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Brothers and Sisters,
I honestly don’t know where to begin. The first month in Louisville has already ended, and I’m not sure how to respond. I’m getting attached to the people here. I’m closer with the seven women I’m living with, and I look forward to seeing everyone at the shelter each day. I recognize and talk with friends in the shelter, and I’m learning more about them each day. The faces are becoming people that I care for and will miss when I leave this city. It’s hard to think about the future, realizing that I will be leaving in a month and half. I’m looking forward to being back with everyone and being at UNCG this fall, but part of me doesn’t want to leave everyone in Louisville.
This past Saturday will be a day I remember for quite a while. After returning home from walking in our neighborhood with the seven women I live with, I wrote this blog. I want to include the blog in this newsletter because I want to share it with more people that may not follow the blog I write online (lovetheleast.wordpress.com).
Saturdays myself and the seven other women I live with walk the neighborhood picking up trash, visiting with our neighbors, meeting new people, or spending time at the local park with the children and people there. This morning we decided to walk in our neighborhood and pick up trash. We had walked down our alley and crossed onto the next road when we saw an empty lot behind a store littered with trash. We cleaned the lot and were about to leave when we turned around to see Jennifer, a familiar face from the day shelter where we all serve at during the week. Jennifer had recently been kicked out of the shelter for drinking near Jeff St.’s property. Trying to explain why she hadn’t been at the shelter, she openly admitted that she has a drinking problem and has cirrhosis due to her heavy drinking. Earlier in the week she had been in the hospital with congestive heart failure and alcohol poisoning. As she was speaking to us, she began to cry. You could see the brokenness on her face; you could hear it in her voice of how she longed to be made right and whole. She was crying to us and to God to be freed from this bondage she held herself in. Her voice and her tears cut through me like knives. I immediately began to feel broken for this woman. She’s beautiful and brings joy to others, but she has been held in bondage for years. Her father was a Pentecostal preacher and at a younger age she was on fire, seeking and serving the Lord, but she allowed addictions to have power. She shared with us that she was abused as a child and entered prison by the age of eighteen. She showed us scars from being shot and stabbed. She had a black eye and a laceration on her forehead from a man she was seeing. She was worn and tired and broken and alcohol was the savior she ran to. She asked us to pray for her, and we asked her if we could pray for her then. She softly replied yes and we gathered around her, laying hands on her and holding her in our arms. She quickly grabbed my hand and held it tightly. As we prayed for her, her warm tears dripped into my palm as I held her hand. God’s presence was immediately there. He was already there before we arrived. He was planning this for all of us. I prayed for her as she was shaking and weeping in our arms. God was revealing to all of us this morning our brokenness as a people. She kept repeating that she was torn and at that moment I felt torn with her. I felt broken for her, for all of God’s broken people on the streets of our city. As I prayed with Jennifer, I rebuked Satan and declared that he has no power any longer, and I prayed that God would break the bondage Jennifer has been in for years. I asked God to not allow her to drink alcohol and not to let it become an idol that she went to instead of Him. At that moment, I couldn’t take it anymore. I began to weep more, and I couldn’t speak, but after a couple seconds of regaining composure, I cried to God that He would break us for one another, that when one of His children is broken, we would see and we would know and feel that same brokenness. A year or two ago I asked God to give me His heart and teach me to love like Him, and I have continued to pray that prayer. God has answered that prayer and continues to each time He brings people to me that are broken like Jennifer. God has shown me how broken His heart really is and it hurts. It’s not easy to feel the brokenness of others, let alone our own brokenness, but God has shown His faithfulness. He has shown me the beauty in His broken people. He has shown me how He loves us and desires to be with His children, even if it kills him, literally. God has shown us that He loves us to death through Jesus and His death on the cross.
After we prayed with Jennifer, a man walked up to us and asked us if we were praying for a death. Jennifer spoke and said that we were all praying for her. The man asked us if he could do something for us and we said “Well, what’s that?” and he replied “I want to sing Jesus Loves Me.” The man began to sing in a beautiful voice. His voice and the words of the song brought me and Jennifer to tears. This man had beautiful eyes, almost a blue color, but his eyes seemed glazed from the alcohol I could easily smell on his breath. Despite his intoxication, I could see God using this man to tell Jennifer how Jesus loves her.
Jennifer kept telling us that she loves us and cares about us, and after today, I can say I am beginning to feel the same emotions towards her.
I long to feel her brokenness. I long to see her healing and redemption. I long to feel God’s heart for her. I long to see her as God sees her. I long for God to continue to teach us and reveal our brokenness to one another.
Days like today are why I continue to pursue and seek this dream God has given me. Days like today are why I return to the streets and return to the broken people of this city because I see love and hope in God’s people.
I hope this story encourages you, and I hope it shows you how God is using me here in Louisville. I must say serving here is not easy. It’s hard to be at one place from 6:30 a.m. until 3 p.m. four days each week. It’s physically and emotionally draining. Each day is not beautiful, as often the people here are broken and that state of brokenness can be seen and heard in the atmosphere of the day shelter, whether it’s the smell of alcohol or the tension caused by harsh words. Amidst this brokenness God has shown me the beauty of His children. I had a conversation where a women who had been separated from her children said to me that she had learned to depend on her love for God rather than her love for her kids. To me that is a beautiful statement, when our love and desire to trust in God transcends all of our other loves, even the love of our own children. We visited a man from the shelter at his work where he is a chef and you should have seen his smile when he realized we actually came. Each time we are able to love one another at the shelter, God’s beauty is revealed.
Our neighborhood isn’t very different from the brokenness that is seen in the shelter. There are whiskey and liquor stores on practically each corner, people intoxicated in the streets, and poverty on each block, and yet God reveals His beauty. God is found in His people loving one another, sharing dinner together, inviting one another into each other’s homes. Living in community has shown me God’s beauty in His body. As we try to love our neighbors as Jesus would, we have been able to see past the darkness of this city to God who is light as He is at work and moving among all of us.
Continue to pray for each relationship I have made with people from the shelter and for our neighbors. Pray for Jennifer, that God would give her strength to win the fight against alcoholism and pray for healing of her cirrhosis. I am still in need of financial support for this summer and if you can help financially that would be a great blessing. You can make checks payable to Jefferson St. Baptist Center and on the memo line please write HOPE-S10-WJ1. The checks can be sent to Jefferson St. Baptist Center at 733 E. Jefferson St., Louisville, Ky 40202.
Thank you for supporting and encouraging me this summer. I am looking forward to the final month here and how God will be present during that time.
Grace&Peace,
Whitney
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