“I am so lonely, I have nobody. All I have is my small dog but what happens if I die? Then my dog has nobody”
So many of us are lonely. Even being surrounded by five other women 24 hours a day, I face bouts of loneliness. Lonely for a place to call home, lonely for my bed, lonely for my family. Yesterday I found myself missing all those things I left behind and questioning the purpose in it all.
Why am I here? In the middle of this small Ukrainian town that most people will never hear about in their lifetime, what good am I really doing?
I met this lonely woman on the street. Looking into her eyes I saw myself. The only difference between her and me was that I had the lucky advantage of being born into a family that loved me dearly and a country that allowed me the opportunity to succeed.
For the Romas attending the Thursday feeding program, they were on the unlucky side of life and didn’t have the strength to make a difficult U-turn. Many were drunk. As I write that last sentence I can picture people quickly writing them off. A year ago that person would have been me “it is all their fault they’re living on the street, they spend everything on booze anyway.”
But this feeding and our train station experience have taught me that we are only a few steps from this type of demise. If I didn’t have a place to always call home and a faith that kept me strong, I could have ended up on the streets with them. I know most of us like to think better of ourselves but we don’t know their stories, we don’t know the difficulties and letdowns they have faced. For us life never headed in that direction.
I began talking to the lonely women. She was drunk. It was noon. Valiya, our translator, wanted to simply give up on her, but the woman desperately wanted to talk, hold my hand, and search my eyes.
“You know she is drunk right? She is always drunk, there is no use in talking with her.”
Looking in her sad eyes I could tell that she was in this place because everyone had given up on her. Would she even believe me if I told her that God would never give up on her when so many others before had? And if I said that, is it something I actually believe?
This month God has placed me immediately next to numerous homeless drunks, smelling their hard life on their skin. Each time I hear God whispering to me, “look these people need me too, don’t give up on them because I never will.”
Each one of these people has a story; a story that goes far beyond the bottle. Each one of them took numerous wrong turns, turns that placed them filling a jar full of donated food. Each one of them is a child of God and is desperately loved by Him. So as of now, I will put my judgment aside and not give up on them either.
Not giving up on this lonely woman may be the answer to my question of what good am I doing in this small Ukrainian town. Maybe something as simple as holding her dirt encrusted hand and not giving up on her actually is enough.
