Homeless Shelter, Handouts, and a lot of Heartache

Many months ago my daughter shared a story of a friend in a dire situation.  My daughter felt helpless watching someone she cared about get smacked with another round of hardship.  Isn‘t it crazy how some people get whalloped in life and others seem to skip through?  These hardships weren't a garden variety of general bad stuff seen through a negative lens.  It was really bad, a little girl who had been victimized many times now an adult trying to keep her head above water.

What to do?

Through work I had a very long list of resources.  We searched for the right ones and sent her the information.  Oh yeah, she lived over 100 miles away.

There is this prevailing thought about people sucking off the system when there are so many resources for help out there, churches and such always offering a hand.  Let me point out a few difficulties with "resources".  I don't know what the statistics are, but I guarantee that for every hand extended there are over forty more lined up to grasp it.

The friend reported that the shelters were full, the offices too far away, phones never answered, and her own phone low on minutes.  Her car was broken down and the shitstorm continued to rain down.  By summer she was ready to leave, escape the hellhole, and start fresh.

I mentioned this in passing to my husband.  Out of nowhere he suggested letting her stay with us.  Unlike when my brother camped out here, sleeping on a spare bed in our tiny two bedroom house, we offered to clear out and rearrange the sunroom to be a private apartment.  She considered our offer but instead opted to believe the empty promises of an abusive and manipulative boyfriend.

A month later she asked if the offer was still available.

In the meantime our own world was imploding as we were making the painful decision to close our shop.  We asked her to hold off another week as we addressed our own issues.  She said she could find her own transportation that she felt bad asking us to come get her.  Her original transportation arrangements fell through, but a local church was able to muster gift cards and someone with a van.

We had a fair idea of what we were getting into.  In the package came her five year old son.  What we had to offer was sanctuary away from abuse, in a city her abuser avoided, with an unknown family.  This was going to be a long-haul time commitment that would try our patience.

She arrived on a Monday morning with a few pieces of furniture and loads of stuff hastily tossed together that didn't make sense.  She was shattered and scrambling, that was clear.  Over the next few days we carted her to various places necessary to get assistance and to enroll her son in school.  She managed to tell authorities the right portion of her story to get the assistance she needed.

There wasn't much opportunity to sit down and work out details of how we were going to operate our living situation.  When I got home for the day she was connecting with friends she hadn't seen in six or more years.  She was keeping late hours and was threatening the obscurity we were offering.

When we did talk it became clear she was expert in saying what you wanted to hear.

I got it.  She was running and at the same time trying to keep the peace. "Make no waves" was a theory that had served her well through the years.  I also understood that if she sat still too long she would have to face her demons.

Two weeks later she pulled up stakes and found sanctuary with family members who had previously been unavailable.

While I can explain it all away and see her point of view, in the end we got burned.  I can't even begin to express the disappointment in her decisions.  Sanctuary wasn't what she sought.  She had no understanding what a few months of peace and quiet could mean, how what we were offering wasn't another hand-out, but a hand-up.  This was an opportunity to start all over, fresh, with a clean slate.  Instead she chose to cling to the safety of a world she already knew.

Opportunity comes in many forms and often we don't see it for what it is.  We bypass the minor inconvenience of change in favor of staying with what we know.

I firmly believe all things happen for a reason.  Clearly the friend was here only as a stop-over, not to rebuild her life.  For us, however, it forced us to finally address the sunroom.  Our extra refrigerator and deep chest freezer were moved to what has turned out to be far more convenient location - who knew?  We cleared out a ton of junk, throwing away so much and finally organizing tools and other stuff that had been stashed away.  I also think it offered us a distraction from the other stresses in our world.  I'm not sure taking on more stress is a good way to do so, but it seems to have worked.

Over the weekend my daughter and boyfriend took up residence as they transition to other housing.  She has jokingly referred to us as a homeless shelter.  I'm pretty sure the shelter is closing its doors after this round.