Redeeming The Homeless Part One: Returning To Eden Through Thorns

Consistent Watering Breaks Rock-Hard Hearts...Like My Heart Once Was

The topic of homelessness is a challenging subject to discuss...and is mostly discussed without hearing from those who are / were themselves homeless.

Recently a friend on social media asked how homelessness should be addressed.

My short response:

Appropriate state and federal land; co-op the building of homes, a simple community, local food production, etc. using the homeless themselves; promote pilot programs for more affluent people to move into such communities as light management in exchange for a rent-free living space (a volunteer situation); other details. The program would last several years and would aim at redeeming the homeless back into society. I would also enforce and extend current loitering and vagrant laws that would disallow people to simply drift - the program or jail or somewhere for the mentally incapable (reintroduce something like mental institutions, learning from past mistakes with a very different approach).

I'll elaborate on this initial statement in the following parts...but first my experiences.

From my personal experiences and getting to know some people who are currently without a place to call 'home', few of them, sadly, are psychologically grounded.

Most are quite disconnected...and whether they had a predisposition or later developed a disconnection due to life's challenges, each individual case may or may not prove otherwise.

Both young and old people I've met have addictions that prevent them from facing their situation soberly.

Those without addictions are quite sick mentally.

Many people walk through life with some form or degree of denial...and some experience 'successful' lives although having many denials all about them.

When I went through a personal journey of being homeless*, part of my denial was drug abuse.

Another part of that denial was my pride, among other character shortcomings.

I had started a couple of businesses and enjoyed nominal success, and when those efforts began to run dry because of my own incompetence and lack of discipline, it would have been quite humiliating to have to again work for another person.

I opted to suffer (and practically threw my life away) than be someone's employee.

It sounds ridiculous and quite arrogant, but that is simply where my mind and heart was.

I felt I was too good, too smart and too experienced to do anything other than something on my own.

But it was being left on my own where I realized that it was my many bad decisions that had led me to being unable to afford the rent.

It was my bad investment choices that brought me to near-broke, and blaming 'the economy' or some faceless greedy people in government or elsewhere wasn't a solution, but a lame excuse.

It was me who had alienated relatives, friends and God (if alienating God was possible, but in our minds, we form thoughts that seem like reality).

Gratefully, I had at least one individual who wouldn't let me go absolutely homeless; a brother from the church who, despite his wife's objections, allowed me to stay in an empty home he was renovating.

Looking back, I can clearly see the Hand of God guiding me and holding me through it all.

However, while it was happening, my heart was so embittered, that God was the last I was asking help from, thinking He'd abandoned me long before (because of my rebelliousness and deplorable lifestyle).

Thank God He is not proud or vindictive as we may make Him out to be, according to our human nature that projects human attributes and human characteristics and human attitudes onto God.

*When I think about my personal journey, I can't say I was absolutely homeless, because I never did spend a night outside or without a roof over my head...there was always someone who answered my request for a momentary place to sleep.

Thankfully, the way things worked out, the journey didn't bring me to that desperate point of sleeping outside on the street.

Yet my depression and blaming everyone else but myself was propelling me to desperation where I didn't care if it came to such extremes.

I wasn't happy with who I had become and what I'd done to everyone around me.

Some relatives had become sick and there was nothing I could do about their ailments.

My relationships with the church had long soured and I couldn't stand the religiosity, vagueness, repeated prescription to simply do everything leadership would suggest, and no financial help or assistance as a place to sleep when I had given thousands of dollars over the years.

Part of my rebelliousness and inconsideration to my own person was me traveling around in a car that wasn't insured and with expired tags (a recipe for immediate confiscation by the authorities).

In sharing all of this I desire to express clearly that each individual has a story as to 'why' they are homeless or struggling with themselves.

In approaching people according to their story, and not as another number, is important I think.

The personal draws people closer together.

If a group desires to help the homeless, whether it is a government group or non-profit / charitable organization, and yet they attempt to stay at arms-length from the people they are trying to help (keep it 'professional' instead of personal), I think the human element is then being disastrously ignored.

Lots of money is thrown at the homeless situation, yet people are still broken despite having housing and food opportunities.

I think homelessness is a reflection of a broken society, that produces broken people who, instead of keeping it together for the sake of staying in society, they simply drop out and fall into a steep pit.

Continued in Part Two.