It almost feels like the Starship Enterprise flying through space at warp speed, so fast that everything is shaking and it is hard to stand in one place.  Instead of Scotty, I hear Judy screaming from her office, “SHE’S GONNA BLOW CAPTAIN!”

            At this moment, a little girl of perhaps four or five walks between Aretha and me with her blond hair askew.  Aretha says hello and the girl sits in one of the chairs, her lips stained with dry kool-aid.  She takes off her sandal and concentrated on it as though it is broken. 

            A second later, another little girl passes, also blond with stained lips, and this time Aretha reaches out and touches her tiny shoulder as she speaks. “Hello.”

            I look through the glass doors and see a bulging suitcase and a large garbage bag full of their possessions.  An exasperated woman is holding her small brown haired son on her hip.  She is explaining to Gloria that they were told that they could stay here.  Gloria has them all sit together in the waiting room with Aretha and I.  We have stopped the frustrating conversation that will keep me awake and staring at the ceiling at four-thirty in the morning.

            Gloria asks the mother if they are hungry.  They had breakfast, but it is now around three in the afternoon.  Gloria has juice brought up from the kitchen and the kids greedily slurp it down.  Gloria returns to her office to call Jeanette Bacon to find out if there is room in the inn.  She already knows the answer.  We are full.  We are always full.  In this business, never is enough.  Knowing this, I walk into Gloria’s office.  Before I can say anything, she says, “You want me to make it happen?”

            I nod my head, knowing that I have just made Jeannette’s life more difficult as she tries to now figure out what to do with a family of four when we are already full.  I never cease to be mystified that we can build a $10 million company and assemble more resources than anybody else in the city, only to have a tearful mother and her dirty precious children make it seem that we have not accomplished much anything at all. 

            Returning to the waiting room, the boy is coughing and the wet sound fills the room.  Aretha is explaining to the mother that there is a health center across the street.  The mother does not understand and is desperate to find a place to stay.

            “We’ve been on the move since Saturday,” she explains.  “I never thought that I would be homeless.”  Her voice cracks as she buries her head in her one free hand as she clutches tightly to her son with the other.  She begins to sob.

            Gloria whispers in my ear that it all started with domestic violence.

            Then the first little girl stops examining her shoe and looks at me.  “My mom cries when she gets headaches.”  She says this in a matter-of-fact way resuming concentration on her shoe.  I wonder if she is already assuming matriarchal responsibility as her mother falls apart.  It is common for the oldest child in a homeless family to begin acting as the parent.  Homelessness robs children of their childhood.

            I approach the mother and confidently sticking out my hand, I introduce myself.  She gives me her wet, tear stained hand.

            “We have nurses across the street and Aretha is going to take you over there so we can see about the kid’s cough.  We’ll find a place for you to stay so don’t worry about that.  You’ve come to the right place.  This is what we do.”

            Aretha takes the family to the health center and I dive back into the management of a runaway agenda to make this community a better place.

            Later that night, when I am staring at the ceiling at four-thirty in the morning, it is a sobbing mother and three coughing kool-aid stained children that I am thinking about.  The other stuff will take care of itself I tell myself.  I’ve got to remember what’s important.

            Then Julie tells me to stop worrying and go to sleep.  “Everything is worse at night,” she tells me.

            And I wonder if a desperate mother and her children are sleeping or staring at the ceiling like me.  Whatever headaches I have, it pales in comparison to theirs.

Rev. Micheal Elliott, April 2007