Last night as I was driving home with my two little brothers, we listened to this story on MPR about a homeless man, David. He talked about how he became homeless due to schizophrenia. Slowly he retreated from a man who had a full-time job to despair and isolation and eventually wound up being evicted from his apartment. It was a hard story to hear, which thankfully had a happy ending where he got out of homelessness of 2 years and is now working for the National Coalition for the Homeless.
It really made me think about the difficult times that we all go through and all the different ways that we deal with pain, hurt, misery, and shame. Most of us are lucky enough or blessed to come out of it with slight bruises and little scars to show for our pain. But there are some, like David, who has no one to rely on and/or has no one to speak to. Granted he was schizophrenic, but I came in the middle of the story and don’t know if he was ever diagnosed. Maybe he didn’t have the money for health insurance? I don’t know. All I know is that his story has a happy ending. He found self-empowerment through the struggles of being homeless and came out of this battle alive. I think I’ve heard before that many homeless people have some kind of mental illness….and maybe due to not having any friends or family or relatives that know your whereabouts and care about you, that it’s real easy to just fall through the cracks and basically disappear.
David talked about how for those 2 years, no one, not a single person called him by his name. He talked about the little things that we take for granted, like having people call us by our name or clean socks or toilet paper. I remember writing a blog once a few years ago about why the homeless smoke and drink. I wasn’t trying to justify the reasons why they do that in a sense; but then again in a way I was. I just got so upset about people being judgmental about the homeless! I was trying to get people to think in a different perspective about why the homeless might do those things….Maybe they drink to forget the pain and ease the despair in their hearts that tear them up inside. Maybe they drink to lessen the hurt that they are nobody in this world. David talked about how it was easy once you got looked down and talked to as dirt, to believe that you were indeed “dirt”. Why believe you are anything more than that when everyone else thinks you’re nothing? Maybe they smoke cigarettes because their stomachs are empty and the feeling makes them feel full. Maybe they smoke because a pack of cigarettes is cheaper “food” for a week than buying meals. We don’t know, many of us have never been homeless! And yet whenever we see a homeless person, we turn our eyes to focus on something a bit more pleasing so that our minds don’t go there. So that our minds don’t dwell on the fact that we are better off than others and maybe we should give a part of ourselves to that person, and if not to that person, then to the community, and if not to the community, then to God’s people who are in desperate need.
It breaks my heart how self-absorbed we are/I am. What have I been doing and where have I been when God’s people were beggars, homeless, or starved? I can’t tell you and I don’t know…..But I do know that I haven’t done enough.
Lord, I pray that You would “break my heart for what Yours breaks.”
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