Rising up from the Ashes
For a couple of years I was a volunteer in my community for an organization that helped the homeless. I crawled under bridges, hiked out to tiny tent cities in the woods and went inside the occasional abandoned home where people were living. I heard their stories, each unique and equally heartbreaking. We brought to them, blankets, hats, gloves, toothbrushes, water and sometimes hot biscuits. Several times I cried all the way home after looking into someone’s eyes and feeling all their pain. How did they get here and how many of them would listen to us about the help that was available? Would they go to the shelter for a hot meal and a warm bed and talk to a social worker? It was always great to hear about someone accepting help, or getting a job and a decent place to live again. I also had to accept that some of them suffered from drug addiction, alcoholism, and mental illness and had no intention of living anywhere but the street. They had made their choices a long time ago and decided they could not or would not change them.
Several years ago a woman I had gone to high school with, she jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. I would never have believed it if I hadn’t read it in the newspaper. Why would she do such a thing? I later learned that after moving to California, she had been in a car accident in which the car had caught on fire and her legs had been badly burned. She did not want to live with the scars. At the time, I just could not understand it; she was so young and beautiful. What no one could see were the emotional scars that she could not heal from. She wasn’t able to see the beauty inside herself and decided to leave this World, still in her twenties. She left behind a family and friends in shock.
The other day a friend and I were walking downtown and a young woman walked by us who had been badly burned down one side of her body from her face to her leg. I immediately thought about my friend from school and the choice that she had made not to continue living with her scars. I also thought about the pain this woman passing by me downtown must have gone through and the courage she has to keep on going everyday. How strong she was inside to endure the stares and questions that surely must come everywhere she went.
I had a friend a while back who I was very in tune with psychically. Waking up one morning, I had a feeling of dread and despair that were directly linked to him. I could hear my guides urging me to call him right now. I hadn’t spoken to him in over a year but I could not ignore what I was hearing and feeling. I dialed his number and he picked up the phone immediately. I asked him what had happened. He wanted to know who had told me about it. I said I didn’t need anyone to tell me, I just knew that something was not right and he needed help. He said he had just gotten back from the funeral home where his dad’s funeral was still in progress and that he just could not stay until it was over. He explained that his father has become despondent and depressed after a recent car accident in which he had suffered a painful injury and had then decided to take his own life. I was in shock that someone who had seemed so content and happy the last time I saw him had done such a thing. My friend wanted to know what I thought about this, would his Dad still go to Heaven? Would he be forgiven for doing this and leaving his family in so much emotional pain? I explained that through my beliefs and studies, it was my understanding that each soul is unique with the consequence of their choices and actions.
