Chapter One: The White House
She came in frantic, her hands trembling as she tried to make sense of a world that wasn’t listening. Her eyes darted, wide with fear, her movements rushed and uncertain. She was hearing impaired, and that barrier—already isolating—was now made unbearable by pain and desperation.
She motioned urgently, pulling at her clothing to reveal a wound at the base of her abdomen, raw and angry, the smell unmistakable. There was no time for modesty, no space left for social norms or comfort. She needed someone—anyone—to see her, to understand.
We found her a notebook, and her handwriting shook across the page:
"I had surgery and am homeless and my incision is hurting really bad."
Just eleven words. But behind those words was a world of suffering.
She didn’t know the name of her doctor. She didn’t know where she was supposed to go next. A cab had brought her to town and left her here, alone and forgotten. Five days post-op, nowhere to rest, nowhere to heal.
I knew we needed medical help, and somehow—thankfully—we found someone willing to take a look at her wound. It was clear the infection had already taken hold.
But then came the bigger question. One I’ve heard too many times.
“Where could she go?”
That question led me to the white house. Once grand, now faded. Once filled with light, now shadowed by the lives of the broken and the barely surviving. But it was the only place left with a door we could knock on.
The first thing I saw when I pulled up to the white house was a man sitting outside in nothing but a pair of shorts. No shirt, no shoes. A cigarette dangled from his mouth, and empty bottles of liquor lay scattered at his feet like ghosts of long nights. I had come with food, clothing, and medicine—just enough to get her through the weekend. But even with my arms full, I felt unarmed.
I parked and gathered the bags, bracing myself for whatever I was about to walk into. I asked the man for Room 8, my voice steady even though my stomach wasn’t. He nodded toward the house without much interest.
As I stepped through the front door, a dozen pairs of eyes seemed to turn toward me at once. Suspicion. Curiosity. Maybe even hunger. I didn’t belong there, and everyone knew it. The air was thick with fifty years of stale cigarette smoke, the kind that clings to the walls, the furniture, your lungs. I had to force myself to breathe.
The grand oak staircase loomed ahead, still beautiful despite the years, like a broken heirloom no one had bothered to care for. I climbed the steps quickly, scanning door numbers—6, 7—and then paused. Room 8 was invisible, hidden behind a door left wide open.
I’ll never forget what I walked into.
She was lying naked on the bed, her tiny frame barely covered by a hand towel. The room was dim, the light muted by a haze of smoke. A smoldering cigarette rested on a tin can beside her, used as an ashtray. A cheap bottle of vodka stood next to it, half-drained and abandoned. The way she was lying… I knew someone had just left. The air still felt occupied.
Whether what had happened was violence or survival, I couldn’t tell. But the suggestion of it—the vulnerability of it—hit me hard. I felt a chill of fear crawl up my back, thinking about the doors nearby, the men who might be behind them. Could one of them hurt me too? I shut the door gently, but firmly, and set the bags down.
I covered her with a blanket I had brought.
She stirred and opened her eyes, blinking through tears that came almost instantly. She reached for her notebook—the only voice she had in a world that didn’t hear her—and began to write. Over and over again, she scrawled the same two words: Thank you.
When her eyes drifted to the medicine, the soup, the folded clothes, her shoulders shook. It was then that I understood something I didn’t expect to feel: relief. Not because I condoned what may have happened—but because it seemed, somehow, that she had chosen it. That in a life stripped of choices, this one, however heartbreaking, had been hers.
There was a kind of sacredness in that moment. Not pretty, not clean—but sacred, still. A life at its most fragile, still reaching out in gratitude. And me, just trying to meet her there.
I was grateful to care for her that day—deeply, humbly grateful—because it felt like the fulfillment of a promise God had started whispering to me weeks before.
It had begun two weeks earlier, on the eve of a church trip to Indianapolis. I was still volunteering in the homeless sector back home, not yet on staff, not yet equipped with anything more than a willing heart and a few dollars to spare. That night, as I packed, I felt a tug so strong it stopped me mid-task. God laid it on my heart to bring care kits—soap, snacks, clean socks, anything I could gather—for the homeless I might meet on the trip.
I didn’t have the money to do it. Not really. But somehow, God made a way. I packed what I could with what I had, and off I went, not knowing that the act of obedience I thought was about them was also about me. That trip changed my life. I came back home with more than memories—I came back with direction. Not long after, I was offered a staff position as a case manager, advocating full-time for the people I had been volunteering to serve.
That day at the white house, standing in a room that reeked of survival and suffering, I remembered all of that. I remembered the tug, the kits, the trip, the “yes.” And I realized I was living in the answer to a prayer I didn’t even know I had prayed.
No longer was I scrambling to find supplies. I had food. I had medicine. I had blankets and clothes and the authority to use them. I didn’t have to worry about money anymore—I had been outfitted to care.
God had given me exactly what I needed, not just for a job, but for her. For that moment.
Even though I was standing in one of the darkest places I’d ever been, I felt covered in light.
Final Takeaways:
God often prepares us for moments long before we understand why.
When you follow His promptings, even when it doesn’t make sense, He meets you on the other side of your obedience.
The broken places are sacred when you carry love into them.
Ministry doesn’t always look like a pulpit—sometimes, it looks like a blanket, a can of soup, and a listening heart.
The provision always comes when your heart is positioned to serve.
This was just the beginning. The white house wasn’t the end of the story. It was the doorway.
No comments:
Post a Comment