A baby to pray for

Being the father of a teenage girl, I went into "dad" mode the moment I saw Davona -- just over a year ago, now. Blonde and achingly pretty, she was sitting in the doorway of one of our neighbouring buildings, which was under renovation at the time. It was a Saturday afternoon, and I stopped to chat and invited her to come to the Mission service, where I was headed. She thanked me for the invitation, but didn't come up.

A couple of days later, though, she came into The Lord's Rain -- more for the coffee than anything else. It's easy to look at a girl like Davona and assume that she's drugged-out and working the streets; then you want to scream, "GET OUT! OUT WHILE YOU STILL HAVE YOUR BEAUTY! OUT WHILE YOU STILL HAVE YOUR LIFE! OUT WHILE YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TEETH!"

But on closer examination, Davona looks more like 30-ish. The fact that she still seems to have her own teeth is a sign that maybe the drug habit -- if she has one -- isn't so bad. But there was something else about Davona that wasn't right. She would carry on conversations with us -- except her voice would fade to nothing and/or she'd start speaking to the wall or her shoes, leaving you wondering if she was ever talking to you in the first place.

She would also show signs of obsessive-compulsiveness. She would go to a large box of clothes and start pulling them out one by one, examining each piece in detail. I'd find myself on tenterhooks, waiting to admonish her about taking so many pieces of clothing. (The house rule is a two-article maximum. Generally, the people respect that.) But instead of taking the clothing she had pulled out, Davona would carefully and methodically fold each one and put it back in the box. Sometimes, she'd take them out again and repeat the process. Occasionally, she might even keep a garment for herself.

Talking to Davona is like driving on the Interstate and your radio has a wonky tuner: you constantly have to do something to keep it tuned in. She'd carry on these conversations with no one in particular, but all you'd need to do is call her name, and she'd immediately snap back into reality -- or your reality, at any rate, as opposed to the one she had lapsed into. But after maybe 3 minutes, the frequency would start to drift again and you'd either have to call her name to jar the tuning knob back into position or just let her continue and go and do something else.

As often happens with people on the DTES, Davona disappeared for a few months. People do that. Sometimes, they've been arrested. Maybe they get a job and move away. Maybe they lose the job and move back. About two months ago, Davona turned up again. She was a bit more lucid, incessantly fussy in the mirror ... and pregnant.

Danilo tried to press her for information as to how it happened. Well, maybe not the how part, but information about the father. He got nowhere. Another of the women who often come into The Lord's Rain had a baby about a year and a half ago, and that little girl was seized by the Child and Families Ministry shortly after birth. There was an unspoken assumption that the same thing would happen with Davona's baby.

And that was the last we saw of Davona ... until today. I was walking through Waterfront Station, when a very familiar blonde face passed by. I called to her, and yes, it was Davona. And strapped to her front was a Snugli with baby sound asleep inside. "Her name is Shine," she told me, stroking the little head. I was in the middle of some INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT work and had to catch up with some others so aside from a little more sighing over the baby and telling each other it was nice to see the other again, there wasn't much chance to catch up.

In a story that could have so many unhappy elements to it, I'm believing for the happy ones all the way through. That Davona has the support she needs, that she's healthy mentally and physically, that the baby stays healthy and grows ... that everyone involved will see a miracle of God through all of it. A new little life, coming out of (and hopefully, staying out of) the DTES: that amid what often appears to be a land of walking dead, we have a sign that God wants life to keep going -- even there.

Especially there.

In your own way, in your own time, lift up Davona and Shine in prayer.