LOVEBAGS story | doug
ed gilmore - indianapolis, in
LIKE A BLANKET
A couple of weeks ago, I was driving home from downtown Indianapolis with three other friends. I reached over and turned the heater up in my car. It was cold. We had just spent an evening under a bridge (literally), talking to some homeless people, giving out LoveBags.
As we talked about the night, I found out a couple other volunteers in the group had talked with a homeless man, I’ll call him Doug, who didn’t have anything – he was just sleeping with a couple of boxes. He was recently homeless, just got out of jail, yeah, yeah..I’d heard that story before.
My mind wandered to Antonio, a homeless man I had befriended over the last few months. I’d brought a blanket for him that night — he slept outside — but hadn’t been able to find him anywhere downtown, so I’d just kept it in the car. Hopefully he’d be out next week.
The conversation kept on Doug. I turned the heat up a little more. It was really cold. What was I doing though? How was I so easily making it warm, and so easily driving away from a guy who was sleeping on the street, with nothing but a couple of boxes, when I had a blanket in the trunk?
“Hey, does anybody mind if we turn around and go back?”
It was late, a little after 10pm. I made a u-turn, and quickly drove back to the bridge. All the guys were there, just as we left them. It was brutally cold. Ravi jumped out of the car, shook Doug on the shoulder and gave him the blanket. He was either a sleep, or too cold to really move, but he looked up, and nodded thanks. He’d been shielding himself with a small box from the wind. I hoped the blanket would help.
In my mind though, I still thought of Antonio. I hoped he was staying warm.
As we drove back, I learned a little more about Doug. Another friend in the car, Matt, worked for the city, and remembered Doug from a few yeas ago. He’d be in and out of jail — that’s why he didn’t have anything. I was feeling good for having gone back to give the Doug the blanket.
We talked a little more, and then I asked if Matt knew what Doug had been in for, and his answer made me wish we hadn’t gone back to the bridge.
Now I was mad, and truthfully, I’d been mad about it all week. We’d been having record cold, Antonio was out there somewhere probably freezing, I could have given him the blanket, and not only did I give the blanket to someone else, but I gave it to a man who had sexually abused children. Multiple times. Multiple times!
I kept playing Tuesday night over in my head. Initially, I wanted to save the blanket for Antonio. Why didn’t I listen to myself? The only thing I could think was that I was maybe I was being selfish, but so what? I was being selfish so I could help someone else. So, how could that really be being selfish?
It had been in the 30s that Tuesday night, and I wished it had been colder. Especially under that bridge. Doug deserved to be cold. He deserved to only have half a box, and lying on the cement. He deserved to be hungry that night, and every night. What would the kids he abused think if they saw someone helping him, giving him a blanket, keeping him warm, worrying about his needs.
This had always been one of my biggest fears. In the couple years that I’ve worked with the homeless, I always worry that I’m enabling, not helping. And now, was I enabling a child abuser to stay warm? Would he possibly even go do it again?
Thursday morning, I woke up, and I was still thinking about it. I wanted to go take that blanket back. That morning I was listening to a podcast while I worked out, and the speaker said something that made everything slow down.
Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers all wrongs. (Proverbs 10:12)
Love covers all wrongs.
Is it possible that my hatred, my anger, towards someone who had done something so evil, could perpetuate that wrong? Make it worse?
Or is it possible, that maybe through love, through something as simple as a blanket, when all you have is a box, all the wrong, all the brokenness, all the emptiness, all the hopelessness, start to get covered up.
Hating someone who has and probably will forever be rejected by society stirs up dissension, creates more hatred, but love — love covers all wrongs. That kind of love, kind of works like a blanket.
Maybe in some small way, it’s the thing that Doug needs to encourage him to take steps towards counseling, towards realizing that just because the way things were before, doesn’t mean it’s the way they have to be now.
When Jesus was here he didn’t say love was easy, he didn’t say it would be comfortable, he didn’t say it would always make you feel good, but he did say to do it. I think that when we love unconditionally, we’re reminded there is a God who loves unconditionally. After all, without that love, I’m just like Doug.
I finished my workout, and as I walked out to my car, I noticed a sticker I’d recently put on the back. It says, “Love Wins.”
I kind of grinned.
4 people did a u-turn to come back and give a blanket to a freezing homeless man, late at night. It was kind of like a scene from a movie, where you know something the characters don’t, see something they don’t see. In the moment, I missed it – it was right there on the back of my car.
Under that bridge, stopped in the middle of the street, in a city, with it’s flashers on, was a car with a sticker, “love wins.” And even though the driver was going to be a little mad later, love was winning.
Lo