Thursday morning reality checks

Most Thursday mornings I spend at a place called Christ's Body Ministries.  CBM is a homeless day shelter that serves meals, offers showers, has a washer and dryer to use and they also have a clothing room.  My duties usually consist of getting a list made for the showers, coordinating the men and women through the showers and laundry, helping serve pastries and oatmeal and every once in a while I will run the clothing room.  My favorite is probably doing the showers because it requires me to learn people's names and over some time I feel like I have actually started to know who people are.  Regulars in the shower line tend to be Steve, Lance, Kurt, Renee, Javier, & Joseph.  Today there was a kind man named Ronnie who just traveled here with a friend from California.  Ronnie has experienced homelessness here in Denver before and wanted to return, but his friend Jim is "new to the scene".  I'm not sure what Jim's story is, but it was interesting to watch everyone take him under their wings today and show him the ropes.  

Often at CBM I have unexpected moments of joy- like when I can tell that people the are beginning to trust me and seem to just want to be around.  Like last week when Kurt, who tends to be moody and even angry often, asked me, almost secretly, if I was pregnant and when I told him I was he smiled huge and gave me a big congratulatory shake of the hand.  The rest of the day he showered me with questions about my baby and my life.  Like days when John, who runs the place, will sit me down and ask me how I am doing and then bless me with some great nugget from the word.

Also, though, there are many moments of sadness, chaos and brokenness.  Today the news was of one regular who hung himself last week in the park.  CBM will put on a memorial service for him as I am sure he has no family or others who could (or maybe would) perform an appropriate funeral.  Today a man came through the line for food weeping.  Today a man wanted to do laundry and shower who is mentally ill and has problems with going to the restroom in his pants- so he just tends to throw his soiled clothes in the washer.  I literally cleaned out remnants of poop from the shower when he was finished.  Considering I am pregnant, it could only be the Lord that kept me from throwing up in that moment.  And today I sat and talked with Paul.  Just a year ago Paul was a normal working guy who actually spent time serving the homeless, but he suffered a stroke and was forced to stop working and now relies on the same places he served in to make ends meet.

Going to Christ Body allows the Lord to expose some of my worst junk and also some of my best potential.  It reminds me that the controlled world I sometimes create for myself is actually not real and it helps me more and more to understand what it means to be human.  It challenges lies I believe about where our worth and dignity comes from and refines and reshapes my desires.  

I am so thankful.