“I woke up to the morning sky first, baby blue, just like we rehearsed, when I get up off this ground, I shake the leaves back down”. Lyrics from song “Colors” by the Black Pumas

Today, we had the privilege of serving 21 people.

• This morning a lot of our friends were not out with this constant rain.  Even under the bridges there weren’t many people.  Could be because the city made a sweep through them because things were getting out of hand.  We ran into (Kathy/James), a married couple we have been talking to for over a year now.  (James) is in a bad space and has been talking about deciding to get clean but can’t commit to this because he worries about his wife (Kathy) being alone on the street.  We try to convince them to both go into treatment, but they believe they need to go into treatment together, but this is not always possible. Some people who don’t understand addiction think they can just stop and it’s the bad choices they make.  This may be true, but what they don’t understand is our friends suffer from a soul sickness coupled with a mental and physical compulsion.  The substances they use are only to make them feel normal or numb the pain of guilt and remorse. Speaking to our friends today we talked about the line in recovery that states, “you could give up one thing to have everything or give up everything to have one thing”.

• On a brighter note we met some new friends at the bus stop (Rachel, Deb, Joe).  I caught up with them as they were going back into the kiosk to get warm, and I asked if they needed some help.  They seemed very puzzled but when I pulled out our packet of $10 bill/$10 DD card/prayer card, they said God bless you and smiled.  I brought them over to our car and we hooked them up with sweatshirts, underwear, socks, jackets and personal hygiene items in a bag that My Brother’s Keeper has given us to deliver on the street.

• We were happy to see our friend (Jenny) who we have not seen in almost two months.  When we asked where she had been (she is not much for conversation), she responded with “I’ve been around”.  I was told she suffers from severe trauma.  We gave her pants, socks and our packet and left her with “It’s good to see you again”.  She is one of the youngest of our friends on the street.

• We ran into (Jay) who looks good.  We asked about (Annie) and he told us she is still in treatment and not sure what her next move will be.  We are praying she goes on to further treatment after this phase.  The codependency with our friends can sometimes be a big deterrent for them to follow through with a treatment plan.

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God Bless,

Claire and Shaun Teed and Tito

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“But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation” Psalm 13:5

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