Drowning, I imagine that’s what it feels like, to be trapped in a reality that you cannot escape – sinking, sinking, clawing at anything in your midst to pull yourself up but not knowing which direction that is anyway.
When our van turned down the road to our desired destination of where we would hand out warm drinks and bread to the homeless, I couldn’t believe the swarms of people. The scene reminded me of driving down streets with jammed sidewalks as crowds of people are lined up for some special event. Yet it only took a second to notice that something was terribly different about this sight; I have never experienced more darkness, I have never felt heavier.
There was a man of sixty-eight years who has been living on the streets for twenty of them. There was a girl who couldn’t be older than sixteen sitting in the gutter with two stick-figure women whose bodies have been ravaged by drug use, selling pills and powders and piling up bills. There was person after person too ashamed to meet my eyes or even look up at all as I handed them bread. But then there was person after person who said “God bless you” with an understandably greedy hand and a nod.
‘God bless me?’ I thought, ‘What about you? Couldn’t you use some blessings most of all? You, with each moment bleeding together because there is nothing to differentiate them. You wake up on a sidewalk, you do drugs on a sidewalk, you go to sleep on the same sidewalk. You, with every breath coming only to shoot up.’
Before, I couldn’t imagine why these people would choose to sleep on the streets instead of the homeless shelter in our foundation. But now I understand. There is hardly a sober breath taken in this vicinity; who is in the right mind to comprehend our offer of a safe place? And if someone could listen and understand, how could they imagine an entire night off of the drugs they cling to like the most inverse of lifelines? How could they step aside for hours and still survive?
When you are drowning, your vision is blurred at the edges. Can’t you picture it now? All is haze. Your lungs give up their only function and your body turns against itself. You cannot take a breath on your own. Time is as liquid as the body of water that steals all your strength. You wonder for how long you can possibly continue to struggle.
The only thing that kept my feet moving forward in the moment, through the sea of ravaged human beings, is the thought of light in the darkness. “The darker the night, the brighter the stars”, right? I remember as a little girl going night swimming. I would take a deep breath, dive down deep, and swim toward the pool light. My eyes would blur and sting, but through my disorientation, the light was there shining out in the dark water, leading me through the lapping waves. Nothing could dim it; in my child’s mind, the orb of light was a portal to another world.
And that’s all this is, isn’t it? We go out into the darkness to share the light that we have and invite the broken into an alternate reality – one of restoration and freedom, one where chains are broken and true fulfillment is found. My hope rests in the fact that one day, light will fully overwhelm the darkness and the victory that has already been written will come to fruition before our eyes that blur no more. Darkness will flee. Brokenness will cease to exist.
