Helping the Helpless

I felt helpless today-trying to help someone. A young woman staggering down the street.

I saw her this morning in downtown New Orleans, after dropping my son off for work. On a lonely, desolate stretch of Canal Street, she tripped then fell into a pile of debris...cement and mortar and steel...the demolished remains of a high rise building. I circled back to see if she was hurt....She was drunk, maybe high...obviously troubled.

She asked for a ride home...but as we drove, it became apparent she couldn't remember where she was going and she didn't really want to go there-wherever that was. As she cursed her boyfriend she showed me the burn on her neck, from his cigarette butt...I urged her to go to a battered women's shelter, but she refused...and I didn't know what to do.

Skin and bones, her skimpy clothes hung from her like rags...her teeth were dark and chipped...But her brown eyes were large and pretty--and they sparkled when she spoke about her 2 year old son, who lived in Texas with her ex husband. I could tell she missed her child terribly.

She told me her name was Christina...but when I asked her what she was doing here, she said "It's not pretty"... "Prostitution?" I replied. She nodded. Christina said she'd been here long enough to get caught up in the things some women do-just to stay alive or to get their next fix.

I finally drove to the parking lot of a local grocery store...and I called the battered women's shelter...but before I knew it-she was gone. The woman on the other end of the line told me they wouldn't take her anyway-unless she wanted to go there...I asked her what else I could have done-she said, "Nothing -really." That- made me sad.

When I got back into the car, I saw that Christina had dropped a greeting card-from her family. So, I drove around the block trying to find her-to return the card-but she had disappeared-into thin air.

I can't stop thinking about this woman, this mom-this troubled human being. She is the profile of so many lost and homeless human beings-who wind up on the streets and in the gutters of cities all over the world. Addicted, alone, scared...dying inside--driving the nails in their coffin with the drugs and the alcohol and the street life that so often leads to death. And I keep thinking about her son-who is missing his mom...and who may never see her again. Two lives-permanently scarred-unless she can find a way -to turn her will around.

I have met so many people who have climbed out of the garbage heap that had become their life...slowly but surely they clawed their way out of the quick sand that had begun swallowing them up...suffocating their senses. Something snapped, someone reached out or some miracle moved them out of their hopelessness.

I'm no Mother Teresa, but thank God for people like her. She proved that when people care enough to simply reach out a Loving hand...that lives can be saved--in the palm of our hand.

I am praying that Christina-stays safe...that she finds her way back to her real home....and that someday soon-we will all figure out how to Love like Mother Teresa, so that there will be fewer Christinas -wandering aimlessly through this great big world, and dying--right in front of our very eyes.