It matters....

I've been in this weird, distant, confused, state lately and I'm hoping it works itself out soon. It's like I'm really still even though physically I've been really busy. I'm not moving forward and I'm not moving backwards....I'm just stuck in pause though everything around me is still in play.

We have a friend that wrecked his truck that he worked out of and didn't have insurance so we gave him our truck to use to get back on his feet. That's what you do; when a friend is in need you step up and help out. In doing this, it has prevented us from going to the streets for a while. I think that has contributed to my pause mode. I miss it. I miss our friends. I drive through down town everyday going home and I purposely drive down the streets we are accustomed to visiting in hopes of seeing some of our friends. I have ran into a few but it's just not the same.

I did have a truly in your face "this is so much a part of the bigger picture moment" a few weeks ago. It was Memorial weekend to be exact. My phone rang and I'm not one to answer the phone when it's a number I don't know. Well it was a number I didn't know so I didn't answer it. A few seconds later a different number I didn't know called. Something in my gut told me to answer and it was our friend DiAngelo on the other end. We met DiAngelo about 2 years ago and I fell in love with him the first time I met him. We first met at Austin St shelter when Scottie and I had made friends with the guys who ran the door and they let us come in. We were passing out little pieces of paper that had bible verses on them and DiAngelo came up to me and asked if I would pray for him. He was the first person that had every come up to me and asked for prayer. He told me he had a problem with cocaine and he wanted me to pray for him. He wanted me to pray for the money he was going to get paid that Friday because he knew where he would spend it. So we prayed and there was a connection from that point on. Months would go by before I saw him again and each time we were out he would try to hide from us so I wouldn't see him....because he was high. Every time I would find him and go up to him and ask about his dad and his mom because that's what we would always talk about. And sometimes I knew he was high but I didn't care. My job wasn't to fix him but to love him....unconditionally....in his condition. And I did.

So DiAngelo was on the other end of the phone and he has had our phone number for over a year and a half and has never once called us. I said "hey what's up, how are you?" and he had called to let us know that his dad had passed away. He thought to call us. Because all the times we crossed paths that's what we talked about....his dad. We would talk about how his heart was doing, when he was going to dialysis, the last time they went fishing and on and on.....and it mattered. Out of all the people that run through your mind when your heart is breaking....he thought to call us.....that mattered....to me.

It was like I was in pause and God decided to push rewind and play at the same time. Like God saying, remember when you did this...it mattered. I put you there for a reason. Even though it seemed insignificant at the time....it mattered.

He wanted us to come and meet his family. His mom, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews....his family. So we did. We went to his momma's house and met his family. We walked in and the first thing I did was hug his momma and ask how she was doing. Little did I know at the time but that made a huge impact on her as well. DiAngelo later informed me that his momma wasn't very fond of white people and the fact that we drove all that way to support her family and hug her neck all because of the love we have for her son meant a lot to her. Again...it mattered. Even huggin his momma was a part of the bigger picture

Even beyond that God's hand was all over this picture. He used a wheelchair that was once DiAngelo's dad's to fulfill a need of a homeless man that needed a new wheelchair the very next day. I won't go into that story now....but it was beautiful.

I love how you can see beauty and truth in ugly things. I love how you can see God's perfection in an imperfect world. I love how God allows us to see....if we would only allow ourselves to look.

DiAngelo

This was the last time we saw DiAngelo on the streets....and he was high. He tried to avoid me like the black plague but I spotted him and called him out on hiding from me. We prayed that day.....he's been clean since this day. Keep him in your prayers.

Britney and Scottie

Compassion...

ZZ

Joel Olsteen:

Certainly, when God created us, He put His supernatural love in all of our hearts. He's placed in you the potential to have a kind, caring, gentle, loving spirit. Because you are created in God's image, you have the moral capacity to experience God's compassion in your heart.

This is a beautiful idea. This is a beautiful truth.

"...you have the moral capacity to experience God's compassion in your heart."

Beautiful.

Now, if I may, I'm going to reword this sentence to give you a different perspective.

Because you are created in God's image, you have the moral capacity to experience God's heartache.

com·pas·sion
–noun

1. a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.


Can you truly imagine having the moral capacity to experience God's compassion? I mean really; can you imagine God's heartache. Would you even want to? It's in the fibers of our being to experience this compassion. That feeling in your stomach when you stop and acknowledge the world just isn't right. When kids around the world are dying of hunger; there's heartache. When you're given free will and you deny your maker; there's heartache. When you walk by someone in need without giving it a second thought; there's heartache.

Can you imagine having a bad day and you just want to go home and get away from it all?

And this is where you lay your head at night to get rest. There's heartache.

Can you imagine the trials you would face daily if you were homeless and almost blind. If almost twenty years ago someone broke into your home and beat you to a bloody pulp leaving you for dead. They beat your face in so badly that the neighbor that found you could hardly recognize you and it leaves you blind in one eye. But no worries, you get social security and disability that's just enough to not afford to live in your own home. Do you have compassion?

Donny Sockwell

Can you imagine being diabetic since the age of 15 and now you're 32, homeless and six months ago you had to have your leg amputated because of your diabetes? You used to live with your cousin and her 3 teenagers in a small home and she passed away last week due to complications from a hysterectomy. Now you sleep on the streets as you wait your turn on the list for housing. Compassionate yet? Feeling any heartache?

Alicia

Can you imagine shopping for your clothes out of the back of a truck?

And be thankful for it.

Can you imagine the drugs controlling you when you used to say you had control?

Can you imagine a world without compassion? A world filled with people that have compassion running through their veins that are just to busy. Hard to imagine huh?

Can you imagine a man coming to realize how good God is to him and he sees all the grace and mercy that God is pouring down on him and he struggles with that new found reality and the world that surrounds him? Being torn between the two worlds. What he's known and what he now sees. And when you look into his eyes you can see in his soul that he desperately wants to see more of what he's seen. He wants to understand. He acknowledges this powerful force in his life. He's totally freaked out by God's presence. And it's a good, beautiful thing.

Compassion is a good thing but it's married to heartache.

Rob Bell puts it like this in his book Sex God:

"The cross is God taking on flesh and blood and saying "Me Too." This can transform our experience of heartbreak. Instead of being something that distances us from God, causing us to question, " Where are you?".........This is the God that holds out his hands and asks, "Would you like to see the holes where the nails went? Would that help?" It's the place we find out we're not alone, where we find the strength to go on. Not a strength that comes from within ourselves but a strength that comes from God. The God who keeps going. Who keeps offering. Who keeps loving. Who keeps risking."

Will you risk heartache to be compassionate?

Will you risk being compassionate to experience what God made you to be?

Just a thought.

Britney & Scottie

New Year......

Well it's a new year and I will try to post more often than every 3 months. Sorry for such a gap. We've still been going to the streets but we have been crazy busy. The Lord has blessed us abundantly this past year and has kept us pretty busy. We got a new home that we've been working on and Scottie and I both started new jobs at the begining of January.

So again, I apologize for not posting and this year I will try to do better.

Britney and Scottie

In the business of making bad, good....

I've really been struggling about what to write on this blog. I just can't seem to find the words to clearly describe what we experienced last time we went out. We're going out tomorrow so I figured I might as well sit down and try before more happens and my poor little brain has to digest even more.

When we go out on the streets the spiritual warfare is very present. You can feel forces of evil and good all around you; and I say that not trying to sound like a freak or that I have some magical power of sense. It's so powerful you can't help but notice. Sometimes it's more noticeable than others. But in the midst of it, in the middle of the battle field, God is constantly with us pouring his water on our little seed of faith. Lets just say I'm a very needy plant that needs a lot of watering.

I must say that I feel that my faith is still very immature. I would say my faith is truly about 6 years old and it came from circumstance, not study. I feel that I still have a lot of growing to do and to tell you the truth I don't foresee a time in my life that that will ever change. Because I know from experience that when I think I've got it figured out the cookie quickly crumbles.

Last time we were out (about 2 weeks ago I guess) we were totally beaten up mentally, emotionally and spiritually not to mention verbally. There were two men sitting on the sidewalk and we asked them if they would like some crackers and water and they did so we got out and gave them some. One of them asked us if he could ask us a question and he started talking about the bible and God and how we should be feeding the people spiritually and not physically. We should be handing out the word, not crackers and water. He went on to say how so many on the streets were spiritually starving, how the crackers we gave him would enter his body and then soon leave. So at this point I'm thinking maybe he's right, maybe we're just going through the motions. Generally we don't go out beating people over the head with the bible. Our main goal when we go out is just to love and respect people that don't get treated as human much less with respect. As I mentioned earlier my faith came from circumstance, not study, and it certainly didn't come from someone reciting bible verses to me. Believe me, I know God's word is alive and very real. I've read my bible, I've underlined and highlighted passages and I've soaked the pages with my tears but there's no way I could throw up bible verses on someone by memory.

I may not know God's word by heart but what I do know is God's love and mercy He's shown me. All I do when I go out on the streets is recycle it. That's ALL I know.

So going back to the guy .... he started getting excited and talking louder and throwing bible verses at us expecting us to recite them from memory, because after all we were the Christians handing out food to the homeless so we should know these things. When we couldn't tell him what it said he started yelling at us telling us we needed to go home and read. Then all the sudden, religion turned racial. At this point you could see his excitement, he couldn't sit down and talk anymore, he had to stand up for the upcoming production.

"Everyone thinks Jesus is white but they're wrong...He was black....when blood dries what color is it.... BLACK. When someone hits you in the eye and it bruises what color does it turn...BLACK!

This had turned into a very heated racial discussion that started out with God. When Scottie and I tried to tell him we didn't care what color Jesus was, that it didn't matter to us, he would get even more excited and would yell "It does matter, it does matter." He didn't allow us any opportunity to talk so we just stood there and took the beating.

When things were starting to get out of hand I finally said we had to leave, we had more water and crackers to pass out. We left him and the other man that was there with him yelling at each other over whether Jesus was black or not and whether or not it mattered. We were totally exhausted from the beating we had just taken and decided to go talk to Kenneth.

There's no doubt in my mind that God wanted us to go talk to Kenneth right after that encounter. God was about to use him as His water hose! Kenneth is one of our very good friends from the streets. Trust and respect is mutually shared between all of us. The thing about Kenneth, and he told us this when we first met him, is that he is on a different level. Sometimes, no I take that back, anytime when Kenneth speaks it's like talking to the Riddler.....like he's talking in some sort of code. But the reality of it is, his speech is simple and childlike and very complex and meaningful all at the same time.

It was like Kenneth knew what had just happened to us and one of the first things he said as he leaned up against the wall was "you know, Jesus was in the business of making bad things into good. Things start going wrong when people start making bad out of good." That's just what we had experienced...making bad out of good. He went on to say that's our goal in life..to try and make what's bad good.

So as we were talking I was still thinking about what the previous guy had said about what we were doing really wasn't helping anyone. So I just went ahead and asked Kenneth what he thought. What was his perception of us coming out and did it make a difference? He said about 75% of the people really appreciated us coming out and the rest were indifferent.

He said sometimes a table doesn't look like a table to everyone. They don't see what you see. I sat there gazing at him like a child when they first see the ocean. I understood what he just said and my faith was being watered.

He said “You know, I have an ID because I have to have one but that’s not who I am. That’s not my identity. My identity is who I am within this universe. A lot of people out here have ID’s but don’t have identities, they are the walking dead. They don’t know who they are and don’t realize they are a part of the universe.” He looks around and says “all of this around us is fiction. The only thing that is reality is that grass and that tree over there. Everything else is fiction; it’s a product of someone’s imagination. That telephone pole over there used to be a tree but no one calls it a tree any more because someone has made it into something else. Its identity has changed.

This was also something that made sense to me but confused me at the same time. I was thinking is your identity "who God made you to be” or “be who you’ve become”??? Is your identity something you’re blessed with before you are born or is it something that is developed and shown to you over time?

If this makes no sense to you at all it's okay and if it does make sense to you and you're disturbed that's okay too.

Do you live in a world of fiction or are you in touch with reality. Are you a part of the walking dead or do you know your identity? Difficult question? Yes! Let it bother you and see where it takes you.

We'll see how God disturbs me tomorrow. Till then.

Britney & Scottie

People like us....

We finally went to the streets today in what seems like forever since we last went. I sit here thinking about today and honestly I sit here with my mind blank. I know without a doubt that God was ever present today I just can't find the words to explain Him....if there are even words that exist.

Today was very two sided. There were some that were totally exhausting-ly grouchy. They were hot, they were tired, they were hungry and it was an end to one more day on the streets. Same old crap, different, hotter day. And in that same second of frustration, that same moment of exhaustion, breathing in the same hot air was someone filled with gratitude and thankfulness that would say thank you on behalf of everyone. They would come up to us and shake our hands or give us a hug and tell us how much they appreciated us coming out and if no one said thank you they were saying it for them.

We by no means go out there to get patted on the back or to puff up our egos by "doing good to the least of these" and we never expect a thank you or anything else in return. But when someone goes out of their way to tell you...it means a lot.

I honestly love going to the streets and seeing our friends out there. It serves as a check and balance system for my own life. I juggle two lives...one at work filled with people trying to keep up with the Jones' and living well beyond their means to do it and one filled with people that are just trying to survive another day. I relate and connect so much more with the people who struggle in life; people that experience suffering. Rather than those who put on their plastic smiles and face each day suppressing internal struggles.

When we were in front of the Stew Pot today there was a man there that I started talking to named Ernie. He said he recognized us from the walk in (aka Austin Street Shelter). Just before we went to the Stew Pot we were just down the street (literally 1/2 a block from the Stew pot) and we were in a circle praying for some of our good friends and it started out with Scottie and I and 3 other people but the circle just kept growing as people walked up. By the time I closed my eyes to pray there were about 10 people in the circle. As I was praying people kept coming up and just standing behind the circle and bowing their heads and joining in the prayer. Obviously Ernie was one of those that had stopped because when I was talking to him he looked at me and said "I just want to thank you for praying for people like us". I looked at him and shook my head and said Ernie I'm no different than you, I'm just like you. He looked back at me like I was from a different planet and said well thank you anyways.

What does that mean..."people like us"? Has our society dehumanized him enough that he's now less human than I am just because he's on the streets and I, at this moment in life, am lucky enough to have a roof over my head?


I was totally taken back by his statement. When does one human become "more human" than another? How does that happen? When does that happen?



I feel more like "us" than I do "them".



I have most definitely been in the valley before. A dark, scary, lonely valley and God has allowed me to be on this mountain top of life for the time being. But I don't want to get to far away from the valley that I forget what it looks like...what it feels like...even what it smells like. From my personal experiences in life I feel like God hangs out more in the valley than he does on the mountain. I know for certain that the same God that is in the valley is the same God on the mountain top. I just felt closer to him when I was in the valley.



Maybe that's why I enjoy going out to the streets; it gives me the opportunity to be in the valley and in the presence of my maker as He allows me time on this mountain top. The thing is I know this time is limited and short lived. I know for sure I will again be in my own valley needing others to cry out in my behalf. That's life.....life as we know it anyways. A series of valleys and mountains. When you're in the valley you feel like you have no way out of it and when you're on the mountain you never see the edge before you fall off of it.



People like us.....out of all the things that happened today those words are the only thing I can think about and I still to this moment can't wrap my mind around them.





I was reading the Street Zine (a homeless newspaper) on the way home and there is an article in the July issue that addresses Dallas's decision to have a tougher panhandling ordinance. This is a part of the article that intrigued me and I thought it was brilliantly said.



"The greatest tragedy of this ordinance is its contribution to the myth that the presence of the poor equals a threat to our safety. This is simply not true.

Our safety is threatened not by the poor, but by evil. Evil is present along the entire spectrum of society. It is present in middle-class neighborhoods in Carrollton, where a man recently shot his family and himself. It is present in University Park, where drugs and alcohol continue to claim the lives of students at SMU. It is present in southeast Dallas, where a 15-year old was killed in a gang related shooting last week. It is present in too many churches, where a blind eye is turned to abuse.

It is indeed present among the homeless population, but no more there than the rest of society. It is also present in us when we see another human being as a threat simple because that person is poor" ~ Rev. Joseph J. Clifford, Pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Dallas.



Seems like all of us are "people like us".



Something to think about.....

Britney & Scottie

It all started with a size 13....

It never fails to amaze me how God is a part of everything and everything truly does have meaning and purpose....EVERYTHING. I don't even think I can actually explain that to where it makes sense but I believe with all my heart that everything happens for a reason.

It amazes me that God can turn a size 13 shoe into a lasting friendship. It sounds funny but it's true. We have a friend that we met at Austin Street Shelter about a year ago that recently got off the streets and into his very own apartment. He sent me an email telling me he had his new apartment and that he was going to invite Scottie and I over for dinner but he didn't have furniture yet so it would be a while. When I got the email I sent an email to our church letting them know the situation and asked for furniture, dishes, towels, and whatever else they had to go into a "home". They responded like crazy and he now has basically everything he needs to live comfortably in his new home.

As cool as that is that's not even the cool part of the story. The cool part is looking back and seeing God at work. Seeing how he crossed our paths months ago and created a friendship from a parir of shoes.

This is how it started....

His name is Michael and we met at Austin St. when we were passing out random things to the guys out there. Michael was very quiet and shy and had a child like smile. He didn't just smile with his mouth he smiled with his eyes. He was always grateful for us coming out and very very polite. After months of us going out to the shelter he came up to me and asked if we had a size 13 shoe. We didn't have that size at the time but I told him I would look for some. So every time we went out there he would ask if we had found a size 13 shoe yet and I would joke with him about how big his foot was and it would take us a while to find a shoe that big.

Scottie and I went to Church Under the Bridge in Waco with a few people from church one weekend and a guy that was scheming money off of people using a floppy shoe came up to one of the teenagers from church and asked for 5 bucks so he could buy a pair of shoes. Josh, the teenager from church has the biggest softest heart ever and he asked what size shoe he needed. The guy said 13, and that happened to be the size shoe Josh wore. Josh took his shoes off and gave them to this guy. Awesome story I know, but like I said the guy was scheming. He took the shoes off of Josh's feet and put them in his bag. He didn't even put the shoes on. He put them in his bag right in front of us. His floppy shoes were his money maker and the day was early, he couldn't put the shoes on.... he was working the crowd.

I couldn't believe what just happened, he totally just played Josh. I told Scottie what happened and he and Adam went to Wal-Mart down the street and bought Josh a new pair of shoes since it was cold outside and Josh was standing in the cold with socks on.

I kept my eye on the guy and watched as he went from person to person flopping his shoe and giving them the same song and dance he gave Josh. I waited until the service was over and I went over to the guy and sat down next to him and looked him in the eye and asked if he was going to put those shoes on knowing he had no intention to put those shoes on. They were going to be sold by the end of the day. He laughed when I asked. I told him I would buy the shoes back from him for 5 bucks (the original amount of money he was asking for) and he said without hesitation....10. I said 5 bucks....he said 7. I looked at him raised my eyebrows and said I'll buy the shoes for 5 dollars. It was a deal. I gave him 5 bucks and got Josh's shoes back. I went to go find Josh and trade him his shoes for the shoes Scottie and Adam had just bought at Wal-Mart. I made the trade and Finally....I had a size 13 shoe for Mr. Michael.

The very next time we saw Michael I gave him his very new pair of size 13 shoes and told him God definitely wanted him to have these shoes!!! It brought tears to his eyes that day and we went to the side of the truck and prayed for the first time together. We prayed for a job he was trying to get and for him to get off the streets.

About two or three weeks later he came up to me telling me he got the job. About 2 or 3 months after he got the job I got the email saying he got an apartment and was off the streets!

A week ago we went and surprised him with lots of stuff for his house. We just kept bring stuff up to his apartment. It was awesome! He just stood there speechless as I was putting his new dished in his bear cabinets. After all the dishes were put away, all the food was in the pantry and all of the boxes of towels and sheets and blankets were unpacked he stood there and just looked around. You could see the disbelief on his face. He said "I don't know what to say" as tears filled his eyes. He walked out of the room without saying anything and went into the bathroom to wipe his eyes.

This was Michael's pantry when we got there.
This was the pantry when we left :)

When he came back out we reassured him he didn't need to say anything. This was all God's doings, we just delivered it for Him. I couldn't stop smiling. I was so thankful to be a part of this story, thankful for this friendship and thankful for that pair of size 13 shoes.

We all held hands, Michael, Scottie, Cheyenne and I, in his living room and we prayed. We thanked God for the day, the breath he had given us, the apartment, the friendship and the way He crossed our paths to make a beautiful part of the bigger picture.

Scottie, Cheyenne, Roxy, Michael and Britney

Through trials and tribulations there are rainbows after the storm. If you are in the storm right now I pray for you to hold on to your faith. If you're just coming out of one I pray for you to open your eyes, your mind and your heart and wait for the rainbow.

How you treat people today makes a difference for a lifetime. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Britney and Scottie

I can see...

Every once in a while God will let you see a tinny tiny glimpse of the "bigger picture".

He created us and is well aware of the fact we're not capable of wrapping our minds around the plans He has for us. BUT...Sometimes.....he lets us see just a glimpse of the bigger picture.

Bigger than the little bubble of our everyday routine. Bigger than you. Bigger than us. Bigger than the little pale blue dot we live on. God is so much bigger.

This life isn't easy. Everyone has trials. As different as they may be everyone has them. It's in these trials that you have a choice to find yourself. To find God. To fully rely on God for every move you make. When you're in total darkness and you don't know which way is up or down and you're hanging on to your faith by threads.....you find God.

Most of the time it's painful.

It's scary.

It sucks.

You can only see the nightmare in front of you.

The thing is God see's the bigger picture and He can see the rainbow when you're in the midst of the storm.

As painful as these trials are God sees you through it. It hurts. Physically, mentally and spiritually it hurts. But you get through it.

God can heal you in ways that are indiscribable.

I've gone through trials. Painful, heart breaking trials that are at sometimes still hard to swallow but I let my guard down. I broke down the walls that, what I thought, were protecting my heart and only then did the healing begin. I gave it all up. I COULD NOT TAKE IT ANYMORE.

When I gave it to God the healing began. In ways I can't even begin to explain.

On Easter Sunday God gave me a little glimpse of the bigger picture. Our friends from the streets, Kenneth and Denise came to church with us. Denise has a van and we invited them to come down to go to church with us and they showed up. I have to say it was the best Easter ever.

As we were singing in worship I looked over at Kenneth and saw his eyes and for a split moment God allowed me to see a glimpse of the bigger picture.

I could see.

I could see why God allowed Courtney to suffer and then take her home. I could see why God allowed my heart to crumble into pieces. I could see the answer to all those nights I laid in bed kicking and crying asking why. I could see a glimpse of why. I could see why God put it on my heart to go out on streets to Love people.

I could see what Todd meant when he pointed out the verse in John 15:16

"You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit- fruit that will last."

I could see why God choose me. If all that suffering and all that heart ache was to reclaim lost souls for the Glory of God then it was worth it.

I could see a glimpse of the bigger picture.

The beautiful thing about this is that GOD CHOSE YOU! You didn't choose Him, He chose you to go and bear fruit.


As you walk through these trials we face in this life try to remember God can see the bigger picture when you're spinning your wheels in the darkness.

God chose you.

Britney and Scottie