War Torn Eyes: Getting My Homeless Friend to Rehab

The first afternoon we ever met him, he wasn’t wearing any shoes. His pants were tattered, and instead of a shirt, he had a throw blanket wrapped around himself. It was late in the summer, and that’s all he had with him. He claimed all of his possessions were stolen. What he really needed and didn't ask for, was a drink of water and a cool place to sit down, so that’s what brought him stumbling into our office. Now, I know his name. I won’t ever forget his name. It’s really possible that if you live in Mount Pleasant, you know his name too, but his whole story isn’t mine to tell, so I’ll keep what I know anonymous for now. I'll tell you how our stories collided.

Our new friend had no teeth left, he had dirt caked under his finger nails and open soars on his hands. He was frail. Before we even knew any more of his story, when you looked into his eyes, you could see his raw humanity. Without saying a word, you could tell that the scares this gentleman carried expressed hardship I couldn’t comprehend. Whatever he had been through had beaten him down beyond his years. It was beyond what his soul was ever created to endure, especially on his own. 

Honestly, what ended up carrying even more weight for me when I looked into his eyes was seeing a reflection of my own father. Change up my dad’s drug of choice and take away his money, and if he had still been alive, that could very easily have been him sitting in our lobby, only focused on what needed to be done to survive today without a single thought looking toward or planning for the future. In reality, there was a good chance this guy didn’t have a future. The road he was walking only had one destination. Fighting for his sole survival was what this guy knew. He had very little trust for other people, as his few belongings would get stolen or thrown away often. He was addicted to and currently using methamphetamine, but more often than not, he was shooting up so he didn’t have to feel. And to be fair, I wouldn’t want to feel what he was forced to feel either. 

With that first visit, we gave him a new pair of shoes and some clothes we could find in the back room. We couldn't send him back outside without at least that much. He made a few more stops to our offices over the next couple of months. Each time, we made sure to get him water and any snacks we had around. With each visit, we got to know him more, and hopefully we showed him that we are safe, trustworthy people. One night, he needed a ride somewhere, and we learned he had been sleeping behind a gas station dumpster because that’s the most recent place he had found where people wouldn’t harass him. He had remarked that he had friends that didn’t think he would survive the winter. At this point we saw him as a friend, and we had never felt more helpless. Our friend was sleeping behind a dumpster in our neighborhood, unsure of where his next meal would come from or how much longer he would actually be able to survive. What do you do with that? How do you sleep soundly in your own bed now having that information? 

I am good friends with the crew that runs our local homeless shelter, but they have boundaries and rules in place to protect themselves and their other guests. This man had already received many, many chances with them, but unfortunately, providing shelter and resources for him was only enabling his addiction. At the time, he wasn’t fully ready to get help. When you’re trapped in a cycle like that, you have to want it for you more than the people around you want it for you. The nights got cold out in the swap he was camping in, and sometimes it got even colder in his mind. As long as he kept shooting up, he wouldn’t have to feel as much of anything. The drugs were a part of his survival. It numbed the cold. It numbed the thoughts. So, for now, this man, our friend, was surviving on the streets.

One very recent Sunday morning, warm, worship music filled the walls of our warehouse church service, and I had the camera strapped to my side, ready to capture candid moments of that family-like space. As I stood toward the back of the room, I remembered that I hadn’t yet seen a post that I had scheduled for the previous day show up on any of my socials. I wanted to be sure it had been posted, so I quickly tapped into the Facebook app to check. The screen buffered for a brief moment, and then my still sleepy eyes were shocked awake. I didn’t see the post I was looking for but there at the top of my newsfeed was the sentence, “They found a dead body in the Chippewa River this morning.” 

This was startling for a number of reasons, but it held a different weight this time as I quickly began scrolling through the comments. “I heard it was one of our local homeless people,” read one of them. My heart began to panic as I remembered that our friend had asked to store some of his things at our office for the weekend. He had no cell phone. He had various stashes of possessions throughout the county, and it seemed like he was sleeping wherever he could find a safe place. We had no way of tracking him down, and none of the first responders we knew could confirm it wasn’t him. The break in my heart grew even wider remembering the pain in his eyes, and thinking about him out in the woods, dying cold and alone, with no one out there looking for him. No one deserves an ending like that. No one deserves a life like that. 

Monday passed. He didn’t show up to pick up his things. Tuesday passed. Still no sign of him. Wednesday rolled around, and an entire morning crawled by before he finally walked back through our doors. Obviously, a sigh of relief began to fill our lungs, but Matt, my best friend and close ministry partner through all of this, was ready to have a, “Come to Jesus Moment.” The dreaded feeling we had the last three days was not one we were looking to feel again. We were ready to do what we needed to do to get Brad off the streets. We didn’t want where his life was at right now to be the end of his story.

We never could have predicted what would happen in the next 5 days. He was ready to go to rehab because, and I quote, “My life is shit, and I’m afraid to die.” Matt sat with him and mediated all his intake appointments, but he was put on a waiting list. He was moved to the top of that waiting list because he was currently using intravenously, but they would call when a bed opened up for him. Now remember, he didn’t have a cell phone, so they had Matt’s number. Matt got a call the following Sunday that a bed would be available for him on Monday, but he needed to confirm he would be there for it by 3pm on Sunday afternoon. I can’t emphasize this enough. He doesn’t own a cell phone. He has Matt’s number, so he can call him when he is around another phone, but we had no sure way of finding him. By what I know to be purely the grace and faithfulness of God, we found him in a random neighborhood downtown, stopped him, and made plans to drive him up to rehab the next day around 10am.

The details of Monday were absolutely wild, and there were multiple moments throughout the day that we started to lose hope that we would ever get him checked in. The details aren’t important, but I will say, God’s hand was protecting us the whole way. It wasn’t until we finally hit the highway around 1pm last Monday, that Matt and I were finally able to breathe and shed some silent tears of relief. Our friend sat tucked up in the passenger seat, arms wrapped around his backpack, and he slept for the entire 2 hour drive to rehab. This was it. He was getting another chance. His head bobbed with the movement of the truck, but his soft snoring told us that he hadn’t had a warm, safe place to sleep in a long time. 

He woke up just as we were arriving at a facility that’s actually inside of an old school building. Matt and I helped him get his bags moved up to the front, blue doors of the dusty brick building, and we stood with him just inside as he got checked-in. I watched the staff person place a piece of masking tape labeled with his name onto his backpack that was then placed into a pile in an entire room filled with other bags, each labeled with the name of someone currently in recovery. Another person in medical gloves appeared at the second set of doors, and he was instructed to say his goodbyes. With the same war torn eyes that stumbled into our lobby last summer, our friend looked at each of us and offered the most sincere, “Thank you,” I’ve maybe ever heard. And then we watched as the same set of shoes we had given him months before turned and walked forward toward what we are praying is a fresh start. 

I don’t know what the rest of his story looks like. I don’t know how much Matt or I will be involved in even the tiniest bit of it, but I do know that having people walk hand in hand with him may be what saved his life. He’s been to rehab before. He’s been given chances, but I don’t know that anyone with good intentions has ever taken the time to look for him. He has a long journey ahead of him. He is going to have to do a lot of fighting for himself, but hopefully he knows now that he doesn’t have to do any of that alone.

I don’t write any of this to paint myself, Matt, or our church as heroes. In fact, this doesn’t feel above and beyond what anyone should do, really. A few months ago, someone who was desperate to be treated like a human being and not just wasted space, walked through our doors. A moment to be the hands and feet of Jesus literally landed in our laps. He never asked for money. He was nothing but kind to us. He had been through a lot, and he felt like there was no one on this earth worth trusting, let alone people that would care about his well being. All we did was treat him like a person, not his mistakes or circumstances. As he was ready to take steps, we stepped with him. 

Maybe God was being really intentional with the timing of this all because as it turns out, November is National Homeless Awareness Month. I really tell you this story because homelessness can happen to anyone. I don’t know about you, but I live relatively paycheck to paycheck. Any set of life circumstances while living in our expensive world, could change a lot for me. Homelessness wasn’t something my friend had chosen. Homelessness was what he knew. My friend knew that he had to do whatever it took to survive the next day. It’s impossible to learn and prepare for a future that you are unable to picture for yourself. If I’ve learned anything about the homeless experience through this process, it’s that remaining unseen is your safest option, so the homelessness that exists in our community often isn’t visible. However, there are over 500 documented homeless individuals just in Isabella County right now. There are more than 10,000 in the state of Michigan, and those are just the ones that were able to be found and counted.

So before you get frustrated that “those people” are hanging around in the same public park your children like to play in, remember that they are human beings with names and stories. Before you assume that the man sitting on the street corner asking for money will immediately spend what he collects at the local liquor store, remember that your life has to be in a very low spot to even get to a place where you ask for money on a street corner. Remember that “those people” come from families, have interests and desires, and their brains may not know how to live in a reality where there are more goals and aspirations than just surviving until tomorrow.

It’s like constantly living in fight or flight mode. That takes, first, a safe space to land, and then, eventually, a lot of time and energy to rewire a brain stuck in survival mode. It’s not a process that glides from point A to point B. It’s a tangled up jumble of wobbly steps. Our friend’s first step was checking into rehab. If you ever see someone you suspect is homeless, they could be on any number of wobbly steps in their journey. Many aren’t even dealing with a substance or mental health issue. Some are, but not all. However, all of them are human beings. All human beings deserve to be treated with dignity, respect, and ultimately, love.

And for the love of all that is holy, please, please, please, if you see someone struggling after you read this, take time to look them in the eyes, sit with them, and just listen. Don’t feel pressure to fix them because you can’t, and they don’t need that. What we need as humans that experience suffering, is someone to listen and care. If you have the opportunity to ask how you can help, do what you can, but please never ever assume that you know what is needed without asking first. There’s power in admitting I may not understand, but I am here with you. The world is a dark, broken place. I do believe God is good, and I believe with the same amount of conviction, that the world won’t see Him unless we are agents of action. I think all of this stuff applies to all humans and communities, we should always be caring for one another, even when it’s inconvenient and challenging. But if you follow Jesus, this isn’t a suggestion, my friend. It’s a command. Jesus himself said, 

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 13:34

AND

“If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others on the hills and go out to search for the one that is lost? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he will rejoice over it more than over the ninety-nine that didn’t wander away! In the same way, it is not my heavenly Father’s will that even one of these little ones should perish.” Matthew 18:12-14

There will always be a one lost outside of the 99. What if you are the only one that notices the one? What if seeing the one means you were meant to be their sprinting shepherd? 

Please take care of more than just you. 

You are truly and deeply loved. 

So is the homeless stranger.