Knock on the door

As Carl and I were settling down to bed in our still new to us home in this new neighborhood around 9:40pm last night there was a knock at the door.  Moose bounded out of the bedroom and bellowed at the door.  I was immediately nervous and scared.  We sat there for a moment not sure what to do.  Looking out the window it was a man we have gotten to know this past year who is functionally homeless.  It was a personal dilemma whether or not to open the door.  Carl went out and spoke with him and found out he had just gotten back from being on the road with some guy but had to buy a bus ticket back and had very limited cash in order to find a short term motel to stay the night in.  We gave him what cash we had in the house (not much) and asked politely if he would kindly not call so late in the evenings.  He expressed his thanks and said he'd pay us back the next day.

This whole experience was quite jarring and also gave us a strong sense of guilt.  We have made it a point to reach out to this guy in particular because we realize we cannot help or save every person who is homeless in Detroit.  But now by inviting him into relationship, we have found ourselves in a position that made us feel uncomfortable...and then we were feeling guilty for feeling uncomfortable.  In the end we are no worse for the wear but we have begun to think about where this relationship may go in the future.  How to set boundaries but also tear some down in order to help his place in life.

I wish there were a manual on this kind of stuff.  I know we are not the first ones to have these thoughts and conversations.  Reba House and the Simple Way probably have a better way of going about this, maybe a manual of what to do in these situations.  But maybe it's different when you live alone vs in an intentional community.  I'd feel much more comfortable inviting him in with a house full of folks to help out if something were to go wrong.  Most likely nothing would have gone wrong but these thoughts are hard to quell.

So in all we learned a lot about ourselves, our comfort zone and how to push past that comfort zone in order to make it a better world.  I hope next time we can be more prepared.  And I hope he was able to find a warm place to sleep with the little money we were able to provide.