Evictions and Moving On
About five years ago, I met a woman who was living on the street near the Northlake mall area. Little did I know that I would continue seeing her for the next five years. Sometimes it was at the bus stop, sometimes it was outside of Staples, sometimes it was in a parking lot, sometimes it was in the library, but we would always chat about life. She basically told me that her family was in Michigan and that she had no contact with them. I repeatedly attempted to help in some way. I tried to convince her to come to my home for a shower and to use my laptop to find housing. I offered to connect her to social services. I sometimes took her gifts and occasionally gave her money. She never once asked for anything.
I eventually came to the conclusion that she was dealing with some type of paranoia and that the best thing I could do was just be her friend. Around the time of the pandemic, I saw her on the front porch of a Po Folks that had been shut down due to Covid. Over the last year she would essentially make this front porch her home. The location of her new spot was on my beaten path, so I would drive by it at least once and sometimes twice a day. With very few exceptions, I would honk and wave and she would wave back. I would think almost every time that I needed that connection as much or more than my friend. One time I took her a pillow because I could see her sleeping on a bench on the porch. Turns out she had a collection of pillows as I wasn’t the only neighbor who had fallen in love with her.
The week before Christmas I was driving by the Po Folks when I noticed a cop car and two police officers and a woman talking to my friend. I stopped out of concern. I had a discussion with the cop to make sure she was ok and he asked me to wait. While I’m waiting in my car, another concerned neighbor stopped to make sure that she was alright. It turned out that the woman was a nurse who partners with the police to provide mental health services. She told me that they were trying to convince my friend to go to a hotel for the night because of how low the temperatures were predicted to drop. My friend would not budge. The nurse and I exchanged numbers and agreed to stay in touch. The next day was Christmas morning so I made a trip to see my friend and take her some coffee. For the first time ever, she was unfriendly and stand offish. As I got back in my car, it dawned on me that she must have thought that I had called the police.
I continued to wave but something seemed to have shifted and I had to honor that. The nurse gave me the lecture I had given myself about accepting that my friend was healthy and content and that we had to honor her decision to continue living on the street. Weeks later I drove by the Po Folks and there was no sign of my friend. The restaurant had been bought out and she had obviously been evicted. I called the nurse and she had heard about it from the police. She had heard that my friend was hanging out a coffee shop down the street. I drove through their drive thru and no one there had seen any signs of her.
A few weeks ago I just couldn’t stop thinking about my friend, so I called the nurse. She said that I had just crossed her mind and that she planned on calling me. She wanted me to know that my friend had finally agreed to accept help and that she was receiving the social services she needed for her mental health and for housing. I felt such a sense of relief to know that my friend was safe and better yet had found a path out of homelessness.
I immediately began to reflect on how we often get “evicted” from comfortable places for our good. I sat on these thoughts until today and decided to share as I find myself aware that I have settled into my own comfortable porch as a result of fear, grief, depression and disappointment. I guess we all have our own versions of “porches.” Today, I am grateful for friends and family who have sat with me on my porches and who encourage and inspire me to move on but who are patient when I get stuck. It can be hard to leave our less than ideal safe places, but I also find comfort in knowing that God will send folks to visit us and when necessary intervene to make us move when we are unable to ourselves.
