Anything Helps

I drove by a shopping cart as I turned onto my street, full of someone’s worldly goods, brown cardboard sign poking out from the top. It was haloed in light from the street-light above. I didn’t see anyone nearby.

Last night I passed the same shopping cart piled high as I got off the highway. It was just a few hundred yards away from where it sat tonight. 

Someone “lives” in this area, parking all their belongings as they try to catch a few moments of rest. Likely struggling to truly sleep, racked with anxiety their cart will have been taken away come morning. I wonder, as the owner flew their sign earlier today, did they make enough money to find a cheap place to stay? Some shitty motel with a low rate, anywhere slightly cleaner and more comfortable than the hard concrete. 

I simply cannot fathom keeping everything I own in a shopping cart. Honestly, I can’t fathom owning so little it all fits into a shopping cart. 

I can’t imagine what it is like to have to fly a sign all day, standing at the corner of the exit off I-25, not only wanting to make some money, but also longing for someone to look my way and acknowledge my presence, my humanity. Standing there as people are waiting at the red light. Awkwardly fidgeting, avoiding eye contact, praying the light turns green so they don’t have to sit here and pretend I’m not there because they don’t have any cash, or they don’t want to give it, or they think I’m a lazy bum, or they just feel guilty that they have while I have not. 

I can’t imagine what that’s like. 

Yesterday I was driving back from my shift at Network, a coffee shop centered around providing a safe, humanizing space for Denver’s homeless. A place to just be present, enjoy friendships, drink too much coffee. I’d just spent hours practicing presence with the homeless, and as I drove down Grant and turned a corner, I realized there was a homeless man standing on the corner with his sign who I had barely seen until I’d already passed by. 

I spend my weeks engaging with the poor and building friendships with the homeless and I still barely saw him. 

We’re so conditioned in our society to ignore what makes us uncomfortable, to pretend that which is not right simply does not exist (for to acknowledge it would mean having to address it). It’s far easier to dehumanize the “other,” because if I have compassion and begin to actually see another human being, I can no longer excuse their suffering. 

There is so much injustice in this broken, hurting world. When these injustices are happening to a far-off group of “others” who I have no personal connection with, I can speak in lofty terms, pass judgments, and create grandiose hypothetical solutions for the human beings I’ve never met. But when someone goes from a nameless, faceless being to a person I know by name, the hypothetical solutions and lofty conversations are now about my friend. 

We must begin to see the Imago Dei in each and every human being we encounter - whether we love them or not. There are people in this world who I would rather hate. I want them to just be evil, because that would be simpler. Bad people are bad, therefore I do not have to love them. This releases me from humanizing my enemy. But the truth of God is that every single human being in this world is a Child of God, made in God’s Good Image. Even if they are deeply broken and twisted at this time, the core of humanity is still a Good Creation. And when we acknowledge this, that we are all Beloved Children, then I can no longer demonize the other or the perceived enemy. I can no longer hold those I deem bad at arm’s length, because we have the same core identity.

When I see the shopping cart glowing in the late-night street lights, and I pause to think about the Child of God who pushes it around, holding a cardboard sign reading, “Anything Helps,” I must begin to also see myself. 

I too am a beggar. While my physical needs are met and I have been afforded much in my life, my beggar is within. What would my sign say if I stood there on the street corner? My shopping cart full of my insecurities and bad relationships, piled high with poor decisions and all the ways I try to earn love, affection, and worth, all covered up in a blanket of doing good things for the wrong reasons because I’m afraid I won’t be loved if I don’t. My sign begging for love, pleading to be wanted, asking for security and success. “Help, I’m addicted to affirmation. Won’t believe I’m enough on my own. Can’t seem to get clean.”

We are all human beings created in the Image of God. We’re all beggars in some right, suffering from loneliness and racked with addictions trying to fill the void. The question is if we will choose the humility to see it. 

That shopping cart could so easily be mine, on the corner of lonely and hopeless under a street light in the foggy night. 

Pass Through Under the Mercy

I get to see Jesus a lot. On Tuesday I got to see Him in a woman named Sparkle.

Sparkle is probably in her 70s, I'm terrible at gaging people's age. She comes into Network often enough that we've developed a friendship, I sat with her for a long time last week and we talked about faith.

It's really incredible to witness truly childlike faith, and I see it the most at Network. I guess there's something about being in a place in life where you honestly have nothing, that you learn to rely entirely on the only One who has ever really loved you. It's a faith that I struggle to access, because I have people and possessions, a home, work, to fill the huge gap loneliness leaves in our souls.

Sparkle has really beautiful faith. She grew up Catholic. She told me on Tuesday she's still trying to work it all out. "I'm really good at giving other people advice, telling them how to trust God. But then I doubt, I don't know how to take my own advice."

Her short, white, frizzy hair was stored under a red felt winter hat that day, grey sweatpants pulled over Ugg-style boots. Her black skin is actually quite smooth for someone who has been on the streets for over 20 years, maybe she isn't in her 70s. I'm so bad at guessing ages.

Sparkle sat over in a chair at a square table near the window. She was talking on the phone loudly and excitedly, drawing my attention away from washing mugs.

"I've got my housing! I've got my housing!"

On various waiting lists for months, years, in and out of temporary places to stay, Sparkle was learning she could finally be inside. Just last week we were talking about how hard it is for someone of her age to live on the streets.

She came over to the counter and I leaned over it to talk with her. We talked about how hard it was to be a woman on the streets. A black woman on the streets. A black, elderly, disabled woman on the streets. "I'm tough though," she told me, explaining that she can hold her own.

As we talked, tears squeezed out of her eyes, sliding slowly down her cheeks. "I'm crying because I'm happy! I just can't believe it. I hope nothing goes wrong..."

So afraid something would go wrong. We talked about her fear. I held out my hands to her, held hers in mine. I reminded her of my favorite Bible verse, that "there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear."

It's really hard for folks to get off the streets, for a hundred reasons. Not only is it simply difficult to get the proper documentation to get permanent housing, but many folks self-sabotage. There is so much fear of ending up back on the streets, it paralyzes people from actually progressing forward. See, the streets harden a person. You have to be tough, you endure endless abuse - physically, mentally, and spiritually. One homeless friend told me about the bruises his soul receives from people's hateful actions and words towards him, the "homeless drunk bum." (This friend happens to be taking college courses, studies all the time, does not abuse any substances, and we attend the same church). To get off the streets you have to let go of some of that hardness, but in doing so, you lose the protective armor that saved your life. So what if the housing falls through, but now you are defenseless?

This fear, this self-sabotaging, this being one's own worst enemy...it's not something only homeless folks do. It's simply more visible in their lives, in the addictions they can't let go of because those addictions are saving them from something deeper and far too painful and vulnerable to address.

But we are all addicts, we are all lonely, we are all searching for belonging and unconditional love. We are all filling those voids with everything possible. We get promotions that mean we are now worthwhile humans, we wither away when our job isn't good enough. It killed me to work at Starbucks as a college graduate who was supposed to be "doing great things," until I learned that working there and building relationships with my co-workers and customers was a great thing. We stop up the loneliness with friendships, family, significant others. Or pretend we don't give a sh** and are wonderfully fulfilled being on our own. Independence is a mask. Our titles are facades.

And we sabotage ourselves. The fear of being alone causes us to destroy relationships because we are so afraid they'll leave anyways. Afraid we won't succeed in our work, we do a bad job and do ultimately end up failing.

It all come down to fear. Such deep, penetrating fear that if we were to access it we believe it would tear us apart. Fear of losing everything, everyone, and being completely and utterly worthless and alone.

But this fear comes from a wrong identity. It comes from a view of ourselves that says our worth and value come from what we possess and what we can give. That no one could ever love us apart from what they can get from us (this, at least, is the lie I must battle).

But then, there is no fear in love. In fact, perfect love has the power to remove all fear because it is not love based upon merit or earnings. It is love that deems ALL as worthy, all as worth loving, and that to all this great, deep, unfathomable love has been given.

I was so grateful to see Jesus in Sparkle on Tuesday. To talk to her about this perfect love, because I knew I was really preaching this message of deep worth and love to myself, because I too am very afraid.