The beggining of a new life

By Susan Walker

We practice 40 days of Lent in order to celebrate 50 days of Easter!

During Lent, we practice specific disciplines: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. It’s a time of real growth, when we focus on changes we want to make in our lives and make them a reality. Forty days is quite an investment of time and effort — and we are rewarded with 50 days of feasting afterwards. So, Easter Sunday is only the beginning of our newly adjusted life.

Feasting doesn’t mean we overdo or overindulge. That wouldn’t make any sense given that we just put in 40 days of some pretty hard work on ourselves. The payoff is clear: we give up sugar, our bodies heal and we feel better. We work on mindful responses to difficult situations, and we go through our days calmer and with fewer emotional swings. It only makes sense, then, that we take the time to really savor the changes we made in ourselves over the past forty days.

Men and women who come to Catholic Charities for help and receive our wraparound services go through a season of change that feels much like Lent: supported by skilled staff members, they navigate through needed changes with the hope of emerging on the other side of all that work with a better life, filled with stability and confidence and plans for the future. It’s not an easy journey, and our staff offers meaningful and robust support along the way. To help people reach their goals, our staff employs a method known as strength based case management. This method recognizes that each person is unique, and their way out of poverty’s grasp is determined by their skills, talents and positive characteristics. However, when entering one of Catholic Charities’ programs, they may not be able to recognize their own strengths. That’s where we come in.

Case managers in our supportive services programs take ample time to work with the men and women in their care and assess their advantages and goals. Each time they meet, they review and reinforce the strength and skill that each person possesses and use those attributes to create a pathway out of poverty.

Catholic Charities’ case managers focus on:

SETTING GOALS: the central and most crucial element is helping each person set the goals they would like to achieve in their lives.

ASSESSING STRENGTHS: the primary focus is not on problems or deficits, but rather the inherent resources they have at their disposal which they can use to counteract any difficulty or condition.

INDUCING HOPE: increased hopefulness comes through a sense of self-worth and is strengthened by relationships with people and the community.

MEANINGFUL CHOICE: people are experts in their own lives; the case manager’s role is to increase and explain choices and encourage people to make their own decisions and informed choices.

Our staff takes a deep dive into each person’s individual situation — which produces a much deeper change: the new mother develops a sense of confidence in her ability to care for her newborn; a veteran who has struggled to maintain a job builds up his ability to deal with workplace conflict; a woman fleeing domestic violence rediscovers her self esteem and ability to craft a trauma-free future for herself.

This opens up a new “season” in their lives. After doing all the hard work to change and grow, men and women exit their case management time ready to embrace and maintain their self-determination, dignity and stability. They are ready to savor the results of their efforts and enjoy what all people desire — family, work, health, creation, relationships, etc.