On Saturday night, my good friend Mike Morrell and his lovely wife Jasmin opened their house to all the attendees for a party to raise money for Love Wins Ministries. The house was packed, mass quantities of food was consumed and prizes were raffled off. And, we raised a shade over $250 for the ongoing work we do here at Love Wins. But I still have not gotten to the good part yet.

Here is the good part:

I have known Trish for about six months. She moved to Raleigh from Charlotte to escape an abusive ex-boyfriend. She thought her friends here in Raleigh would take her in, but their own resources were strained, so in a matter of weeks Trish found herself homeless. She showed up at the shelter, completely unprepared for what was next: Getting in the system, the endless standing in line, the dehumanizing assumptions, the grind of it all. Along the way someone gave her my card and said that she should talk to me.

We talk for about an hour the first time we meet. Her story is all too typical, and since she is from a middle class background, the hardest job I had was convincing her there was no safety net to catch her. She stayed in the shelter for nearly a month, applying for jobs every day, every day going back to the shelter, jobless. Along the way, she made friends with another lady at the shelter, and when this lady got a job, she invited Trish to come live with her. Over the next few months, everything went well. She got occasional temp jobs, helped out around the house and met and fell in love with Jim, a big, strong man ten years her senior who has one over-driving ambition: To take care of and protect Trish. And right now, Trish needs to know she is protected.

So, when Trish and the friend had a falling out a few weeks ago, there was no way Jim was going to let Trish go back in that shelter, even if she could. Jim works a permanent day labor job, which means he makes about $65 a day, and gets paid every day. So every day, they would rent a motel room and get up the next day, Jim to work and Trish to find a job. And every day, the combination of food, motel rent and laundry fees and bus tickets ate into their funds, putting them further and further behind.

So Friday, I get a call from Trish. We sit in the park as she tells me it is untenable. She does not know how they can go on – the expense of living eats into almost everything Jim makes, leaving them no way to save money or get ahead. The only thing they know to do is give up the room and sleep on the streets for several weeks to save money to be able to get a place. Understandably, this scares the hell out of Trish.

Normally, this is where I would have to say something pastoral, and be present, and hold her as she cried. But today was different, because today I had $250 that I had not budgeted yet.

So I call a landlord I know who rents rooms by the week. He had a large room furnished with a bed and a dresser for $120 a week, with a $50 deposit. It’s far from being the Ritz, but it’s clean and the door locks – I am not sure you can expect more than that for $120 a week.

So Friday night, Jim and Trish moved into their new place. By Tuesday night, Jim will have the next week’s rent covered, so they can save money up to eventually get into something better. And for the first time in a while, they have hope. And if that is not the best use of $170, I am not sure what would be.

So, on behalf of my friends Trish and Jim, I want to say thank you to the good people at Big Tent Christianity who came to the party and bought those raffle tickets. To you, it was only a couple of dollars, but to Trish and Jim it is hope and future.

PS: As I was typing this up, Trish called me to let me know how everything is going. They are safe and feeling loved. They still need some linens and would love to have a TV and a microwave, but that will have to wait. But the best news is that while they were sitting on their front porch yesterday, Jim asked Trish if she would marry him. (She said yes!)

photo © 2009 Bob Ramsey | more info

Every time I speak somewhere, people always want to know practical things they can do to help people who live outside. I resist this, because I do not like to perpetuate the idea that there are easy answers, because the answers are not easy.

But today, I have one simple thing you can do. It will cost you less than $5 and it has two parts:

1. Buy a case of bottled water and put it in your car.
2. Give a bottle of water to people you see outside holding signs.

It is scary hot outside. Here in Raleigh, it is in the triple digits. People who are outside holding signs are usually not in the shade and stand out there for hours at a time. They are a heat-stroke looking for a place to happen.

If you want extra credit, you can ice it down in a cooler, but that is not really necessary. The important thing is that they get  water inside their body.

And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward. ~ Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 10:42)

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Or there is the guy I know who is always carrying paperback books by intellectual authors – but I am pretty sure he has about a fourth grade reading level. Or the conversation I had with Martha right before she died, where we talked about Jazz musicians. She made it a big point to tell me about the artists she had seen in person.

If you spend much time out here at all, you hear about the hot ex-girlfriend, the car they used to own, the job they used to have or the college they went to. In other words, they want you to know that they are special.

“I just want you to know – I am not like these other guys out here. “

I have heard that line, or some variation of it, hundreds of times. I used to think it was a hustle. But I have come to see it for what it is – a cry for respect, a way to scratch out some way that they are unique, while living in the midst of people society says are all the same.

Even more than they want housing, more than they want jobs, more than they want the fundamental right to take a shower or decide when to use the toilet, my friends who live outside want their dignity. They want to know that they matter, that they are not a wasted life. Despite the fact that society gives them their leftovers (leftover food, leftover clothes, leftover time), they want to know; they need to know that they are not leftover people.

In the Judeo-Christian story, we are told that humans are made in the very image of God – that we all hold something of the Divine in us. Whether we mean Mr. Slocum the bank president or Blind Willie who lives under the bridge – we all bear the image, the imprint of God. This means we probably owe an apology to Blind Willie for the way we treat him.

Dignity is not something we grant, but something we recognize in each other. But first, we have to be willing to see that the person living under the bridge is special – not because he was in Delta Force with Chuck Norris, but merely because he exists.

Several people told me they could no longer support our work financially because we do not “share the gospel”. Others accused me of being ashamed of Jesus and said we should be much more up front with the “good news”.

Let me tell you a story.

She’s 24, but could pass for 16. She’s rail thin, with prominent cheekbones and dusty brown hair cut almost as short as mine. She grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, but for the last year has lived in a tent south of town. Let’s call her McKinsey.

When she was 17 years old, she told her mother that she thought she might be gay. Distraught, Mom went to her pastor, who told her that the thing to do was to exercise “tough love” and put McKinsey out – to shun her, if you will – until she repented.

Since then, she has lived by her wits. For the last six years, she has survived mainly by turning tricks. Somewhere along the way she picked up an alcohol addiction. She has been sexually assaulted more times than she can count, and sleeps in her tent with a steak knife under her pillow for protection.

My question for you is this: If you are McKinsey – Who do you get mad at? Do you get mad at your mother, for throwing you out? At the preacher for telling Mom to do it? Or do you get angry at the God that preacher is supposed to speak for?

If you are her, and you see God as having caused all this, you probably won’t react well when someone comes up to you and tells you God loves you – however true that might be.

So I did none of that. Instead, I sat with her on the park bench as she held her cardboard sign. I listened for hours as she talked about all the anger she held for her mother and for God. She laughed when I told her a joke she had already heard the day before, and I laughed when she described me to someone else as “her preacher”.

And earlier this week, I was looking very out of place in the woman’s section of Wal-Mart using your money to buy size small sports bras, while trying to not answer embarrassing question from the clerk about cup size and so on. Because McKinsey had no one else who would go for her.

After all this, McKinsey still is not a Christian. And in truth, she has been so burned by the church, I’m not sure that is ever going to happen. But had I “Led with the good news”, I would have eliminated any opportunity for the friendship McKinsey and I now have. And if I had let that happen, you couldn’t call me a Christian, either.

I haven’t read the book yet (But it is on my Amazon wish list – hint, hint), but the excerpt was spot on with my considerable experience with day labor pools. If there is any thing more depressing than not being able to work, it is the horror of investing 14 hours or so only to walk away with something like $35, assuming you actually get picked to work today.

I submit that most of our questions along this line are not really about panhandlers, but about our need to hold onto our money and our service to the false gods of convenience and control.

Huh?

I unpack that a bit over on my friend Karen’s blog, where she asked me this question:

I recently pulled out of a parking lot and there was a line of panhandlers at the stop light. How do I help? Who do I help?

Go see what my answer was.

And then you lose your job. It was outsourced, or your company filed bankruptcy, or your department got shuttered. Whatever. You are out of work.  And on your way to becoming quickly out of money.  Because you recently moved here for that job, you don’t have any local friends that would let you live in the spare bedroom until things turn around. You have family back home, 800 miles away, but they are struggling too. There is no real money to send you – they are trying their best to just survive. So you keep putting in applications, buy cheaper and cheaper food, start researching the food pantries and the soup kitchens. And at night, you cry.

They repossess the car first, because you chose to pay the rent instead of the car note. Luckily you live near a bus line – not that you have ever ridden the bus before, but you are learning to do lots of things you never did before. The college degree on your wall in the bedroom mocks you when you wake up in the morning to face yet another round of rejections from people who still have jobs.

By now, you have quit being choosy – you are applying for jobs at fast food joints and retail stores. Collection agencies are calling your phone nearly nonstop because you quit paying the bills to hold on to the little cash you have left. Yesterday you tried to charge the groceries and your last credit card was declined. You come home to find the a note on your door, telling you to be in court in seven days. You are being evicted.

You’re an educated, intelligent, normal person. You’re not an alcoholic or drug addict. You’re not a bad person. But you are 27 years old and homeless.

I have personally seen this very scenario at least 5 times in the last three months. People who all say the exact same thing to me – “I am not like this! This is not me!”

This is how homelessness happens. It is not one bad decision you made – it is a process.

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It is worth noting that there are at least five places (I see nine)  in the scenario above where the church could have played a role in keeping this from happening. Can you find them?

Photo Credit: tombothetominator

After the first month on the street, they lost the stuff in storage back home because they could not pay the bill anymore. On the bus ride down, their luggage was stolen, along with their Identification – making work impossible to get in our post 9/11 world. Shortly after getting his ID straightened out, he was working a temporary job and hurt his leg, putting him on crutches (and unable to work) for the next two weeks.  My grandfather would say they were snakebit and my Social Worker friends would say they have “Multiple Conflicting Issues”, but either way, they just can’t get a break.

Some folks adjust to homelessness better than others. She is not adjusting well. She spends most of her nights in the shelter, thank God, but seperated from her husband, who sometimes, but not always, gets into the men’s shelter. Apparently it never occured to the powers that be that a childless married couple could ever be homeless, or, if you are cynical, you have to assume the powers might have thought about such an incident but they just do not care or value keeping such a family together.

Monday was my day off. I had no business being downtown at all, but I was looking for a friend of mine who had offered to help me move into the new place when I saw her, surrounded by police officers, crying and shaking. Her husband, Rick, was across the street, talking to another police officer. I walk over to investigate. The officer does not like this, but it is times like this that those pastor credentials come in handy.

Rick had went to fill out job applications. Normally they travel together, but since they only had the one bus pass she stayed at the Cat Bus station downtown. Surrounded by people, she felt safe while he went and tried to find work.

While Rick was gone, a guy sat next to Karen, in broad daylight, and assaulted her, groping her and putting his hand under her shirt. She screamed and he was stopped from running by some folks who came to her aid. The police were called and Rick arrived. She was hysterical. After the police arrested the guy and left, we talked for over an hour – trying to do a passable example of trauma counseling while surrounded by well wishing, but testosterone filled, men, all of whom were intent on exacting revenge for her honor. You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to know getting her out of there would have been a good plan. I called several of my female friends, hoping to find one who would take her to the gym, so she could shower and change there, and maybe have conversation with someone who is not the same sex as her agressor, but all my friends were in voice-mail mode, so we had to make do with convincing the shelter to allow her to come inside two hours early, so she could shower and change clothes. Unfortunantly, this also cut her off from her husband, who is not allowed inside the shelter.

Being out here is so dark at times. And if I did not believe that God still reigns and that one day Karen’s suffering would be redemed and made right, I have no idea how I would go on. And on days when I just cannot believe it any more, I still have at least the hope that it’s true. According to the author of Hebrews, being sure of what we hope for is the definition of faith. So, in faith, I go on.

Lord, I believe. Please help my unbelief.

*As always, names are changed for privacy purposes.

Unless you live outside. If you live outside, it means finding another blanket or two, so you can sleep warmly at night. It means wearing three pair of pants and four coats. It means looking for a warm place to sit and wishing you could store the warmth, somehow, for later, when you will be in your cat-hole, shivering, feeling the cold from the concrete soak through the 5 blankets and into your bones.

This will be my third winter among the very poor of Raleigh, including those who live outside. Going home to my warm house never gets any easier.

What is a Freshpac?

A Freshpac is simply a quart sized sealable plastic bag that has the simple things you use every morning – soap, shampoo, razor, etc.  The items are travel size because the people who need them don’t have storage facilities – they travel light.

How Can We Help Provide Freshpacs?

Here is a list of things that go into the Freshpacs that we provide to people who need them.  We encourage you to put out a call to your congregation, service club or small group to help gather any or all of these items.

People acquire these things in different ways: Some collect hotel-size items when traveling, others buy travel
size goods at department stores when they do their shopping and some people have reported success asking
dentists or local hotels to donate travel size items.

• Toothbrush (Dollar stores often have 2 and 3 packs of these for $1)
• Toothpaste (Travel size – Target and Wal-Mart are good for this. Also, dentists are a good source, and
can order these in bulk, should you happen to know a dentist)
• Shampoo (Travel size – also, encourage friends who travel to save theirs)
• Soap/ Body Wash (See Shampoo notes. Body wash is preferred)
• Razor (Disposable. Dollar stores have 5 packs for $1)
• Feminine hygiene products (Regular pads are best)
• Deodorant (Travel size)
• Body Lotion or Baby Oil (Travel size – Baby lotion works well)
• Wet wipes (Travel packs of 10 or so are good)
• Chap Stick (Generic works fine)
• Quart size ziploc-style bags (Check the dollar store)
• Single Use hand warmers (8-10 hour type – look in sporting goods dept. – These are most needed in the winter, but anytime you see them on sale, grab them!)

What about full size items?

We do have a need for bigger items – we use them for shoe boxes we fill with hygiene items for low-income
households. (Like bottles of shampoo, packs of razors, etc.)

What do we do with this stuff?

If your congregation or small group would like to donate items on the list above OR are looking for a service
project to do as a group (like assembling these kits for us), please contact Hugh.

Note: We really do need your help in filling these up. It would tickle me if your church or small group could get behind this and collect this sort of stuff for us. You can go here and download a printable copy of this post, to share or email.