"I Envy You Jo"

Tuesday was a typical night - I drove up to The Mustard Seed in my little red car, said hi to the gang waiting outside for dinner, and started my usual chores:  handing out plates, chatting with the community members, clearing away coffee mugs, and all the while just seeing all the people as just people, no different than I, and I always thought they saw me as an equal as well.

But maybe I was wrong.

I was chatting with one of my homeless buddies as we usually do - about work, the street, his "issues", and then suddenly he spoke frankly:  I envy you Jo.

My first thought was, "Why would he envy me?"  Maybe it should have been an obvious answer, but I've come to know some of these people so well that they are no different to me than our neighbours across the street.  The answer did not immediately come to mind.

And then his reply:  Because you get to drive home in your car, to your house, and to your family.

Oh, how we take our everyday life for granted!  To think that a person would envy me because I live in a house, when I never think twice about it.  And to have a family, when some of these people have such battered family pasts that maybe they lay awake at night thinking about what life may have been like if they had just been born into different circumstances....

As much as I see them as the same, these people are different.  The ebb and flow of their lives has brought them to one of the harshest and violent streets in Edmonton to get a meal and find some conversation.  Some of them are homeless by choice, but I'll bet lots of them dream about the day when they won't have to stand in line for food, won't have to use an outdoor toilet in the middle of the night, and won't have to freeze for most of the day in any given January.

How blessed we are.....I'll never forget that again.