Back at it

So after a great week of relaxation, I'm back at Sanctuary, and back on the streets.

A beloved woman from our community, and the mother of a great great friend of mine died last week. Her name was Patty Wink and we had a memorial for her at Sanctuary on Wednesday. Many people both from the streets and not had only wonderful things to say about her... she will be missed.

Last night was a stressful drop-in. I found out from two women who I'm fairly close with who are both on the street that they are pregnant - within a few minutes of each other. I think that it is so important to celebrate all life so of course I congratulated them and tried to get excited with them - though I am well aware that pregnancy on the street is rarely intentional and seldom welcomed. For one of the women it's her 9th child, and for one it's her fourth. It's so tough. I cannot imagine the stress of pregnancy when you're addicted and in a ridiculously codependent relationship, never mind the fact that you're sleeping on the sidewalks of Toronto at night. I know that the kids will be taken by CAS and that breaks my heart as well, not that I would support a mother keeping her child when she is in the midst of an addiction and life on the street. What is hopeful however, is that pregnancy is one of the only and most common way that women on the street get and stay straight and clean. It still doesn't happen much or often at all, but pregnancy can be a huge motivating factor for a woman to reexamine her life and ask for help. I hope and pray that these women might consider their babies as big enough motivators to take some healthy positive steps. Hopefully their violent and abusive boyfriends won't sabotage them if they do - there are so many obstacles.

There is a man, R. who i've known for a few years who is known for panning outside of the Tims north of yonge and bloor. R. is a great old guy with a heck of a lot of character. He got a visitor tag somewhere and has been wearing it on a lanyard around his neck for months - which is hilarious. Whenever I ask him why he's a visitor or where he's visiting he just chuckles and says somehting like "oh you know..." He's from the older generation on the street who drink and drink and drink, but aren't into crack or heroin or any of the other dangerous drugs that a lot of the younger people (i mean in their 30s and 40s) are more generally into. Some of the older guys, and many native people I know take a sort of pride in the fact that they're just drinkers. But oh, do they drink. Yesterday R. was sitting on the bench in the park drinking a bottle of listerine. It is not uncommon AT ALL for alcoholics on the street to drink mouthwash, amongst other things. They drink 'rub' which is rubbing alcohol, I've seem a friend drinking cologne, even heard of a group of guys who were drinking watered down hairspray. They get so sick... poisoned. Listerine is the most common though, people drink bottles of it day after day after day. So R. was drinking Listerine and was in worse shape then I've ever seen him - he'd wet himself and was falling all over the place - it is so hard to see friends killing themselves. If anyone doubts the power or existence of addiction they need only spend some time in the park outside of Sanctuary. No one grows up dreaming of spending their days on the sidewalk drinking mouthwash everyday until they collapse. Sometimes it's hard to keep hoping for something better for these guys - when it has been their routine day in and day out for year and years - decades even. Hope is exhausting sometimes... because I know that it takes work.. and nothing short of a miracle for some of these guys before they know even a tiny tiny bit that they are loved, precious, fearfully and wonderfully made. I think of people who walk by my friends and spit on them or throw garbage at them, and how it might be difficult to convince one of these passers-by that the 'thing' they are spitting on is really something - no someone - to be absolutely treasured, adored, delighted in, loved, valued, prized. That is the truth though, and the way God feels about them. It would probably take work to convince a stranger of that... times that by about a hundred for how difficult it is to help someone see it in themselves. It is easy to believe you're garbage because then you can go on treating yourself and acting like garbage, but to let yourself believe that you are a temple in which God resides... that's hard.

Speaking of hope - there is a GREAT book everyone MUST read called "Bent Hope" by Tim Huff. Go read it riiiiight now.

And usually when I'm at the point where I'm ready to throw in the towel because there is so little tangible 'success' in street ministry, something happens that keeps me hoping. Last night a man who I've gotten to love and adore over the last 8 or 9 months came to drop in pretty messed up, as usual. We've talked alotttt about his addictions to crack and alcohol... how he equates them to an abusive lover that he just cant get enough of and can't get away from. He was talking to me yesterday about all the money he's wasted and I made some dumb offhand comment about how many kids he could have fed in africa by now - I don't know why, it just sort of slipped out, then I reliazed that it was probably a pretty dumb thing to say, but he just sort of sat there. He had been talking about all of the things HE could have had - a car, a place, nice clothes, etc. and I mentioned the thing about the kids and he just paused... and it was cool because he sort of explained how getting a car, place, etc. would never motivate him to stop using because those were things for him, and he didn't think he deserved them anyways, but that if he could do a 'god thing' with the money then it might be worth it. I'm glad my comment slipped out when it did. Anyways, he spent some time talking to other staff during the drop-in and at some point decided that eh wanted to go to Ottawa to get straight and sober. He has some family out there. So he talked with some of the staff about having a plan and stuff and they got him into a detox in Ottawa. When someone commits to taking a positivev step its a pretty big deal and we take it seriously. So last night after drop in at about 11pm myself and Steve drove him to detox in Ottawa. It was great having those hours with him in the car where he felt safe to share more of his story and his fears. Whether he really absorbed any of what we were telling him or not, he will remember that we were willing to drive him there in the middle of the night - and he realized that it was because we genuinely love and care for him, and it was really cool to see him actually let himself believe that. Oh I pray pray pray pray pray that this will work out for him.