The last 2 weeks have probably been the hardest I have yet had to face in my vocation as a youth worker because I have spent much of my time supporting particular families in crisis situations while wrestling with my own role at work. I have felt singularly useless and found myself exhausted of practical ideas or suggestions. After much effort, I feel I have come to the end of myself and have nothing left to give. This frustration and emptiness is new to me. Generally, I tend not to get too emotional or let situations effect me much so I have been learning a great deal about true faith and hope in the face of adversity. It reminded me of Rob Bell’s words in Velvet Elvis.

Ultimately our gift to the world around us is hope. Not blind hope that pretends everything is fine and refuses to acknowledge how things are. But the kind of hope that comes from staring pain and suffering right in the eyes and refusing to believe that this is all there is. It is what we all need – hope that comes not from going around suffering but from going through it.

This actually makes a lot of sense to me now. Although I’d understood it on an intellectual level before, I have actually experienced a tiny amount of the pain and suffering to which it refers. I have come to an understanding that sometimes I can’t do anything to help others apart from just being with them, silently lending my sympathy and support for their situations.

As youthwork has its heritage in the Christian faith, it makes sense that “being with” others is also a fundemental value of youthwork (or informal education). Jeffs and Smith put it well in “Informal Education: Conversation Democracy and Learning”

In other words, we should not be looking at other people, as looking with them at what they are seeking to communicate