A letter in the bushes

Shopping carts

It’s a little after 8:00am Saturday, December 1. I exit our backyard gate, walk through our church courtyard, and proceed towards a church back door. I see the shopping carts. Frustration immediately rises inside me.

I woke up several hours earlier feeling sick. I have to start moving to lessen my severe whole-body pain and fatigue. But this isn’t a post about my frail body. I’ve already written about that here, here, and here.

I enter the church building and begin preparing for our 9am church work and cleanup day. When you pastor a church with a massive aging facility, much of your mental energy gravitates toward days like this. But cleanup is relative when you also pastor the homeless. I agreed to two shopping carts in our church courtyard. Now there are six.

5 weeks earlier

A homeless man rings the Parsonage doorbell at 7:00am. [FYI, a “Parsonage” is a church-owned house where the “Parson” lives. Parson is basically an archaic word for “Pastor.” In the U.S. we rarely see this word, unless it’s being used with the suffix to describe this unique class of houses….or when we sing “Walking in a Winter Wonderland.” Bonus points if you don’t need to google the lyrics to remember the reference.]

I open the door to see a familiar face. I’ve known this homeless man for 5.5 years. Many in the Wedgwood area of Fort Worth would recognize his face. Some of my local readers have probably already guessed who I’m writing about and can picture him now. In this post, I’ll call him Dave*.

My famous front door…

It’s not unusual for homeless people to ring our doorbell. I’ve learned word travels quickly in the homeless community…I’m talked about. My home’s location gets shared and described. ‘There’s a pastor who lives on that corner by Goodwill, in a house with a dark blue door, who won’t just run you off the property if you ask for help.’

Dave has been homeless for almost 20 years. He can’t remember an exact date. Even if you were taught proper social etiquette, years of street-living causes memory loss about such rules.

‘Bells will be ringing’

For some unknown reason, Dave never rings the doorbell just once. It’s always a quick double ring. If we don’t answer the door fast enough. He rings it again, and again. Then the fist pounding begins. His front door techniques aren’t unique. Most homeless people at our front door follow the same pattern. I’m not sure why.

Given the types of people I regularly interact with, we have a strict family rule: my wife does not open the front door if I’m not home. One afternoon she had to break that rule when a homeless woman came to the door. After 5 minutes of relentless ringing, door pounding, front window-peeking (seriously), garage-window peeking (yeah), and dog barking, my wife had to break our family rule and ask the woman to come back later. Did I mention this was during our baby’s nap time??

Garage greetings

A few weeks ago, Dave (thought he) saw me pulling into our small and tight garage. So he followed behind the van and entered the garage to greet me as I opened the van door. You guessed it. It wasn’t me, but my wife. She exited the car, and stood in a 3.5ft gap between her van door and the side garage wall, with another garage wall behind her and Dave standing in front of her, blocking her path.

Yep.

He recognized his mistake and quickly backed out of the garage, sincerely apologizing to my wife (and later to me) for scaring her.

In my desperation from working with such people, I quickly sought out principles from experts such as Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend, who wrote the book Boundaries; When to say YES and when to say NO to take control of your life.

When serving people who appear to have no boundaries my professional and family boundaries had to become pretty firm. (Although, after that garage incident and a few others like it, my wife may feel my boundaries are still a little squishy!)

Refreshingly Honest

Dave is different; he’s always been refreshingly honest with me: He makes decent money panhandling and considers that his job. He’s ‘a drunk’ and doesn’t plan to, or can’t, change.
He doesn’t do drugs anymore, but only because he doesn’t like how psychotic they make him feel.

Chronically homeless

Professionals in the field describe people like Dave as “chronically homeless:” homeless for over a year with at least one disabling condition (e.g. mental illness, addiction, physical disability). He’ll quickly tell you he prefers the streets to any type of free housing he might be offered. Sadly, I’ve learned this is true with many “chronically homeless.”

There’s no doubt Dave suffers from multiple disabling conditions…alcohol addiction, a sickly body from years of hard living, and mental illness. While working in the back yard, I occasionally hear Dave as he walks down the road. It sounds like he’s having an argument, but no one else is with him. One time I had to give Dave some tough love; that angered him for months. We run a resident summer internship in conjunction with our summer day camp and feeding program. When an intern was setting out the trash one morning. Dave walked by and let loose a tirade about what a terrible person I am.

After almost two decades living outside, Dave is now claustrophobic inside the same buildings that give others warmth and security. He now views ‘four walls’ as obstacles to a quick escape if he’s attacked (he always sleeps with a knife). In the 5.5. years I’ve known him, he’s only attended our church worship service once. His visit lasted 5 minutes; he was in and out before the service even started. Church Growth experts would weigh my hours spent with Dave against Dave’s church attendance patterns and probably assess it as the worst-possible Church Growth strategy.

A sad past

During late-night conversations on my front porch or afternoon chats in our church’s front lobby (with 4 all-glass doors and glass side panels that give the feel of still being outdoors), Dave has slowly shared details from his traumatic past. Given his honesty with me about other issues, I believe most of the details are true.

After years of abuse in foster care, Dave finally aged out of the system. He spent a short time in the military, but received a dishonorable discharge due to uncontrollable anger. After that, he worked whatever blue-collar jobs he could find. Frequent alcohol use led to a couple DUIs. Eventually, he married. He and his wife spent their weekends doing cocaine…until he found her dead in the bathroom from an overdose. After her death, he quickly spiraled out of control.

Morning request

On this 7am morning, we’re busily preparing our oldest for school before his 7:50 tardy bell. I smell the beer on Dave’s breath as he begins his request. He speaks in his usual long-winded and ‘beat-around-the-bush’ style: he wants to temporarily store some of his sister’s belongings here at the church.

I interrupt him. I’m happy to talk more later but need to take my son to school. If he will meet me at the front of the church building at 8:00am, we can talk more. At 10:50am he finally arrives. I’ve learned time is fluid in the chronically homeless community, at least with the ones I know.

Dave asks to store a couple shopping carts filled with items in our church courtyard. His sister [not his real sister, but they ‘adopted’ each other many years ago] also lives on the streets, or with abusive men who take advantage of her vulnerability. She’s also chronically homeless; I regularly see her, body racked with tremors, pushing around a shopping cart as she dumpster-dives behind businesses, and always talking to herself.

A troubled mind’s treasures

Occasionally, Dave’s sister finds something valuable from her daily dumpster-dives. She sells what she can to the local pawn shop or jewelry store. But (in my unprofessional opinion), she mainly collects items because she’s a compulsive hoarder. Like my boys who fill their pockets with worthless ‘treasures,’ she fills shopping carts to the point of overflowing with worthless junk.

How do I know most of the items are worthless? First, she found them in dumpsters, so that’s not a good start. Although, I admit, our society throws away a plenty of good items. Second, I know they’re worthless because I’ve had time to inspect six full shopping carts of her ‘treasures,’ all hiding in our church courtyard. What few items held some value were now worth even less after sitting 5+weeks outdoors (including through two heavy rain storms).

I listen to Dave’s request that Friday morning in our church lobby. His sister found a storage locker employee who would rent her a unit without ID. She just needed to provide one month’s pre-paid rent. A friend with a car would help them haul items after work Friday evening and all-day Saturday. They just needed a place to store them until then.

I heard a similar story three years earlier. It ended with a church volunteer group filling half a dumpster after Dave and his sister disappeared for months. But, I give them another chance, and a stern warning that our church would not be responsible for any items after the Saturday night deadline. That conversation was Friday, November 2

Work Day

The deadline came and went. Four more shopping carts appeared at some unknown later date, pushed in through a broken gate entrance. Now, I see all six carts as I prepare for our church work day.

So frustrating.

I’ve organized this day to clean up our old facility. Yet my leniency with Dave has created more trash we now have to clean up. But not today. I should at least track him down and warn him before I throw away everything and return all the stolen shopping carts. And, when I do see him, I’ll give him another stern lecture about lying to me and abusing our church’s generosity. I pull my church keys out of my pocket and enter the building. But my frustration festers.

Today’s church work day list includes patching leaks in our roof (cursed flat gravel rooftop!), vacuuming 30+ year-old carpet, cleaning and organizing a kitchen in constant use from multiple churches and a funeral home, and trimming holly bushes out front.

A piece of paper in the pile

I check on two of our men trimming our bushes and bagging up the clippings. One of them gives me a note. He found it underneath a bush near the church front doors. It’s a blank piece of card stock the size of a bookmark. Barely-legible handwriting fills one side. The note has obviously been outside for a while, water-damaged and a little dirty.

I quickly scan the handwriting and inspect the signature. The handwriting is so poor and cramped on the narrow paper, but I can still make it out. It’s a note from Dave. He must have stuffed it between the front doors. I guess the wind blew it out before anyone saw it. It then lay hidden in the bushes for weeks.

I’ve transcribed his note below, including his spelling and the five exclamation points at the end. The words in brackets are mine:

The letter

Dear Pastor Chris and Mrs. Pastor,

Thank you so much for helping me and my sis. I will try to be there to celebrate Thanksgiving with y’all [our church offered a Thanksgiving dinner to the community]. Thanx for the invite. I don’t think very highly of myself so its easier for me to be alone by myself. I do know this. I believe now [I’ve asked him many times if he believes in Jesus and that Jesus can save him]. I don’t believe like most do, but I do know this, I would give my life for a friend and consider both of you my friends!!!!!

His words touched me, and I felt convicted about my morning frustration. But our work day wasn’t done. I pocketed the note and continued my day.

“Being Jesus to him”

I’ve grown up in church. And I’ve spent years serving in a paid ministry role. I can predict the typical Christian comments and well-meaning encouragement after Christians (the Christians in my circles, at least) read Dave’s words. Most follow the general theme that I’m “being Jesus to Dave.” Sure, there’s some truth in that idea. I’m a follower of Christ and representative of Christ’s Church and I do strive to treat and love Dave the way Christ would.

So, yes. In a sense, one could say I’m “being Christ” to Dave (or maybe “I’m being the hands and feet of Christ,” as another Christian phrase puts it).

Thankfully, Christ did not allow me Saturday night to rest in such thoughts, which can linger dangerously close to the cliff of Self-righteousness.

Daddy Duty

I come home absolutely exhausted. My body always pays for days like this, spending the next day in recovery. Unfortunately for me, the next day is Sunday. Recovery will have to wait. My wife woke up the morning of our church work day feeling bad. But she pressed on and went to the church building to help. But she didn’t last long before calling a doctor friend of ours.

It’s a sinus infection.

She walks home to rest while our boys play with help in our church nursery. By dinner time, my wife is lying in bed feeling worse. Daddy’s on duty. I finally put the boys to bed. Everyone in the house is now asleep. Time to clean the dishes. The water runs as I stand over the sink.

Tears

Suddenly, like a crashing wave, words from the Bible flood my thoughts. They’re Jesus’ words. I begin sobbing, trying not to wake my sick wife or our little boys…

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:13

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” John 15:14

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Matthew 25:40

Why is it we Christians gravitate to the few Bible verses describing our position as “being Jesus” to the world but ignore the verses where the world is “being Jesus” us? It’s right there in Matthew 25:40. Whatever I do for Dave, I’m doing for Jesus.
As my tears fall into the sink, I’m overwhelmed with this truth: without even knowing it, Dave wrote Jesus’ words to me.

Like Jesus, Dave says I am his “friend.” I’ve said Dave is a nuisance.

Like Jesus, Dave says he would give his life to his friend. I struggle to give Dave 10 minutes

So…who’s really “being Jesus” in our relationship?

“You search the Scriptures…”

I woke up from a Night Terror several weeks ago. Probably pastor stress. It was 2:30am, but my adrenaline was pumping. I got out of bed and began reading my Bible for the next 3 hours. Long stretches of Bible reading aren’t uncommon for me. For a while now, I’ve privately read through the entire Bible once each month. I don’t do it to be a better preacher, or become super spiritual (although, can you imagine the bragging rights this can get you in the Christian community?!) And it’s definitely NOT a recommended Church Growth strategy…too many lost hours. I simply do it it because I think I heard God command it. Until I understand otherwise or receive further clarification from Him, I’ll continue the practice. [I do not recommend this practice to anyone else, by the way.]

“Thank you that I’m not like other people”

But consider Jesus’ words to religious leaders like me who fill their time with religious practices, especially practices we talk about and allow others to see:

“To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” Luke 18:9-14

What’s the point of reading through the Bible each month if I fail to see and practice the Bible’s commands? How often have I read those verses that hit me Saturday night, yet failed to obey them? Such wasted time.

Shopping carts, again

It’s now a little after 8:00pm Saturday night. I put the baby monitor in my pocket and walk out our back door. The church work day ended only a few hours ago, but I’m on my way back for more work. I’ve been informed a toilet is leaking water and the old shutoff valve won’t shut off.

I exit our backyard gate, walk through our church courtyard, and proceed towards a church back door. I see the shopping carts. This time Love, not Frustration, immediately rises inside me. And gratitude…gratitude that I have one new friend tonight; and gratitude that, when I failed to see such glaring Biblical truths, God sent me a letter in the bushes.