a surrender - 45

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter six, "there are no heroes in the kingdom of God")

But people kept coming. One night, after we had closed the house, there were two emergency calls. A woman was stranded at the bus station and the security guard was calling to find her a place for the night. The other call was from a nurse at the hospital with a woman fleeing domestic abuse, who couldn’t find room at the local domestic abuse shelter. It was after midnight then. I managed to let them in and provide a place on our couches. And the next morning Heather helped me sort out their stories and find bus fare to get them on their way. Heather was very good with the woman who was fleeing. She was extremely nervous and needed comforting, and Heather invited her into her room and helped her prepare for a bus ride to a safer place. We felt happy after helping those two women.

But they kept on coming. The very next night a woman showed up on the porch late, drunk, but she was shaking, crying uncontrollably. I let her in, and asked if she wanted something to eat. She was ravenous for meat, since she had been living on noodles for quite a while, so I found her some sliced turkey. And sat with her, and listened.

She had been saving money to pay a fine, she told me. If she didn’t pay she would go to jail. Her court date was tomorrow and she’d had the money ready; she had given it to her boyfriend to keep safe. But he had spent it on drugs.

“He smoked my freedom,” she cried.

When she demanded the money, shouting, and wouldn't leave him alone, he’d called the police and had her taken away. But she had been living with him; she had nowhere else to go. So the police left her at our door.

I had to sit with her a long time. She couldn’t calm down enough to sleep; she raged and paced and wailed. She wasn’t sure who she wanted to shoot, him or herself. She said she believed there was a God. And she believed God hated her. She said she now understood how some women turned to prostitution, how others became criminals. And then, sagging in the chair, she cried, “And no one cares… no one cares.”

She said that over and over, and I suddenly realized that her anguish was spiritual. Right in the middle of her loss of housing and possible loss of freedom, she was most troubled because no one seemed to care. Not even God. I didn’t know how to respond to her deep pain, except by listening and trying to be a friend to her.

Continued...