More than just showers ...

There are days -- all of them, in fact -- when God reminds me why The Lord's Rain is there.

Yesterday (Tuesday), only a handful of people showed up -- which was just as well, because I didn't have any volunteer help -- and no one took a shower. But we still saw the value of the ministry.

There is a woman who's been coming in for the past six months. Let's call her Tina (which is a good idea, because that's her name). When she first came in, she told me that her son "went to the Lord in March". I had one of those embarrassing moments, when I started to rejoice in his salvation, and then realized that by "went to the Lord" she meant "died". He'd died of a heroin overdose, not long after Tina's father had passed away.

In the time since then -- and she comes in pretty much every time I'm there, Tuesday and Saturday mornings -- Tina has constantly declared God has had His hand on her life. She's been gradually coming off crack, cutting back on smoking, and restoring her relationship with her mother. She also works on a street-and-alley cleanup crew, run by the Bottle Depot down the street.

Like most of the women on the Downtown East Side, Tina used to be attractive. The ravages of the drugs and the tough living she's gone through have taken their toll -- not to mention her teeth. But in less than a year, she's gone from living on the streets and suicidal, to having a place of her own and with a joy an optimism in her life that would amaze people.

Yesterday, she was in a particularly good mood, having come into an additional $20 and, while she'd initially planned to buy a rock of crack cocaine with it, she took a deep breath and phoned her mother instead. Mom was a little "down" because, as it turned out, she had no money for cigarettes. So Tina bought cigarettes with the $20, hopped on a bus and went up to see her. On the DTES, that's a major victory!

But then she opened up about a situation she was trying to deal with. She'd learned that she's eligible to receive the WCB benefits her son would have received but didn't collect. (I don't know anything about WCB regulations, so I don't know how "on the level" this is, but since she wasn't trying to use that promise for collateral, let's go with it for now.) In order to do so, though, she'd have to obtain Ryan's death certificate and get her own documentation to prove she's his mother.

"I'm scared to do that," she said. "That will be the final confirmation for me that he's dead. I don't know if I can handle that closure."

At first, I suggested that she might not be supposed to obtain that money, anyway, considering how God tells us He doesn't dump blessings in our laps all at once, but doles it out as we can handle it (Deut. 7:22). She agreed that it might turn into a temptation, rather than a blessing. Then we talked some more, and she declared -- as she has done often in the past -- that she knows God has something better for her. She recalled how, after Ryan had died, she was ready to end it all, herself, and then she had a dream. Her father -- who was in a wheelchair when he died -- was standing, with his arm around Ryan's shoulders. They were smiling and waving at her. She woke from that dream and determined she was not going to commit suicide.

She also pointed out that her brother, who's been quite well-off and "good with money", has offered to set up a joint bank account where the money can be kept, and which would require both their signatures. He's also talked about socking it away in RRSPs, which would certainly prevent her from spending it on drugs. That puts a different light on things.

So I suggested that -- even leaving out the prospect of obtaining money -- the "closure" represented by obtaining the death certificate would allow her to let go of that part of her past and break through to that "something better". It's a matter of stepping out of the comfort zone -- a vital element in receiving God's promise for us. Tina's comfort zone involved grieving for her son, and the idea of living without that grief is new, different, and a little frightening.

(In the years since my previous marriage broke up, I've been separated from my kids, and that pain has been unbearable. For a long time, I was scared to ask God to take the pain away, because I thought that would mean I'd stopped loving them. It was a major step to spit out the prayer that He would remove it, but you know what? I'm much more confident about the relationship ... and the grief is almost all gone.)

The conversation ended with Tina feeling much better about the idea, and grateful to have had a sounding board. "I don't know anyone else I could tell about this," she said. When I write that ministry on the DTES needs disciples, that's what I'm talking about: sounding boards who can help put problems into perspective -- a smattering of Biblical knowledge helps, so that people realize there's an Absolute Authority, where they can get their guidance.

Once again, The Lord's Rain is in the right place, at the right time -- and it's more than coffee and showers.