Today, I want to introduce a word to you, Discouraged, so let’s read. To live a life of being discouraged without hope for tomorrow is no way to live. To be deprived or courage or confidence, how is one to make a way for a better tomorrow? We look with hands folded, hearts closed, minds set and pockets zipped shut, yet expect change. We do not lift the burden nor comfort the discouraged when we judge the homeless and refuse compassion. We do not know their story. Our heart has to be changed, it cannot be about me and mine anymore. The discouraged must be EN-couraged.
Simply Discouraged, My Identity is Discouraged
I once was filled with encouragement and hope and joy for the day ahead and the events of the day and life, but not anymore. Life turned on its head and I landed hard and not securely. I am young, and I am not on drugs, life just did not go according to the master plan that I thought up. See when life throw that curve balls some decisions were right but others not so much, but the result is this, I still need help. I’m now homeless and without the basics of life. No longer able to get work, or benefits or help I now wander aimlessly each day though the streets of my local city, invisible in plain sight. Discouragement is a sneaky brat, comes up from behind and drops you hard, like a football tackle.
The very loss of confidence or enthusiasm regarding life and the events of life, that is discouragement and that is my life now. I am also losing hope daily and running low on the willingness and ability to fight on. My name is now not so important, there is no one out here to relate to or care about me.
Discouragement leads to despair and then despair to hopelessness; this is my new reality and life. You can be but discouraged when you must learn to eat from trash cans, wash up in hidden bathrooms, and sleep on the dirt, hidden. People still want to say that this is choice, I love for them to follow us around for a day. To see what we have to go through to just survive out here, and then see what their mind-set may be. But they are too comfortable, the ones that could help us. And you wonder why I am so darn discouraged right now. Thinking about finding some train tracks I am.
Quick comparison, you are discouraged when the waitress is tardy with food delivery, yet you were told this is a five-star restaurant. You are discouraged when the bonus is a few dollars less then already spent. You are discouraged when the kids score B minus instead of a B plus, important, but not life altering. Your discouragement is not based on the missing essentials of life that break down your humanity.
Howard had a home, family, friends, social engagements, a job and a place of belonging, but when life tossed him a curve ball he did not land well, and his life and name were changed, discouragement now is how he is known. Yea, even his family has walked away from him in the midst of the battle. No food, no home, no help and no safe place to sleep. How is he to go on this road? How?
See this is most of the reality of the street it is not filled with bums, low life’s, panhandlers, and the like, it is filled with Howards! But society will still turn a blind, unseeing eye toward those on the street, because of socially engineered thinking.
I am now Discouragement, I am not Howard, but I would like to be Howard again, but will it happen? Where do I go to get the help I need, where do I go to get food, a shower, or are we suppose to just fade away into the landscape so people don’t have to deal with us. This country used to be different, but it has changed and it ain’t no darn good now how it takes care of the old, the sick, the veterans, the disabled and us folks out here, this ain’t the America of 50 years ago. You, yes you with homes may be even discouraged the way America is falling away.
Will You Allow Us to Wear the Filthy Rag of Discouragement
Or
Will You Simply Chose to be an Encourager Today
