“Hey, were you guys just praying?”
I turn from my four church friends to a man – a young man – with blonde hair. He’s a couple years younger than me — a veritable kid with studded earrings. He dons a red sweatshirt emblazoned with the acronym of a local university.
“Yes,” we confirm to him. We were praying. Praying over one of our own in a downtown alleyway just outside the restaurant where we’d spent the last two hours.
The young man steps toward us, wheeling along what I think is his cart of earthly belongings. Only this isn’t actually a cart.
I’ve met the homeless before. Encountered them in this very city and in Chicago. But I’ve never met the homeless like this.
As the guy-younger-than-me gets closer, he confirms to me and my friends he’s indeed homeless – along with his son.
He lifts the flap of the cart which is actually a stroller, revealing the most serene sleeping two-year-old boy I’ve ever seen. He’s tucked beneath a bright blue blanket, his blonde hair tussled over a chubby face unaware of five foreign faces now staring down at his innocent frame.
Photo courtesy Redink Photography
The young man tells us his name is David; his son’s, Adrian. (Although I’m employing pseudonyms here.)
“I saw you guys praying,” David says, “and my heart just went, YES GOD.” David looks upward and points to the sky. He’ll make this motion several times over the next twenty minutes. Does it whenever he mentions the name of God as if to clarify His omnipotence.
David tells us the story of being a college student and how he became homeless, and I ask him if he’d like some money. I immediately realize it’s a silly question to ask a homeless person, but for whatever reason I feel awkward simply sliding him a 10 without asking.
“Dude, I’ll take whatever you can give me. I’m struggling.”
My friends and I pool some money together and his youthful though grizzled face brightens with gratitude. He instinctively tells us more of the God he keeps pointing to and believes in – believes unequivocally.
He proves it.
Without warning, he lifts his sweatshirt and reveals two red scars on either side of his white chest.
“A little while back I got shot underneath the freeway,” he tells us. “The bullet went straight between both lungs. Totally missed the heart. I woke up in the hospital and everything was fine. I was fine. It’s a miracle.”
He shakes his head and continues.
“And dude, this one will blow your mind.” David lowers his sweatshirt and tells us another story. “Three months before Adrian was born, I actually jumped from a bridge 55 feet up and tried to commit suicide. Again, totally fine. Look at my legs –” He does a little jig like any normally limbed person could and stretches downward. “I just can’t touch my feet is all.”
I chuckle inwardly; I can’t touch my feet either. Though I’ve never jumped from 55 feet up.
“So yeah, dude, I believe in God. I’ve got so many stories. He’s real. I just don’t understand why all this is happening. Why I’m homeless like this. I wasn’t living right, so am I being punished for my past sins? Or is He testing me or what?”
I hold back tears as the conversation noticeably shifts from carefree alleyway jigs to heartfelt spiritual questions. I’m standing directly to David’s left, and he eyes me with bold blue orbs. My friends listen intently, circled about Baby Adrian’s stroller.
“I haven’t thought about God for weeks,” David confesses, pointing upward again. “It’s really hard to talk to Him or even think about Him when I’ve got all this shit going on.”
He whispers the word “shit” out of politeness, I suppose, though I’m completely fine with the word. Those words don’t faze me nearly like they did five years ago — back before I realized other people are messed up and struggling with stuff way worse than me.
Listening to him speak, I cannot fathom what David is going through. Cannot firstly imagine living homeless on the streets for a single night, let alone with a two-year-old son in tow.
I stare down at the sleeping boy with undoubtedly bold blue eyes just like his loving father.
“Can we pray for you?” one of my friends offers.
David doesn’t miss a beat. “Yes, please,” he says, as if hoping from the start we would gather round him and do what we’d just done with one of our own.
Over the next few minutes, we lay our hands on David’s arms and shoulders and pray for him and his innocent son — two people we’d just met and hardly knew and yet deeply cared about. One by one, the five of us speak words to an invisible God we cannot see and yet can look upward and point to because we see what He does.
He hands us money in a downtown alleyway.
He spares our lives from bullets and bridges.
He blankets us in a stroller when night falls.
He lives. As sure as the sky above and ground below, He lives.
Even while shit happens around us.
I’m the last one in our circle to pray for David and Adrian, and when I say “amen” and lift my hand from his shoulder, I look to my right and see David red-faced. He wipes tears from his eyes and sweat from his brow.
“Dude, I feel like I just worked out for hours. Thank you.”
We part ways for the night. The five of us to our cars; the two of them into darkness.
I don’t know what will happen to David and Adrian. Where they will sleep tonight or what they will eat tomorrow.
But I know one thing.
They have a Father looking over them. A Father who pushes David in a stroller just as David carts his own son, leading them both through a world of struggle day after day after seemingly unending day.
While David’s struggle wasn’t erased that night by five strangers’ prayers, I hope David was reminded he has something vital worth fighting for. A son’s survival. Hope and love.
Redemption.
When redemption does come to David — and I believe with sincere hope that it will — I hope he tells that story to Adrian. That along with the story of a divinely led bullet or an impossible jump from a bridge, the blonde-haired boy also hears the tale of his earthly father’s homelessness.
An earthly father’s homelessness and the night he remembered his heavenly Father.
A Father more faithful than the sun.
Beautiful story, not a chance encounter! One thing puzzles me though (I wasn’t there so am not judging) as to why you guys didn’t in some way do something to try and stay in contact with him. Just wondering.
We did give him one of our phone numbers. Hopeful that we’ll have another encounter with him someday!