Where is Home? A Story About the fragility of Shelter

Post provided from: A Woman's Heart in Winter Haven

It is too easy in our busy lives, incessantly filled with ongoing appointments, meetings, schedules, family obligations, maintaining a household - all while trying to retain any semblance of stability - to stop becoming aware. It becomes motion without meaning, memories become a far away story, the present becomes just another obstacle to rush through, hurriedly pushing to a tomorrow that’s never promised.

Until, something happens that grounds you where you are, and now you have no choice but to face what’s in front of you.  It shakes the visage you have been maintaining for so long, and now you are forced to confront the very fragility of the reality we strive to exist in when things are going according to plan. It is a humbling experience that draws distinct lines between families and generations, and the people we encounter in our lives each and every day.

Growing up an orphan, my mother never had a place of her own and was out on the streets by high school.  Swept up into the arms of a promising man, she finally saw a future of stability. Trapped in the grip of domestic violence, that hope shattered, and she bought children into this world, hoping for change that never came. She spent much of our lives on the run, sometimes in shelters, sometimes in public housing. 

When we were finally freed from the threat of his presence, we were able to find an apartment and my mother was able to work full time. However, living much of her adult life being financially dependent on an abuser, it was a struggle for us all to adjust to establishing our home and maintaining the bills. We all ended up going our separate ways, a way to escape and shed the pain we had just left. Years of living in a busy city, bouncing from home to home, walking past faceless stories on the street.  Too caught up in surviving, eventually thriving, to be still and recognize the broken lives scattered around us. 

After escaping a cycle of domestic violence and struggle, we finally moved here to Polk County and for the first time, three generations felt at home.  It finally seemed decades of storms had come to a resolution. The boat was rocked upon our first truly personal encounter with a homeless child, living a seemingly normal adolescent life.  He was skilled at masking the abuse and abandonment as means for survival, but found a trusted source in my child to release his trauma and just be a kid again.  We were faced with a myriad of unknowns, entangled by governmental systems that left him a victim and offered no permanent solution. Unfortunately he was taken into a juvenile detention facility.  It was then I learned how vast and incredibly common this problem was.

This drew me to search for guidance in the appropriate way to help, and the Spirit of God led me to Heart for Winter Haven.  Becoming involved opened a whole world outside the one I had been living in, and it is an incredible blessing to know that behind the scenes and all around, there is a network of plentiful services and beautiful souls working to bring solutions. Walking downtown it is difficult to see so many individuals in need, and each and every one as  a broken soul just seeking compassion and recognition. 

Then it hit home for real.  My sister, after years of unfortunate health issues and inability to maintain consistent work, was evicted and is now staying in a shelter. There are so many hindrances in trying to get out of that cycle and it is a struggle in maintaining her dignity and contact with us, when we are so physically far away.  Then, tragedy struck her son.  The house he was staying in burned down on Christmas Eve.  By the Grace of God, there were no fatalities, but he lost everything.  It is devastating how quickly one’s sense of stability can be wiped out from under them, and how helpless we can all feel when tragedy hits the ones we love the most.  “That will never happen to us”  is no longer a truth for so many lives out there.  

Knowing the resources God has given us is what will carry us all through every circumstance. Seeing the community rallying around my nephew, watching the generous gifts being dropped off for children in need,  seeing the pantries being filled up with donations, witnessing the team both here at Heart, and as well as others in the community…these are all glimpses of light in the sea of despair.  Shelter should be a fundamental right, and the housing instability so many are enduring has become a harsh reality in a world of so much uncertainty.

Yet in moments of our own fragility, we are reminded of the resilience in those we encounter around us, and the strength and compassion we have within ourselves to offer. Ultimately, home will be where we finally rest in the place God has in store for us.