Something has been niggling at me. To be honest this niggling thing has been irritating me off and on for the past several months. I saw a Facebook post shared on the good ole Facebook that said something along the lines of "If you have ever had a 'move back in with your parent's' phase, but you hate homeless people you should reevaluate things. The only difference between you and a homeless person is you had someone to catch you."
Initially when I read this post, I rolled my eyes. The longer the words of that post scrolled through my head the more my irritation at this sweeping generalization just grated on me. Knowing the full story is so important. Personally, I have had to make hard choices regarding my family and whether I help them after they have burned through all previous attempts to help.
Whoever wrote this post must have never had a family member addicted to drugs or alcohol. A family member that pulled at your heart strings and promised to change if you would just give them money one more time. The person who penned this post has never had a teary family member call you with a laundry list of bad things and reasons why they need you to pay their rent one more time. When met with the answer of 'no' the person you love, the family member you have helped so many times, waits for you to turn your back and let down your guard before taking what they really want from your wallet or home.
I have been in exactly that place many times. I have looked into the eyes of someone I love and had to break my own heart as I set a hardline boundary. A boundary not only to protect myself, but to try and shake the person I love into changing their behaviors. The whole time knowing that when they walked out of my door, they had nowhere to really go but praying that it would be the 'rock bottom' they needed to start healing.
The hardest thing about loving someone is knowing when your love needs to be ridged and hard lined. We as a society have shifted to this idea that love is always soft and gives you what you want. People have a tendency to want love to feed into the instant gratification our world of technology tells us we deserve. So many people believe they are entitled to be given the things that other people work so hard for. Too many of those same people believe life happens to them and cannot see their choices have led them to where they are. The truth is, love is not always soft, sometimes loving someone means not being the reason your loved one repeats bad cycles. Sometime loving someone means saying 'no', setting boundaries, and loving them from a distance.
So, while I don't like to make blanket statements and I will agree there are people who live on the streets who do so because they are all alone in the world, but more of them live there because their family had to draw a line between helping and enabling. They are there because someone loved them enough to say I won't watch you slowly kill yourself. A lot of the people who live on the streets have washed chance after chance down their favorite drain.
I pray every day for those in my life who choose to live as slaves to their addictions. I had to learn the hard way that it never matters how much I want to help or how much help I offer, if the person I am trying to help is still focused on their next high then there was nothing I could do to help. There is a lot of help to be found. There are a lot of resources available to people living on the streets. It takes hard work, a willingness for a person to humble themselves, admit they need help, admit their position in life is a direct result of choices, and a willingness to push through the pain.
My heart goes out to every person who sleeps without a roof, and I give anytime I feel it is right. Knowing the full story is so important before we make blanket statements.
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