I was walking home from yoga class, hurrying to get home to
my kids when I heard the yelling.
A man was riding a bike down the street with a woman on a
bike behind him, screaming, cursing and crying.
She looked homeless, unkempt, and had on only a black skirt and a red,
lacy bra. She was sobbing, yelling that
she didn’t want to ride, and seemed, geez- what would you say- unstable? Drunk, upset, unpredictable. A bit scary even. I walked a little further, crossing the
street and looking at her, feeling a little conflicted, but wanting to put some
distance between myself and the, you know, crazy.
And then the guy rode off, and the woman collapsed on the
sidewalk and sobbed and sobbed, saying, “I don’t want to be alive anymore, I
just want to die. I want to die.”
Well, that was enough to turn me around and stop denying
that I had to get over my fear and go over to this woman. I walked up, scared, and knelt on the floor
next to her. I asked if she was ok, I
think. I don’t remember how I started
but I eventually asked if I could pray for her- this mess of a woman, sobbing
with all her being, tears and snot and blood streaming from her face. She said yes, and I wanted to touch her but I
was still scared- not sure if she would attack me. But she nodded and I put my hands on her and I
prayed and – well… I became Jesus for her.
I was filled with love for her. I cried with her. I took off my sweater and wrapped it tenderly
around her shoulders. I knew that I
would have taken off my shirt if I hadn’t had my sweater. I rubbed her back while she cried and talked
her through the worst of it. She was
homeless, she had nowhere to go. She had
been punched in the face by her boyfriend, who had pushed her down the stairs,
who had thrown away all of her clothes, who had stolen her last 20$…
I sat with her
through all that, and we talked. I asked
her if I could walk her to the Jesus
Center, we were close,
and she said she couldn’t go back there.
I asked if I could call Catalyst, and she said she couldn’t go
there. I asked where her mom was- she
had been crying for her mom- and she told me her family was in Idaho. She was waiting on a check to get to Idaho, she said, she had
to get out of town. She was still crying
when I said, “If I buy you a ticket to Idaho,
will you go?” She calmed down a little,
she looked at me, and she said, “yes.”
We walked over to get a pen and paper so that she could get
my number. She wanted to say goodbye to
her babies first, she told me. She was
finally calm and steady as I wrote down my number and gave her a hug and told
her to call me. Several times. She
assured me she would, and she rode off, and I walked home.
This story is getting long, and I have a tendency to use 5
words when 1 would do, so I will sum up.
She called me later, and I brought her a bag of clothes, a card that I
had written, prompted by her yelling of “I want a new life” when she was
crying, and got her a hotel room for a couple of nights while she waited for
her check. She wanted to buy the ticket
herself. We talked about God and her
mom- who is in prison and tells her she is praying for her daily, “I’m fighting
your battles, Misty.” I told her she is
so loved by God, that I could feel the esteem He feels for her when I was
praying, and she fought away tears and told me she knew- that she could tell
there were guardian angels around her.
She was blown away by all I gave her- she kept saying, “You don’t even
KNOW me!” and tearing up when I would hand her more things.
But the thing is, it wasn’t
me. I told her that, but it wasn’t an
attempt at false modesty, it was a simple acknowledgement of the Truth of it
all. It was an answer to something I had
asked of God two nights before, something that I had forgotten I had even
written in my journal: “God, I want to be my most creative, authentic, loving
self. Make me a Being of Light, so that the Love that will meet us in Heaven is
down on earth for everyone around me.”
God answers prayers.
Misty was such a gift to me.
I am awed and humbled by it. In just
allowing myself to be used- in just a simple act of obedience to God- getting
over the fear and walking up to her- I was given such a profound gift.
And here’s the kicker: we had already used up our tithe and
offerings money for the month. Actually,
we had already used up most of the money for the month! But walking away from that I had not one single doubt that God would
provide for us. It didn’t even occur to
me to think about the fact that we would be short- I literally could not even
TRY to worry about it.
And two days later, of course, I happened to be online and
decided to check our bank and we had received a surprise check for FIVE times
the amount that I gave to Misty. Out of
the blue. Unexpected. (Except by me.) Because heaven’s economy is like that. And Jesus wasn’t messing around when he said
life abundant. (Although I really
dislike using that about us getting more money… it make me really
uncomfortable. But you get the point.)
