INNER 3RD GRADERS

In order to minister on the streets, you have to see beneath the layers of hurt and anger and fear. You have to see that child within.

I’m not sure if this is a gift from God or the result of teaching 3^rd grade for so many years but I see the inner 8-year-old in most people on the streets. It’s what allows me to love and care for them, despite their appearance, language, and actions.

No-one would turn away from a hungry, lonely child no matter how disheveled he looked.

Most of these guys (and girls) out here have been alone since they were little more than kids anyway, their family lives not falling anywhere near the norm on the spectrum of American society. They didn’t have the parents to nurture them when their travails down the road to nowhere hit the inevitable dead end.

Some are the black sheep of their family, while others are merely the next generation of vagrants and vagabonds. They live what was modeled.

And they model it for the next generation.

Sometimes I have to employ the “time-out” method.

Just like with kids, they have the “give-me-an-inch-I’ll-take-a-mile” mindset.

If I don’t object to one curse word, they’ll say three more. If I give a quarter, they want a dollar.

But the worst is, if I don’t acknowledge falling-down- drunk behavior, they take it as a sign that I’m okay with it.

And I’m not.

“If that is what you choose to do, you are an adult, and I can’t stop you,” I’ll say. “But I don’t have to continue to drive you places and bring you food and come sit and listen to you ramble on and on about how you want to change but then you don’t.”

How is that helping?

So I will pull away, albeit temporarily, because I’m not going to enable someone to stay in their sin and give my approval by ignoring the behavior.

I’m going to call you out or I’m going to skip visiting your camp. Maybe both. Usually both.

Scooter found this out the hard way.

He came up to me at the soup kitchen the other day. I hadn’t been to his camp in three weeks. His slobbering drunk phone calls, after making a commitment to get sober, convinced me that he needed a time-out.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked.

“No, not mad,” I answered. “Disappointed.”

“Why don’t you come by anymore?” he questioned.

“Because what kind of friend would I be to make it easy for you to stay in the woods?” I explained. “I’m not going to sit by like it’s okay and watch you die like Roger and Alvin.”  Scooter’s health has been on a steady decline and he looks like a walking skeleton.

To my surprise, and delight, Scooter not only understood, but he seemed pleased that I cared enough to “discipline” him.

He pulled out a postcard that our ministry puts in the sack lunches when we do street feeds. On the back was this note:

YOU ARE DIRTY FOR WHAT YOU DONE. I WONT NEVER COME SEE YOU AGIN.

“Did you write this?” he asked.

“Of course not. Why would I say that?”

“I don’t know. I compared the handwriting to a letter you wrote me and it didn’t match but then you didn’t come out so..” his voice trailed off.

“First of all,” I explained. “I would never say something like that. Nor would I say it like that. What am I, a 20’s gangster?” Besides, I want to pull out my red pen and correct these spelling and grammar mistakes, mistakes I would NEVER make, I wanted to add, but that was not really the issue here.

I was a little miffed that someone would use my ministry card to leave such a message and briefly thought about the time one of our magnetic signs disappeared from the van door. We worried that someone would use it on their vehicle and cause some problems for us, but as time passed and nothing happened, we assumed it got lost going down the interstate or in a rainstorm.

This was a little more personal.

Whoever had written it was pretending to be me.

It didn’t take us long to figure out the grammatically-challenged culprit. Neither of us were particularly upset.

He’d run the boy off from his camp earlier that week and saw it as juvenile retaliation. Relieved to confirm it wasn’t me, he was at peace.

I’d dealt with kids forging my name on letters home to their parents for years.

Like I said, 3^rd graders.

Update:  As I was posting this I got a phone call from Scooter who was excited to tell me he’d gone for a shower, haircut, and shave. He’d gone to the thrift store to get a new set of clothes and stopped and ate dinner at the Salvation Army. His voice was strong and clear and we made an appointment to go to the Social Security Office Tuesday. Maybe time-outs really are good for grown-ups too!)