A Gift of Hope: Helping the Homeless Read Free

But being a religious person, I figured I had been given a job, and however I felt about it, no matter how reluctant or terrified I was, there was no turning back, no way to act as though I hadn’t heard what I did. I was sorry I had asked, as I walked quietly out of church.
    I thought about the response to my prayers when I went home that night and the next day, and the day after. But the clear directive wouldn’t go away. And finally, I thought,
Okay, God, I get it, I hear you.… Okay, I’ll do it
. I figured that doing it once would get me off the hook. And hell, I could do anything once. Couldn’t I? Yeah, right. So I thought about what to do. I asked a dedicated employee of mine if he’d come out with me on a night just before Christmas, and being a kind person, he agreed. I bought warm down jackets, a stack of sleeping bags, and some wool socks and gloves. I can’t remember how many, probably around forty or fifty of each. We put it all in a van, and set out on a bitter cold night. And I will admit that I was gritting my teeth, but there was something of an adrenalinerush too. I don’t think it was excitement as much as fear. I had no idea who or what we would encounter, nor what to expect, and I was anxious to fulfill my mission, do the job, and get it over with. Nothing in the message I’d heard said I had to do it more than once.
    I remembered a few homeless people I had seen in regular spots in doorways in my neighborhood, so we stopped there first. People were already tucked in for the night by the time we went out, shielded behind pieces of cardboard boxes and staying warm as best they could. And the reaction we got, each time we stopped, was one of surprise, and instant gratitude. Suddenly, their faces lit up, as clean, new, good-quality sleeping bags were put into their hands; warm jackets were handed out and immediately put on and zipped up; gloves went onto hands; and people took off battered shoes and put on warm socks. And as I looked at them, met their eyes, and touched their hands, I was no longer scared, but deeply humbled by their warmth and humanity. I was suddenly embarrassed by the fearful thoughts I had had about them for years. Other than the births of my children, it was probably one of the most important nights of my life.
    I had already learned a hard lesson, that no matter how “comfortable” we are in life, whatever our “station” or “rank” appears to be, however “safe” we want to believe ourselves, we aren’t. We are right out there in the front row of life’s storms,whoever we are, and whatever we have. I had lost my so-much-beloved, precious son, my sweet boy, and then a husband whom I also loved. I had learned firsthand that tragedy and disappointment can strike any of us at any time. For me, right then, it didn’t get worse than that. Other things happen to people—catastrophic illness, tragedies, whole families die in fires whether you are rich or poor, road accidents claim high school students who have families who love them—and these people I was handing sleeping bags to had wound up on the streets. So how safe are any of us? We just aren’t. Bad things happen to good people all the time. The phrase “There but for the grace of God go I” never seemed truer to me than that night. And as we handed out sleeping bags and jackets, I couldn’t help thinking how proud Nick would have been of me—I who had so often shrunk beside him when he reached out to some homeless person with a hot meal, who had pursed my lips and told him he shouldn’t hug them because he might get a disease. God forgive me. What a different world I walked into that night.
    After we had delivered our goods to the people I knew where to find, we began driving, drifting from the safe familiarity of the neighborhood I lived in, crossing invisible borders into uncharted land and some dicier neighborhoods. And the people I was looking for were painfully easy to find: in doorways, in parking