When I Was Homeless

How I became homeless
How I survived
How I got out
What I learned

What I Learned
Looking back, I thought that all I did was cry. But in retrospect, I learned many, major, life changing lessons.

Lesson One: I used to be petrified of a man throwing me out in the street. Since I had been a housewife and for years and had no education beyond high school, I was extremely vulnerable. My survival was tied to his income and his feelings towards me. This gave him so much power over me. I would say, "Okay, I'll do whatever you say, I am the terrible selfish, controlling person that you say I am, and I repent of these evil ways. Please don't throw me out of the house, how will I survive?" Not anymore. Now if I don't like how someone is treating me, I can pick up my toothbrush and say, "Oh yeah? Hasta luego." I don't need to let someone treat me badly anymore just because I don't have enough money, and they are a jerk and have some sort of imagined authority over me. I was raised to be a completely domestic woman. Everything I had learned since I was a little girl until I was married was that marriage was the ultimate goal to be attained and nothing else mattered. That was such a destructive lie. Now I have been feral. The wildness is still there inside of me. Walking away from everything and everyone isn't such a big step anymore.

Lesson Two: As long as I am dependent, I am vulnerable. The idea of a prince coming to sweep me away to live in his castle and protect me was what I dreamed about. I knew that I had my share to contribute too, but it was never equitable. Now that castle looks like a prison. I must do my best to catch up on the lessons of adulthood that I lost by getting married young. I never want to see my daughter helpless and trapped like I was. Today, her dreams do not involve a prince sweeping her off her feet. Her dreams are about getting a degree and having the power to control her own life, her own destiny and make her own happiness. Even though I am living with John, I try more and more to do things by myself, instead on leaning on him because he is a man.

Lesson Three: My treasured friends were false, and their "God given advice" to me was self-serving and destructive. God was not talking to them, they were just telling me whatever felt good to them at the time, and intimidated me by saying it was from God. I'm doing what's best for me from now on and I don't care what they think or say, because bottom line, they don't care one iota. When a Christian learns that I am living with my boyfriend, they always dump on me the gratuitous lecture on how I am "living in sin". They don't care that John is a gentleman, that he gave me his bedroom, and that he insists on sleeping on the couch. And what is their solution to my reprobate condition anyway? For me to move out? To where? Their couch? They NEVER offer to help. Are they willing to support me between jobs and patiently encourage me to make myself more marketable while I go to vocational school for a year? All they have for me is, "Be warm and filled and go thy way". These friends are not my friends, and could care less if I live or die. I am far better off with not a friend in the world, and the freedom to live my life, then with a church full of people who used to call me "sister". They are completely worthless.

Lesson Four: I have a lot of inner strength. People are amazed that I lived in my car. But I am amazed that I lived in my car when I was so distraught, hopeless, and disoriented. For three months I got through every day even though I was crying so hard. I could do it much better now that my emotional crises is now a couple of years in the past. I feel resilient. I feel like a survivor. I feel like no matter what, I can think my way out of a problem. I have two hands, two feet, and a mind, and they are there to protect me and take care of me.

Lesson Five: Something I did have a lot of was time. I used that time to think. I thought about my whole life in great detail. I thought about all the decisions that I had made that led me to this spot. I didn't see them as decisions that I made. I saw them as putting aside my own desires in order to do God's will. These were decisions that others made for me that I cooperated with because I wanted to do the right thing in God's eyes. I knew the verses: "Lean not on your own understanding but trust in the Lord". Now I was staring in the face that the God I loved, trusted, worshiped, and lived for, for over 25 years, had completely let me down. He stood there watching and did nothing every step of the way towards my being homeless. I had begged him for direction and help, and got only silence and shunning. The Bible says, "If you delight yourself in him, he will give you the desires of your heart". The desire of my heart all my life was to find a man to love me, marry me, and be my life partner. To be the perfect Christian wife-y, I had become pathetically submissive. Whenever I had tried to stand up for myself, I was labeled, "rebellious", "unsubmissive", "unspiritual", "controlling". My husband told me point blank after the divorce that he married me primarily for sex. The thing I feared most was being used sexually. Why didn't God warn me? I had thought that the test of true love was to find someone who loved you enough to wait for marriage. Everything I had prayed about for all those years, or sought counseling on, only brought me closer the moment I would be alone in the park crying without a home. Either God didn't care, wasn't powerful, was liar, was on "their" side, or he didn't exist. If I was his "beloved child", why did he let this happen? 25 years of pummeling me, and then he threw me in the street. Why did he steer me in the wrong direction at every pivotal fork in the road? I could not imaging treating my own children like this. Well, either way, I wasn't going to waste another second of my life trusting in him anymore (let alone worshiping him.) I'd rather go to Hell. If he wants to talk to me, he knows where he can find me. But he doesn't bother. I guess he's too busy "slaying people in the spirit" in the Pentecostal side-show at church. There isn't a thing anyone can tell me about God that I haven't already heard, because theology and apologetics used to be my passion.

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