I wrote the body of this blog this in August 2012 when the Lord captured my heart in a new way. Chasing down my hardened and apathetic heart to remold and remake it into one that could carry His love.
I really can’t explain how a man named Troy, a homeless addicted man, a childlike and broken man entered my life. A man who had experienced so much trauma in his life that I’m not sure most would have survived. Trauma so bad that apart from God, many would end up addicted and searching for releif from the past by any means.
The only explaination I have for meeting Troy is God. Because how it happened, and what has happened since, has marked me forever.
I had been asking God to break my heart for the things that break His and He answered with Troy. An encounter that changed how I see God’s love and how I love.
It happened one August afternoon as I was leaving a coffee shop with a friend. I saw a group of men looking dirty and disheveled hanging out on the grass by the parking lot. One of them shouted out to me “Hey! You got a dollar you can spare?” I looked up from opening my car door and saw a man in his 40’s obviously worn and weathered waving wildly at me. Without really even thinking I quickly answered “ I dont have any change for you, I have something better, I have Jesus.”
I said it mater of fact, serious and not thinking twice about it. It was weird because it wasn’t my usual, pretend you dont hear or see them and keep moving response. Embarrasing to admit but true. This time was different though, I dont know how to explain it other than God had plans.
The man looked at me puzzled and said “Really?” as he started walking towards me. He got about 5 feet from me and I looked him dead in the eye and said “Yes, really”
We kind of stared at each other for a minute, trying to figure each other out. Then he blurted out “My name is Troy!”
I smiled and told him I was serious about knowing Jesus, and that I didnt have any change but that I could pray for him if he wanted me to.
He was quiet for a minute, then he shouted to his friends on the other side of the parking lot “ Hey! Come over here, she’s gonna pray for us!”
Before I knew what was happening the other three men who were with him came walking up. As well as a Black Lab named Raider, belonging to one of the other men named Jeff.
Troy, Jeff, Raider, myself and the other two men ended up standing in the middle of the parking lot in an awkwardly formed circle of strangers.
I dont really know how it happened, but before I knew it we were all holding hands in that same awkward circle and I was praying for each one of them. Right there in the middle of the parking lot as cars parked, cars left and people broke their necks staring as they drove by.
I’m sure it was a peculiar sight but we are called to be a peculiar people. The kind of people that bring the Kingdom of Heaven to parking lots.
I talked to them for a little while before finally walking back to my car and leaving. It was strange when I got back in my car, I felt something shifting, like a door opened or a light went on. It felt kind of like the scene in the animated movie, How the Grinch Stole Christmas when the Grinch’s heart grows larger and love invades it, causing it to grow three sizes bigger. Busting open its capacity and widening its boundaries, thats what I think must have happened for my heart that day.
That encounter began a long line of meetings with Troy and Jeff and his dog Raider. Every time I would see them, the two men were together and they seemed to be in the same general area often. I would stop, ask them how they were, and ask if they or Raider needed anything. I would ask if I could pray with them every time and they would always say yes. So no matter where that was, I would get out of my car and pray with them. It became something we all knew was going to happen.
Sometimes I would buy Troy food, he liked eggrolls from the little Chinese restaurant nearby. Jeff would never admit to wanting or needing anything, and he would never ask.
I would talk to them a little more in depth every time and they would open up more and more to me. Sharing life stories and struggles. I started praying for their addictions and struggles to be broken off their lives, and for healing and deliverance to come. I would talk to them about how much God loved them and ask if they wanted help getting into a program or rehab.
I can’t explain the concern I started to have for them, or the love I felt for them. I started telling them how much I cared about them, and that I loved them because God loved them.
I found myself praying for them in the middle of the night and thinking about them during rain storms and heat waves. I started to wonder if this was how the heart of God felt about me when I was running from Him and my life was a mess. I started remembering how He chased down my heart, in the midst of all the broken my life was. Broken is broken, on the streets or in a nice home. God’s rescue and pursuit doesn’t stop because of a location.
I wanted them to know that when I drove away from seeing them, I wasn’t forgetting about them. I wanted them to know God’s love was real and they were not just a good deed to make me feel better about myself.
They would tell me about the organizations that showed up at Christmas and Holidays to “help” and then that was it. Nothing else until the following holiday. They were just someone’s good deed for the season. I wanted them to know that God loved them all the time and that I did too…
This went on for months, I had built relationships with not only Troy and Jeff but now about 25 of their friends who were also on the street. All of them knew each other and I kind of became known as the woman who cooked meals at home, packed it up in my car and would meet all of them in the back of the JoAnn’s Fabric parking lot at 5pm on Sunday nights to have “Church”
I’d feed them, read the Bible out loud and talk about it, and then pray for each one of them. Sometimes there were baptisms with bottled water, sometimes demons would flee and inner healing would take place. I’ve witnessed God’s love crash in on hearts time and time again and it always wrecked me in the best possible way. Some of those that were there ended up getting off the street, some entered programs and got clean, some just liked to eat a hot meal and listen to the music. I’d watch as eyes would shut and tears would flow as friends who had come with guitars began to sing worship. Worship to the God who was very present to heal in the JoAnn’s parking lot.
I had friends donating socks and jackets, friend helping cook the food on Sundays, and eventually people started coming with me to pray and hang out with my new friends. God was moving on hearts, all of us were being changed…
At one point Jeff needed a new Bible, his went missing, so I gave him a new one that had been donated by the local Bible book store. I gave Jeff his new Bible and Troy who was sitting nearby on a curb, literally jumped up excited about Jeff’s gift. Jeff started to cry trying not to let me see how grateful he was. We all sat on that curb in the parking lot between Kmart and the Dollar store, that was the first time that Jeff had ever asked me for anything. Troy sat on the curb holding the Bible like a sacred gift, he opened it up and just started reading where it fell open to…
“Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. So watch yourselves” Luke 17:1-2
As he read the word “whom” he sounded it out “WH..OO..M” I helped him with the words as he struggled to read. He had told me once that he had only a fourth grade education. Shorlty after fourth grade he ended up on the streets. That’s right on the streets as a fourth grader, and what caused that was prior years of horrible abuse and neglect.
I stood up in front of him as he read the verse looking at him as he read. The weight of the words hit like a ton of bricks… How many times had I caused one of these “little ones” to stumble? Walking by those in need whether addicted or homeless and thought to myself “Well they got themselves there, they can get themselves out” It makes me feel sick to even think of it now.
In that moment I heard the Lord speak to my heart and say ”Love with My love Mimi, don’t turn a blind eye. Don’t walk away when you feel like its too hard to love. Don’t be afraid to look like a fool or be rejected, trust Me and just love obediently, I’ll do the rest”
As Troy finished reading he looked up at me and said “I know this is the word of God, you know how I know? because I can FEEL it in my heart!”
He was so childlike and so excited, he jumped up and hugged me with a Troy style bear-hug. As he hugged me I prayed that God would make himself real to Troy. Troy then asked Jesus to forgive him for basically everything he could think of. He told me that he had asked Jesus to be his Savior before, so he knew that Jesus had heard his prayers now.
I told him that God loved him, and so did I. As I drove away that day I could see them of both in my rearview mirror reading the Bible, sitting on the curb together. That was the last time I saw Troy.
I found out a week later that the body of a transient was found behind a building close to where they usually hung out. It was Troy.
He died in the doorway of a building, huddled in a sleeping bag. The cause was cancer, he had been bleeding internally for days but no one knew about the cancer or the bleeding.
My heart broke, he was my friend and he’d become like family. He wasn’t just some transient, he was Troy and he was God’s treasure. I pray that he realized how loved he was as he finally saw Jesus face to face. Something he often struggled with because of his trauma, being truly loved but was now going to experience for eternity.
The weight and heaviness of God’s love for Troy has changed me forever. The love of a father chasing down a lost and wounded child, a love that doesn’t get scared of broken or messy.
A love that continues to reach into the deepest of depravity to bring healing. It’s the love of Jesus that came to save and rescue, redeem and restore. To make a way when there doesn’t seem to be one. Even if that way ends up looking like awkward prayer in a coffee shop parking lot.
My life has never been the same because of meeting Troy and Jeff.
I see differently, I believe differently, I live differently, I love differently. There is no limits to the Love of God.
Let Jesus have your heart to remold and remake. It might change a life, and that life might just be yours.
UPDATE;
Jeff is now 5 years clean and sober, with a new pup named Lola. He has a job, an apartment and has reunited with his daughter (who he hadnt seen in 19 years) and his granddaughter. I’m so proud of the man he is and is becoming. A treasure of Jesus and of mine…
