What a Day!

What a day!

I’m mentally and physically exhausted. Fortunately for me, I’m spiritually stronger than ever. I’ll admit there was about an hour after I came home that I had a hard time shaking off the “street.” I’d been out longer than usual today and had encountered what can only be described as part soap opera, part action-adventure. With graphic violence. And mature situations.

But not language. No-one curses around me. I’m not sure if it’s a reverence to the ministry thing or just respect. Perhaps it’s because I’ve threatened to wash their mouths out with soap in the past. In any event, mouths are cleaner than usual around me.

But they are still filled with hatred and lies.

Today was unusually bad.

I met a friend from a veteran’s service program this morning and took her to meet a vet at Tent City. I arrived to find two ladies fighting, the boyfriend of one of the ladies with a broken hand from a fight the day before, and the 60 year-old self-proclaimed “peacemaker” approaching from behind with a baseball bat. It was almost comical that when I turned and Mr. Baseball saw me, he lowered the bat then made a couple of practice swings as if he were headed out for a game of pick-up.

They don’t know my son Cody.

Born in 1991 with baby blue eyes beneath a mountain of eyelashes, he made the neonatal nurses fall in love at first sight. He didn’t stop there. He charmed his teachers into overlooking missed homework assignments, his sisters’ friends into doing his reports, and his girlfriends into doing his chores. As the only boy in the family, he learned that being the cheerleading “base” or playing the Disney prince was the way to the hearts of his three sisters.

He also knew how to charm his mama. While the others would gag and proclaim a disastrous recipe “disgusting,” Cody would sweetly smile and tell me it “had a very unique taste” as he slipped it piece by piece into the built-in drawer for later retrieval. He concocted a plan with his PawPaw who lived up the hill that whenever he was grounded he would hang a white bandanna in the front window. PawPaw would call and ask for Cody’s help in some project he couldn’t do alone, and even though he was grounded, I’d let my son go help my dad ‘cause that’s what families do. The “projects,” I learned years later, consisted of cards, sandwiches, and root beer. ‘Cause that what PawPaws do.

So the doe-eyed innocent look doesn’t wash with me anymore.

It didn’t matter. By the time he reached me, the bat had completely disappeared. The fighting hadn’t.

We decided to go to a restaurant for the meeting. The vet hadn’t eaten anyway so I bought lunch. Throughout our meal, as he filled out paperwork, I did some internet research on the family he hadn’t seen in eight years. Within five minutes I found his wife, living less than five miles away, and one of his sons, who’d been adopted years ago but reached out through a funeral home guestbook of a relative.

 

What do I do with this information?

He’d asked me to look, but once I found them, he didn’t know what he wanted me to do.

“Say whatever you want,” he said.

What I want?!! What do YOU want?

The conversation ended as quickly as it started.

After this meeting, I took Mr. Baseball and Fighting Female 1 and Broke Hand to their appointments.

Rather, their places.  Because there were no appointments. And every single place we went closed down from 12-1. We arrived at the first place at 12:05.

That was one hour in the car listening to lie after lie.

I grew more and more frustrated. Then disgusted. Then mad.

Tell me you smoked up your entire check. Tell me you broke into a building. You can even tell me you killed someone.

BUT DON’T LIE TO ME!

There was no doubt I was being lied to. And not the I’m-running-a-con lie, but lies about events that took place and people I’m also helping. One girl was at a safe shelter and I’d been talking to her and the program director for two days. These three in my car said she was “laid up in Mr. X’s house on that crack.” Not only did all three claim they’d seen her there, but they also had passed along that information to the police. I was furious.

But was I letting the anger that ruled their environment into my own heart?

I never said a word, continuing along on our stops and praying to not lose my compassion.

Then Bailey called, followed by J.T. She’s on her way to Florida and he’s “got to help her because she’s in a bad situation.” Guess what, J.T.? You are going to be too when you let her back in. Those soul ties will destroy you.

I stopped by to visit Raleigh and Frances. She has been living with him as a caretaker, her first time off the streets and out of jail in years. She had been sober, trying to get an education, work off her fines, and turn her life around.

She’s back on the fence.

I could see it in her eyes, that yearning for Christ mixed in with a craving for the drugs. The battle raged within her and it appears the darkness has the edge right now.

I prayed with her, gave her my fence analogy (you can’t stay up on that fence for long..the barbed wire will start to cut and your strength is not enough to keep you propped up), and reminded her of Roger Garrison’s funeral service. A service she’s destined to repeat with her own estranged child if she doesn’t get her life together.

A few more phone calls came through on my way home and I turned onto our road wanting nothing more than to stand under a hot shower and let the water drain the physical and spiritual filth from my body.

But we live next door to the church and I arrived home to more needs. I felt like a car, already running on fumes, that had pulled into a gas station to find the pumps shut down. My engine sputtered a little.

While we were still in the church, my husband began to play the guitar. I laid flat on my back on the floor of the church, closed my eyes, and sang that hymn with everything I had.

I felt like I’d come back to life.

I guess with the Holy Spirit, we become hybrids.