Furniture and Delivery Trucks

I don't know if it's the heat or the close of the fiscal year, but I've had three homeless couples sign leases on apartments this week.


I'm affiliated with a federal government grant trying to get people off the streets and into affordable housing. The grant pays all upfront costs such as rent deposit, utility and water deposit, and first month's rent. This allows the person to move in without pricey move-in fees. However, they must show income (job, Social Security, SSI, etc.) that will enable them to continue to pay rent and utilities for subsequent months.


It's been surprisingly difficult.


Many "don't want nobody messin' with" their checks. It is the very thing that they spend their checks on that caused their homelessness to begin with. Others have no income, either waiting on disability appeals or still searching for a job.


It's the third group that baffles me. I call it the Goldilocks Syndrome.


"It's too small."


"Not in this neighborhood."


"I don't like the windows."


Are you kidding?! I want to shout. You live in a TENT! You eat out of a dumpster!!


But it makes sense. On the streets, you have more control. You do what you want, go where you want, spend your check how you want. There are few rules of society to follow and no landlord in control.


But this week, these three couples traded in some of their freedom for shelter.


And I was faced with another dilemma.


What do I do about furniture?


They have sleeping bags and blankets, ice chests and clotheslines. An occasional chair is the maximum furniture most homeless have. The grant doesn't provide for furniture and there currently isn't a ministry nearby that donates pieces.


I began to daydream about furniture and delivery trucks, immediately finding two divergent thoughts fighting for center stage in my mind.


I let them war, the past and present, before I allowed the present my complete attention.


We need some sort of system, where people with used furniture can be matched up with people in need.


When we moved from Jackson, we had furniture we could not take. In the 11th hour we finally found someone willing to take our extra furniture. I tried to find someone in need for weeks before that final night. I can't be the only one.


A website, donated furniture, those in need of furniture...in my head, it is a perfect plan. Delivery would be a two-fold success: we will hire homeless men to drive delivery trucks to pick up the furniture and deliver it to the homeless who've just gotten off the streets.


That's where my plan starts to falter. Who would check driver's licenses? Driving records? Would donors want homeless people coming into their homes? Would the homeless who've gotten off the streets want people knowing where they'd gone? Where would we get delivery trucks from?


The litany of unanswered questions rattles around in my brain so I allow the other train of thought, the one that'll take me back, to reign supreme.


Delivery trucks.


Growing up, my dad climbed the ranks of the Alexandria Police Dept. In those early years, he always worked a side job to supplement his income, a fact that I neither understood nor appreciated until my own kids were teenagers and baseball, softball, and cheerleading dues equaled roughly two month's of my teaching salary.


One of Dad's jobs was driving a delivery truck for Woolco and Sears. I couldn't go on patrol with him, but I could go on the deliveries. I remember those big gray blankets piled up beside me as we headed to the store that had called Dad out. I was often offered cookies as we delivered the furniture to neighborhoods around town. For me, the job was fun.


I never realized for Dad it was work.


My sister and I had what I'd always considered a typical upbringing. Four bedroom house, nice neighborhood with swim club, summer and winter vacations, a never-empty coin purse for the ice cream truck, summer sleep-away camps, fall school clothes shopping trips to Lafayette, and themed birthday parties each year. Mom taught school so she was home with us during the summer and dinner was on the table at 6:30 every night, right after Gomer Pyle.


I thought everyone lived like this.


I never realized that Dad worked those extra jobs to provide these things and that not everyone lived like this. I only came to appreciate the sacrifices my parents made when my kids were growing up and I had to teach summer school and tutor on the side to provide even half of the opportunities I'd had growing up.


But I didn't realize I'd taken my entire childhood for granted until this street ministry.


Family members who were there even when I made mistakes. Opportunities to see almost every state in the U.S. plus Canada. Church camp. Libraries. Braces. Trips to Six Flags. Youth group. Y-teens. Children's Theater. I even took a course on Southern Etiquette! I learned which fork went with each course and walked with perfect posture and a book perched on my head.


These things may not seem important, but they shaped me into who I am. They laid a foundation. Despite years of rebelling, my upbringing remained at the core of who I was.


What happens when you don't have that foundation? How do you find your way back?