Last September Safe Haven was a finalist for Center for Nonprofit’s 2011 Salute to Excellence Award in the category of Baptist Healing Trust’s Compassionate Care. What an honor! This was also daunting and challenged us to examine our policies practices with our families, our volunteers, our board of directors, but most of all with each other. This was the area the award was looking at primarily – if our charge is to create an environment where compassion is a core value in order to serve families in crisis – how could we carry out this value if we didn’t treat each other with equal compassion – and more difficult for nonprofit workers – show compassion to ourselves?
The day the video was filmed at CNM – an interview with me to discuss the reasons we were among only two finalists in this category – staff was having a difficult day. One of those days where one feels the long hard work of creating teams, trust, healthy communication unravels. I arrived at the filming frustrated and feeling perhaps we didn’t deserve this honor.
Not today at least.
I told David, the videographer and director, that I was not at my best and it had been a tough day. It was his compassion, someone I knew for a long time and worked with on several different projects, which brought back my confidence and inspired me to remember the reason we were there. That I was there.
Compassionate Care.
It requires that we forgive ourselves for not being perfect. For not being the perfect leader, the perfect executive director, the perfect staff. To realize that clients, the families we serve, will at times frustrate and confound us and challenge us to care because that is our job and our calling and that they deserved nothing less. We all deserve nothing less. I forgave myself (it took a little while longer to forgive the offending staff! and some time to process some difficult challenges) during the filmed interview. What mattered most was that we were all, to the person, committed to trying to learn, trying to be our best self (51% – an inside joke with staff!), to challenge each other to listen, to care, to forgive, to support.
We are a diverse staff coming from different backgrounds – which is part of our great strength. But this does takes more work. We have to listen harder, understand more, forgive more, and come together frequently as a team, as colleagues, and people who care passionately about our mission to think, reflect, learn, do – and, yes, pray. On most days, we make it work. On most days, we bring our best selves to our jobs and our relationships with others at Safe Haven. Even when we are tired, worked too long hours, dealt with a few outrageous challenges, we show up at work wanting to make a difference and create an environment where families can heal and sometimes, we need that, too.
We did not win that night, but as the finalist, we received great coverage and a $5,000 gift. Not all staff could make it to the ceremony dinner either – one of my staff was at the hospital until midnight sitting with a client as they waited for care. No one knew among the 500+ guests at the Renaissance Hotel that staff had just averted a crisis at the shelter – formed a team that came together and dropped everything to help a very troubled family get through one of our most challenging days we’ve had this year and yet kept everyone safe, calm, and to begin the healing process once again. And that night, even without a win, I did know why we were there.
