolorata Elementary School, I made forty-eight chocolate chip cookies. I knew my students would enjoy the treat but in part it was more for me. I wanted to give my kids something tangible because often what we worked on wasn't and I wanted to feel like I was able to give them at least one thing.

I had just spent a year volunteering as a counselor for five inner city Catholic schools in Chicago, Illinois. I carried a caseload of fifty-four students, the youngest was four and the oldest eighteen. Santa Maria was the last school where I had to say good-bye. All week had been a whirlwind of farewells to students, faculty and parents. There hadn't been time to process the closing of the school year. It didn't hit me that this was the end, until I stood barefoot in the kitchen surrounded by all the ingredients making that last batch of good-bye cookies.

I wanted to put a piece of myself in each cookie as I added each ingredient: salt, sugar, flour, vanilla, chocolate chips; I could sift in my love for each child. I wanted to sift in my hope and belief in them and the promise that I would not forget them. Like Isaiah said, "I will not forget you… I have carved you on the palm of my hand." (Isaiah 49:15). I would carry them with me. Maybe, I hoped that by putting these ingredients of love into their cookies it would spread throughout their system as they took each bite.

Nobody told me when I volunteered that I would fall in love. I would fall in love over and over again and inevitably have my heart broken and feel that awful piercing sadness: a realization of undesired permanence. Volunteering is not forever and eventually I had to say goodbye. To give of oneself and volunteer is a special thing, but it is also a lesson in humility and dignity. Without a doubt the experience changed me. It was impossible not to. There were so many times throughout my year of volunteering where I doubted myself and my abilities, but it was my faith in something larger that allowed for me to continue on this journey.

I entered Felician Volunteers in Mission (VIM) August 17, 2003 leaving the life I had in New Jersey to move halfway across the county to start another in Chicago. If I could do this; I could do anything. I could make anything happen. All I needed to do was just get there. Upon arrival, I immediately convinced myself that this was a mistake of gargantuan proportion. I was living ten minutes from a housing project and a deeply infested gang ridden neighborhood. Of all places I was about to make my home in a convent. I had committed myself to one year of volunteer service as an inner city Catholic School counselor. I would be living with three Felician nuns, one Poor Hand Maid nun, and two other volunteers from New Jersey that I had only met once before. I almost didn't come. Yet, there was something about this opportunity, a chance to work with children as a counselor that felt like a calling. This was the sort of opportunity I had been praying for.

That August, the air was awful and humid. It blew through the convent, mixing with the leftover sweet smells from years of cooking. It was the first thing I noticed upon moving in, and this indescribable sweetness comforted me during those first few weeks I was there. The window in the kitchen faced the alley. At night when I was unsure and unable to sleep, I would walk barefoot to the kitchen to get a glass of water and stare out into the lonely and deserted back streets. Across the way the wind rattled the lose windowpanes of a factory. Taking a deep breath and inhaling that sweet smell, I would remind myself to have faith; to trust in God and to move forward without inhibition as this journey unfolded itself to me. There must be a reason for my being here.

People write in yearbooks and graduation cards that it's not about the destination it's about the journey. Those words hold little meaning as they are thrust at graduates overwhelmed by their recent accomplishment and the pomp and circumstance of ceremonial rites of passage. Yearbooks collect dust in basements and the cards are thrown out when it's all over. As a volunteer, the fundamental journey one takes is spiritually based. Your faith is constantly tested and periodically strengthened and weakened by the experiences with the people you are trying to serve. It is not about the destination, it is all about the journey.

Working as a counselor, I was asked to bear witness to some of the most painful and private experiences of others. Having a witness reassures the storyteller of the validity of their experiences. Some of my student's experiences were so unbearable and awful. Their faith in mankind and God was no doubt challenged as well as mine. In a bizarre sequence of events, my students would question God to me. I would search for words to restore their faith while simultaneously and silently questioning Him myself.

Often I would turn to the Sisters I lived with to help make sense of all of this. How do you continue to believe when you hear about the ugliness of the human experience everyday? How do you give hope when you feel you are losing it yourself? Patiently, they would listen and answer my rounds of questions. God, they would tell me, gives us the strength to survive and to heal. One of the most beautiful gifts He has given us in life is our free will. He does not control us; therefore He cannot prevent the actions of others. Somehow, someway, we survive and we keep going. It is having the belief that there is something more beautiful, more peaceful and more sacred to look forward to that keeps us going. All we really have are hope and faith.

Trying to process the Sister's words, I would challenge them so often. I couldn't let go. I couldn't fully believe, and during my volunteer journey I struggled so hard to find peace- to find a balance between the good in the world and all of the bad. How could the two simultaneously coexist? Since I was only at each school one day a week, I would have to wait another week to continue my work. Usually, scenes from various sessions floated in and out of my mind as I thought of all the different things I could have said and done. After each student would leave, I'd think about how I should have said something differently or I'd worry about how they'd make it through the week. I'd prepare for our next session by creating follow up questions. Throughout the week, I'd collect different words of wisdom from the Sisters and my supervisors to use in the upcoming sessions.

Yet, when I would see them the following week they would bounce in- so new and so fresh. Last week's worries were a world away. There were new adventures, stories, and problems to share. While working with children, I simultaneously witnessed their sadness and pain, followed by their laughter and joy. How resilient the human spirit is! How is it that we are able to continue on, even after we have experienced things too awful to even mention? That is the gift of God. When you can not believe in yourself, He believes for you. Their presence in my life brought me closer to God.

It's hard to remember that even just listening and being present to someone can be enough. That sometimes just being there gives another hope. My students had given me so much. Their presence in my life reminded me to not take things so seriously. It's hard to be self-absorbed when you have so many students depending on you and demanding things of you. How can you be worried or upset, when a second grader runs up to you, throws their arms around your waist and looks up smiling? How do you pout and frown through your day, after the end of a session with a first grader who, with an impish smile says, "See you real spoon"?

It has been almost seven months since my term as a volunteer ended. I still think about the students that I counseled and the different ways they touched my life. I still wonder how a girl from Jersey found her way into a volunteer program in Chicago. Why was it that God wanted me in the Midwest? There must have been a reason that I met these children and they met me. I like to think that we gave each other hope and faith. I know that each student is carved on my hand. I will not forget them.

Rachel Mahoney was a Felician Volunteer in Mission (VIM) at five inner-city Catholic schools in Chicago in 2003-2004. Felician VIM is a member of Catholic Network of Volunteer Service (CNVS), a membership organization of Christian volunteer programs serving the poor and marginalized in all fifty U.S. states and in 108 other countries. More than 12,000 individuals served with these programs in 2002-2003.