STRIVING TO SURVIVE

I attended a women's conference and they closed with a poem Keys to the Kingdom, by Regina Elliott. (seasonsofhopeministries.org) The poem began:

We are living in a world consumed with much distress,

People are on every hand discouraged and oppressed,

Questioning their existence, the reason they're alive;

Living without purpose - just striving to survive.

Wow! Is there anyone who has not felt like that? Just striving to survive. We were awakened by just such a person.

At 5:15 AM, we heard someone knocking on our back door. When we looked out the door, there was a young woman standing there. We did not know her so we only talked to her through the door. When we asked what she wanted, she was incoherent. We did understand, "I know someone who lives here." and "I'm sorry." Over and over, she kept saying, "I'm sorry."

We had options. We could have opened to door. That was not an option. (Such a distrusting society we have become, because it could have been an act. Another person might have been hiding, just waiting for us to open the door.) We could have told her to go away and turned out the light. That was not an option. The option we chose was to call the police. Maybe they could help her. She was coherent enough to leave when my husband told her that we had called and the police would help her.

Just as she was walking away from our home and into a neighbor's yard, the police came. They talked with her. We later saw in the paper that she was 22 and arrested for public intoxication.

Living without purpose - just striving to survive.

How lost do you have to be to knock on a strange door, early in the morning and have no idea where you are. What discouraged and oppressed her so much that the only relief she could find was in a bottle? Is the only reason she is alive is to take the next drink? Living without purpose - just striving to survive.

As we watched the police talk to the woman and then assure the officer that she had not been trying to break in, my husband kept saying, "That is someone's little girl." He felt such compassion as he watched a lost child being taken away in the back of a police car.

When we went to the police station the next morning, the officer said he could not give us any information. Thankfully, we live in a small town, because the officer understood our concern and said, "I can tell you that she is in a place where she can get help." Those were comforting words but the picture of "someone's little girl" dwells deep in my husband's heart.

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Just striving to survive. Is there anyone who has not felt like that? BUT there is help when our burdens are so big.

Jesus came to help with our burdens.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30

All you have to do is go to Him. He will not talk to you through the door. He will open His arms and share your burden.