They're only passing through you in the end...

[chaosandoldnite]

Again, there is no heat-wave today, which I am entirely thankful to God for. Hopefully we bypassed it while up north, and I won't have to deal with dreadful heat again until next year. We had more record-breaking heatwaves this summer than in many, many previous years.
I have had an incredibly odd morning thus far. Waking up wasn't spectacular (is

Comments

[kruszer]

that's sad. how old is this girl?

I think in order to begin to understand people like that, you first need to be them. There's sense of self hatred that seeps into a person as they sink deeper and deeper into despair. The only thing that stays alive is this sense of not caring about anything or anyone else (hard to look outside yourself when you're severely wounded) and a sense of something akin to pride ("the world owes me one")

It doesn't happen overnight, which is why many can be helped before they hit the streets and abandon their self respect to prostitution and self-destructive drugs/other habits. But a dark deep spirit hangs over street people that whispers in their ear "You're crap. who cares what you do. who cares what people think about you." And they debase themselves to animals. Crawling and sleeping in the dust, scavenging for scraps of food like the seagulls on the beach, they don't care that they look like crap and they resent the rest of the world that lives in this realm above their own.

Live in that kind of world long enough and it's not surprising that the hatred and coldness towards yourself and anyone else is manifested. Lisa rejects your help and anyone else's because she's rejecting herself and everything around her. She throws out your stuff not because she doesn't want it or need it, but because she's angry. She's angry that she's even in this place at all.

From our perspective we can say "duh, she doesn't have to stay in this place, we can help her get out." But what if you don't want to get out? Or worse, you don't believe you can? What if you don't believe you are worthy of getting out? What if the spirits have whispered self-hatred into your ear so long that you are angrily contented to just lay down in the dust and cry until you die?
I've tasted that kind of despair and I can understand how far it can lead, even if I've never gone there myself.

Please don't give up on Lisa, or on any other street person. She may never have the strength to rise up and clean herself off, but she still needs to survive and live. Keep giving her food even if she smeers it all over campus for the next ten years (who knows whether she may just return to eat it later). Jesus told us to give to those who ask and to help the poor. He didn't tell us to only give to those who are making effort to help themselves.

One day, the anger may break and she just might see God's love through a people who didn't turn their back on her even when she continued to flip them the bird.

[chaosandoldnite]

Lisa is likely schizophrenic, because I don't think that her state is drug-induced. She lives in another world, but has a grip on reality enough to be able to play the socialist system. She knows what shelters to go to for food and clothing, and I believe she even sleeps in them every once in a while.
When she's arrested, the police bring her to a hospital where she stays for a day or two, and then decides to sign herself out to live on the front steps of Jarvis Street Baptist Church.
When John and I were trying to help her, she became attached to us to a point where she would follow us around the area and spy. When she met Vicky she obviously disliked her, which Vicky picked up on right away.
Every social help program in downtown Toronto offered no help except for a Christian named Ron Farr who runs a men's shelter. My friend Harry and I were going to bring her to a huge bbq that Ron does every so often, but she refused to go and ignored us. I believe that she would rather live off the food that we gave her instead of actually getting help.
She told me that she used to work in a massage parlour in Oshawa and was connected with the Hells Angels. I don't know if its true or not, but I have no reason to doubt it.
I think by helping her it only makes her worse. She'll become attached to any young guy who tries which is not good at all. What needs to happen, really, is for the government to force her to take some sort of psychiatric medication to balance her out so that she can help herself. But, of course, the government won't violate her free will.
What can you do?

[kruszer]

If she won't see a counsellor, maybe a counsellor should see her. I mean strike up a conversation with her and see where it goes - obviously a female counsellor would be best and from my experience these types of people tend to be very territorial - especially if they're pan-handling, but you never know.

I personally have sat down on the sidewalk with the street kids who hang out in the downtown market pan-handling all day and befriended quite a number of them. Most of them have amazing stories to share - I guess maybe I can relate to them more because I'm not quite as removed from their lives as others are. It's just a matter of a right turn over a left one and we'd have all wound up on the same road together.

Anyhow, maybe you could look around and see if there are down to earth and approachable/non-threatning female counsellors who would be willing to become a regular familiar face to Lisa.