I have been avoiding this blog. I had hoped it wouldn't come, but sadly it has. Unless some miracle happens, this is more than likely the last blog of this trip. I will keep a journal from this point on and I do have a tape recorder, but I won't be blogging anymore. Since this will be the last one, it will be a bit lengthy. Sorry about that.
I was out of work with this injury for 9 months, I had lost by beloved truck to repossession. I was living with a friend, what I had left of my possessions were in storage in a friends garage. The rest had been sold to pay bills that had gotten way layed during my recuperation. While recuperating, I began working on a small foundation set up to help transitioning homeless people.
But finally after more than a year, I was offered a job. It was actually the best paying job I had ever been offered in my life. I knew God was moving me towards the path I am on now and although the money was awesome, it was a job that I disliked immensely. I accepted the offer though.
On that same day, my daughter asked why I was taking the job. I told her truthfully that I needed the money. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse.
"Mom, you know how much you want to work with the homeless. Come live with me."
"That's not going to solve my money issue daughter but thank you for the offer."
"Mom, you don't need money. Look I could use some help with Vienne and the house. You want to help the homeless. Why not?"
After much prayer and consideration, it turned out that the decision had somewhat already been made. It turned out that when my new employers did the background check, they found out that the Workman's comp case was still open. They did not want to get involved in someone else's legal matters.
So I moved in with my daughter. Now her apartment is tiny. I would be sleeping on a couch, but I could do the work I knew God was calling me to do. So I made the plans and had the helps of friends who tried as hard as they could to get the funding needed via sponsorship. Sadly, because I am an individual, that funding never came. We did get about $600 in private donations and I was elated. I even got rid of my car for funding. But I was forging ahead.
Two weeks before I left on this trip, my daughter asked me not to come back. Although I had done nothing wrong, she just decided that she and her daughter wanted it to be their house again and not share it with anyone else. So although I knew that at the beginning of my trip, that I had no place to live, I was too busy to be concerned about it. It wasn't a high priority on my list so I just about forgot it.
Somehow it didn't hit me until last week, I mean really hit me, that when I go back to Oregon, I have no place to go back to. I won't even have my car to sleep in. I will be living in one of the shelters that I am out here fighting
for.
So between the emotions of facing places in my past that brought me so much pain, and the emotions of worrying about what I am going to do when I get back to Oregon or even whether I am going to go back to Oregon, took over. I begin to wonder whether or not I am really doing God's work or am I just out here for me? Am I really making a difference out here or does anybody really care other than those who work in the field. I write a blog and ask for feedback. I really do need to know because right now I am doubting whether or not I really heard from God. But I didn't get any feedback.
The van we sleep in breaks down. It cost $1800 to repair. We fix it. It breaks down again. We fix it, it breaks down again. Now all the money we had is gone. My traveling companion maxed out his credit card and then some. I send out an SOS that went out to several hundred people. As grateful as I am for the $135 donations we did get, it is not enough to continue this journey on. the donations were always supposed to go to the shelters and I felt bad having to ask for help myself, but we needed it desperately.
So I begin to wonder whether this is making a difference for the shelters we are fighting for. Are people really making donations to the shelters. I don't know. I may never know, but if the only life I am changing by doing this is mine, then there is no need to continue journaling publicly. I can keep all of the humiliation and shame that comes with being homeless to myself.
Although my traveling companion is against this, I fear I am going to have to continue this journey on my own, but my computer will be left behind. I cannot carry it in a back pack and even if I could, there would be no way to recharge it. So I am sorry that you won't be able to share in the crossing into Mexico with me, but at the moment, I can't think of anything else to do.
At the beginning of this trip I had said to my friends I would rather do this and find out when I get to heaven that I wasn't supposed to do this, than to not do it and find out when I get to heaven that I was. Well, that is how I feel right now. I will do this, not knowing whether this is from God, and I have to trust that I am still doing the right thing.
When I am done, wherever I end up, I will have one doozy of a story to tell.
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