A burger for drugs

When I spend time on the streets, I end up hanging with users of various substances. I still need to meet an addict that I trust. They normally adamantly state that they are clean. I am not being judgmental. I have become more streetwise.

As a rookie to the streets, I believed everybody's story. I felt terrible for my homeless friends. Today, I still feel terrible for my homeless friends, but I don't take every story as factual.

Most of my friends just need R20 to visit their children who they haven't seen for a very long time. Or they just need R20 to go to the doctor because they are sick. Or they need R20 for a deposit for a room for the night.

If you give all those R20 notes you would quickly run out of money...

So I came up with a street rule. I will only give food out on the streets. When I feel my heart moved - which is nearly every week I buy my friends food and we eat together.

I like to know where I spend my money. I don't want buy drugs!

So this weekend, I hung out with of my young homeless friends. He was hungry and needed money to go and see his son in a nearby town. I picked up that he was really fishing for money for his next fix.

I decided to buy him a burger and chips.

He was so grateful. I felt so ever slightly like a mini Jesus giving this hungry guy food. Except, he didn't start eating. He just sat there clutching the food, thinking... For a hungry guy he had a lot of self control... After a long pause he said: "Well I might just go to see a mate."

In that moment I realized, I had just bought this guy his fix for the evening. He wasn't going to eat my food. He was going to trade the food for drugs.

And so he did. He got up and I followed him from a distance till I saw him enter the home of a dealer. I was so annoyed! I don't do drugs. I don't support drugs! I don't want my money to be spent on drugs!

Sometimes we get it terribly wrong, but that is ok. (Tweet This)

It took me some time to laugh at the situation. Here I am the great planner of everything trying to control other people.

Sometimes I just need to let go!

I found peace in my 'misjudgement'. I think I would do it again.

After all....This is life. 

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Rainbows and puppies

This weekend, I met an older man who looked at me and said: "Wow! You have really beautiful eyes".

I was taken aback. Kind of shocked, I didn't know what to say. That does not happen often. So I mumbled a quiet: "Thank you"...

The man could see my uneasiness and tried to settle my nerves a bit. He explained: "Listen young fellow. I am old. I have learned in life to point out the positive. What does it help keeping it to myself. When you see something beautiful or good you should speak it out so people are encouraged. Often, you only have one chance to share your positive thought with the other person. When the moment is gone it will never come back."

I found that snippet of conversation so profound! I am challenged!

Too often, I focus on the struggles of life, the hard stuff. 

There is a choice to be made. Work is demanding. Relationships are complicated.

BUT, there is a grande side to life.

A journey not enough celebrated, a story not enough told:

The wonders of nature

The miracle called life

The beauty in people

Love and kind words

Basking in the sun - swimming

Rainbows

and puppies...

I was so surprised by this gift of encouragement and positive honesty.

I am going to try to surprise others.

Kind words are like honey--sweet to the soul and healthy for the body. (Tweet This) Proverbs 16:24

Who can you surprise?

Naturally, I am good at criticizing. I want to become an encourager

Maybe we can journey together...

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Double murder

He told me parts of his story. It was shocking. I didn't want to hear. Nobody wants to hear these stories.

This is Wayne's voice. He is 34 years old. We are the same age, but his life has been different from mine... wow

"I still remember that day. I was 21.

I was sleeping in an alley around the corner of Parliament Street. I was woken up by a sound. When I opened my eyes, all I could see was a knife coming closer to my face. In that instance, I reacted. I grabbed the knife and stabbed the guy once in the heart. I think he dropped dead immediately.

His friend panicked and kicked me. I grabbed his leg and kicked in his other knee. It snapped. When he was on the ground I stabbed him twice...  That night changed the course of my life for the worse. I was jailed for life.

Last year I was released for good behaviour. I learned a lot in prison. Good and bad things, but I think I am a better person now.

Prison is a hard place to be. There are many gangs and the violence is high. You always have to watch your back. I am trying to change my ways, but that is not easy living on the streets.

                                Casual selfie of me and a murderer - I smile because I am scared!

Wayne has been living on the streets since he was 10. He has a past coloured with domestic abuse. His dad was in prison. He watched his step dad beat his mom. His mom beat him. His step dad beat him...

I am not justifying what he did in life, but he has had a tough wrap.

While I grew up in a loving home and a great education, Wayne had to fight for himself from a young age.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Nelson Mandela (Tweet This)

I feel sorry for him... 

What are you grateful for? 

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My daughter's drawing is my life...

Since I started blogging I have developed a keen interest in other blogs. I read a couple of blogs a week to see what other people think, feel, live, enjoy... or battle with.

I have come across some beautifully crafted blogs. Stories about real life, challenging thinking from one heart to another one, inspiring words and encouraging poems...

Wendy Van Eyck - Donald Miller - Joshua Becker... Some other ones.

For all the brilliant ones, I have also found a whole load of rubbish and nonsense blogs. They frustrate me as I feel I have wasted 5 minutes of my life reading them. Such a shame as I will never get those minutes back.

The blogs I dislike tend to be the ones that try to give the quick fix answers and advice to challenges and problems in life. The 7 steps to fixing this or that. The 4 ways for a better friendship with your dog, cat or friends. The 21 approaches to your partners heart which will change your life.

Sometimes there are some good suggestions in them and I am sure they were written by well meaning people, but life is not that simple.

People often ask me what I have learned from spending time on the streets. I have a whole array of things I have learned in the past couple of months, but the main one is:

Life is not straight forward!

There are no formula's or tricks that make it easy. There are not 7 steps or 302 approaches. Life is much more fluid and complex.

Life is a conundrum and a paradox.

This doesn't mean life can't be great. We can find peace in the place where we are while still searching for our dreams. We can enjoy the now while working towards a different future. We can have questions.

Life is very much this and that, not so much this or that. (Tweet This)

On the streets I am reminded every time that life is not a straight line, but rather a line drawn by my 22 month old beautiful daughter.

It goes all over the place. Up and down, spinning around, stopping or so it seems and starting again. It even feels like the artists - us - who are drawing this life line have no idea where it is going. But somehow in the eye of the father it is the most beautiful drawing worth beholding in his eye.

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