First let me share the excitement and joy of the day. This was the beginning of the rehab on what we are anticipating will be our 30 day house, the “Grandma’s House” that we have been waiting and watching for.
About 6 months ago I was asked by a friend of over thirty years if she purchased the house she grew up in would I put girls in it. My answer, of course was YES! I had shared with her a little about Girls with Attitude! and our mission to “change the world-one girl at a time”. There are times in a person’s life when a small spark can set a heart on fire, and I feel that’s what happened with my friend.
The day was full of emotions as two generations came together to begin the clean up process. A daughter who remembered slumbering in the safety of a warm home with loving parents, and a grandson who recounted spending the night and swimming in the pool at grandma and grandpas house.
Even as I sit here some 4 hours after I left the place, the smells from the house still permeates my nostrils. Not the smell of a rose bush or lilacs, but the smell of urine, and feces both animal and human.
This house is located on what was once a tree lined street that held the blue collar, hard working men and women who left the Appalachian Mountains to find a better life. Today there remain a few trees on the street, but you are more likely to find boarded up houses, and drug paraphernalia lining the streets.
Each time I walked out the door of the house, or looked up from cleaning the yard my eyes were drawn across the street to the house on the corner. Each glance was a reminder of my friend, the one I went to school with, sang in the church choir with, played softball with, the one who died in that very house of a drug overdose. My heart aches as I miss my friend.
I watched the corner house throughout the day. As part of intake for Birdie’s Place Crisis Center I bring the girls past this house, and share with them that this is the house my friend died in. To this day it still pricks my heart as I hear them share that they too have been inside that very same house, but they escaped the fate of my friend.
I watched all day long as “visitors” would pull in front of the home, go inside for 5 minutes and return to their car. I also watched as children played in that same front yard. And my heart ached.
Earlier in the day as I headed to the house I drove down the main thoroughfare while rain covered my front windshield. I said a silent prayer as I watched a woman pushing a man down the street in a wheelchair; not a pleasant day to be taking a stroll, but I felt there was some place that they needed to be. Imagine my surprise when later they showed up at the corner house.
I shared with my husband last week, in one of my weaker moments that a sane person would never do this ministry. A 51 year old woman, wife and grandmother of 10 should be ready to slow down, smell the roses and learn to knit. This has to be a calling, a strength from a higher power, a God given destiny, because on the streets, in the mire and muck is exactly where I feel the closest to God. It’s where I feel I am fulfilling my destiny.
As we were inside cleaning out the garbage left in the house I felt so compelled to pray for the people who had been in the house. No one ever sets out in life deciding to be a drug addict, prostitute or anything other than a successful, upstanding part of society. But we all make choices. I must admit the ones I prayed for the most were the children. Where is the child who played with that rattle? Where is the child who obviously napped under the basement steps? Who drank from this sippy cup? Please dear God protect their hearts and minds, protect them from the choices that are being made for them.
As the afternoon cleared up and we worked out in the yard along walk 4 sisters who stopped and shared that they had once lived in our house. Twins aged 9, and 11 year old and a 12 year old. We listened as they shared that they had lived on this street all of their lives, and how their grandma had lived on this street. They shared about shootings on the street, and about relatives who were now in jail. As they walked away I thought “those are just a few girls with attitude, the very reason you have called us to this place, “for such a time as this”.
Even with the view in the natural eye, I look around and see beauty. I see rose bushes once pruned by the grandmother, and houses where babies were born, where families lived and loved. I walk into our house and see a front room to welcome guest, and a country cottage kitchen full of love and hot meals. Hope and faith are not easily squelched.
And as I sit here exhausted from the physical and emotional toil of the day I ponder, and wonder if I will ever decide that I am ready to learn to knit.
Girls with Attitude! is a 501c3 non profit organization, and all donations are tax deductible. www.1gwa.org
PO Box 614, Grove City OH, 43123
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