Most of the time I love my job. On Friday, I signed off for the weekend with a feeling of great satisfaction. Big progress on three big projects. One of those projects, an automatic stay of removal for a deeply sympathetic case. I worked efficiently, effectively, and purposefully. 

So why, then, signing on again after the long weekend, am I filled with dread? Fear that my motion to reopen will be denied and my sympathetic case deported after all? Fear that I didn't do enough for my other two projects? Sadness at the politically motivated firing of 20 immigration judges, including the chief immigration judge at our local court? 

Many times I cope with the stress of the high stakes of my job by telling myself that I am mostly trying to do damage control from my client's prior bad decisions. The system is unjust, it's true, but with the detained population, there were a few bad choices that brought my clients into the auspices of the system. It doesn't mean they deserve what's happening, but it does mean that they understand, we all understand, it won't be a shock if things don't work out the way that we want. 

I know that's not right. 

And it makes coping even harder when I have a client with no "excuse" to serve as the origin for their unfortunate position, only the bald reality of a unfair, racist, and deeply broken system. 

It is a gift to be in a position to be raging against the machine. To be on the beach throwing to throw starfish back into the ocean. But there are still moments when I want to look away. 

Lawyers on the Beach

Some days, I think about having my own law firm. 

There is plenty that I don't love about this idea. Actually, most of it I don't love. You carry all of the responsibility, all of the liability, all of the work on your head. You aren't just doing legal work, you're also running a business. You have to be organized and disciplined. You have to take cases you don't want because you need the fees. There is no one else to help carry the load; you are completely alone. 

That scares me because I know I am not good enough on my own, all by myself, and in every role I've ever had, I have enjoyed working with teammates and I have leaned heavily on them for their strengths. It is invaluable to have someone to bounce ideas off of, to get a second opinion from, to help you draft something when you are pulled in several different directions. Teamwork makes the dream work! 

But the one advantage of hanging my shingle is significant enough that it keeps me coming back to this ill-advised cockamamy idea. Implicit in self-employment is freedom. You make your schedule. You choose your cases. You set the culture and the standards for your practice. You can do your work from the beach, if you want, and if that work is drafting and not a confidential client call. I could escape from the geographical difficulties that Peter and I are trying to puzzle through at the moment. I could replace the stress of this decision with a different kind of stress. Ah, freedom. 

Tomorrow is my one year workiversary with my small private practice firm. I didn't think I would make it this long, so it's exciting to reach that milestone. When I started I thought that private practice would be hard for me because we wouldn't be able to help every person who came to us for help--but actually what has been hard is justifying taking people's money and not returning to them high quality work. 

Before, I thought that self-employment was completely unattainable for me--I simply didn't have the skillset to make it work, and I had no interested in trying. But after seeing a little bit how managing one's own firm actually works, the hubris in me is like, um, hey, I could probably do this. And even if I can't do it well I could probably do it better, right? I'm embarrassed of my arrogance even as I write that, but it is the reason why I still toy with this scary idea. 

But still, I call it a scary idea because I have seen self-employment turn into a prison, too. How free are you, really? You answer to clients, to judges, to clerks, to the bar, to your colleagues, all the little demands on your time that fill a day until you don't have any time left to sit in peace. With people counting on you and you alone, once you get on the treadmill, it can be hard to jump off when it gets too be too much. 

What reason is a good reason for making such a big and expensive and scary decision? And how can you know how it will pan out before you try? And would I survive failing? 

I miss your tea

I think about my former clients all the time. What is really fun about being a public defender in a rural county is you get to know people, not just the frequent fliers but also the places they go, the people they associate with, and the other things happening in their lives besides their court cases. It makes me feel like a townie in the best sense. 

A few weeks before I left, I paid bond on a case where I felt the bond determination was especially unfair. This was a kid who had never been to jail before, and a case with a high likelihood of dismissal, and so even though the clerk scoffed at my naïveté, I didn't lose sleep over it. After he was released from holding, he came to my office and sat at ALR's desk and cried and cried, and I worried about what would become of him. 

After I left the public defender's office, I checked in on the case once or twice, along with at least a dozen more, but eventually I forgot their names. Whenever I learned of a not-guilty in that county through the listserve, I would text my replacement congratulations, cheering for the outcomes he had been able to secure for my clients which I had not. I never learned what became of my sad sap, but I hoped he was safe.  

Well, today I got his bond payment back in the mail! His case number was printed on the check, but the case was not in the court portal. I spent a few minutes searching for the case but eventually gave up, presuming from the fact that the bond was even returned signaled that this was was dismissed and sealed like I expected it would be. But in the time spent perusing the names of defendants who came after I left, I found myself so saddened by how many names I recognized. This kid may have dodged a bullet, but many of my other frequent fliers had not. 

On our evening walk last night we saw a fist fight break out. There was a gaggle of adolescent boys, maybe 14 years old, huddled out front of the McDonalds. One of them ran a few paces away, turned back and squared up, and no word of a lie, the rest of them pig-piled on him. They were pulling his hair, yanking on his clothes, punching his chest and head. I watched helplessly, torn between wanting to intervene and not wanting to be responsible for escalation. 

Because we had been out walking, we knew there were two cops just 300 feet down the road, and as a car laid on its horn at the kids, I willed these dum-dums to break it out before they caught the attention of the police. I realized that was probably a perverted reaction--I should have wanted some kind of intervention for the poor kid getting wailed on, but I was worried about his assailants, too. 

I don't know why I root for the wrongdoers. Why it's easier for me to have compassion on the struggling criminals than the meritorious innocents. In my rural county it was a revolving door of people hurting people, one week a domestic violence victim, the next week a pants thief. All people unable to get out of their own way because of myriad factors, but most likely because of poverty, and most fundamentally because of sin. 

We are all sinners. We keep passing through the revolving door, of hurting others and being hurt. And strangely, that's not necessarily bad news, because it means we have (for now) escaped the ultimate accounting for our sin. Our God is slow to anger and withholding judgement to just give us a fighting chance at hope, redemption, righteousness, that we might be healed despite the brokenness we sustain. 

My clients, they suffer. Life has broken them even more than the criminal justice system might. I cheer when they avoid judgement for their actions not because I condone their wrongdoing but because I feel in their frustration and desperation that the natural consequences of brokenness in this world are already taking them to task. We sinners are getting what we deserve and also not getting what we deserve every day. And it's perverted to think that our communal suffering is a form of grace in motion, but also I want us all to know grace. 

(P.S. That bond payments are returned to payors via mail months after a case has been resolved does a terrible disservice to those who have no disposable income to be bailing out. I used to think bail bondsman were a scam, but now I get that it's better to be parted from your money forever for less than to shell out beaucoup bucks but have that money enslaved to the bureaucracy.)

Dutiful

In high school I would lay in my bed in the dark, air conditioning blowing on my face (few things are such a signal of privilege to me as air conditioning), and wonder to myself why I was here: why I was born in the U.S., born to good parents, born into safety and comfort and opportunity. I was fixated on teenaged orphans in the Ukraine, and on teenaged refugees from Syria. 

How was it fair that God had given me such goodness and such goodness was withheld from others?

I felt strongly the call of Luke 12:48. As she saw me flounder with my direction in life, my mom would quote its charge to me often, along with Proverbs 29:18. 

When I went to Kazakhstan, I felt so much relief and cognitive harmony, that I was purposing my life towards giving back and doing something for the Kingdom with my privilege. But then I failed. I was terrible at it. Your setting is not irrelevant to your work or commission, but it is not everything. You do still have to, you know, work. 

During law school I felt of two minds about this. Teaching ESL was still meaningful. I got better at building relationships with my students now that I was back on my home turf. Or maybe my students did all the heavy lifting. But my future was not ESL. I was mediocre at it. It was not my goal. I studied law and eventually had to shift, leaving the ESL world behind and putting my hand to the transactional grindstone. 

Still, I found favor. Despite my bumbling and lack of inherent talent, the patient training and mentorship of other attorneys brought me into the good graces of those who could help me get where I wanted to go. I kept struggling non-custodial parents out of jail. But it was not enough for me. I got to criminal law--I couldn't keep these guys out of jail, but at least I was trying. 

I sat in arraignments, or in presentments, in front of judges who did not care what I said, if they did not outright shut down whatever I said, and I looked into the downcast or pleading eyes of defendants and thought, "They deserve so much better than me." I scrawled on my notepad, what am doing with my life? Why am I even here? Aren't I doing more harm than good? I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders as I packed up four DUI trial cases--all sure-losers who insisted on going to trial--and passed them off to a colleague. 

Now, as I struggle to provide any comfort to noncitizens caught up in a system that is fundamentally unfair, I ask myself, why am I doing this? Isn't this a waste of time? Am I cut out for this? On the one hand, expectations are lower in immigration court, and I thrive under low expectations. But on the other hand, the stakes are higher, and I find myself splintering under the pressure. Maybe it was time to give up and find a legal job doing doc review or contract drafting or something where I did not have to carry other peoples' suffering. 

I felt the air conditioning in my car wash over me one day on my way home from work and the Spirit brought Luke 12:48 back to my heart. 

The goal of life is not to avoid suffering. Not that suffering should be chased or embraced or called "good", but suffering is just a bi-product. It is pervasive. It will come to all of us, one day, in one form or another. And if I don't even try to stand with those who are suffering, can I even call myself a servant of Jesus? Is not a heart that is soft to the suffering of others the one thing that separates the sheep from the goats? 

What this means for me is, I cannot grow weary of doing good. I have been blessed so I can be a blessing. It is my duty to step into the opportunities in front of me and work at them faithfully until someone better equipped comes along. I can't shirk the challenges because my selfishness prefers the comfort of solitude to the rigors of defending others. When I feel the pangs of worry and stress, the answer is not to relinquish my work, but rather to steel myself against the discomfort, for this is my obligation as a steward of my privilege.

And it is more than just a mental choice to persevere. The emotional tax of this work is real. Nevertheless, my comfort is not within myself and my sense of obligation. Rather, my God will strengthen me to do the things that are hard for me. As I flex my muscles, He will fortify them. He will give me peace when I am troubled. And it is His love that compels me. 

Make no mistake, this is not to say that we should take on roles that we are not qualified for. Well-intentioned but naive self-appointed saviors have done more damage than those with nefarious motivations at times. Self-reflection, as well as diligent and disciplined work, is critical to ensuring that our efforts have their desired effect, and even then, we have to have the humility to recognize and repent of our failures and shortcomings. 

But it must never be fear or self-preservation that dictates our work or makes our decisions for us.