The New Face of Being Homeless

I really wanted to start our vacation highlights on a great, upbeat, sunshiny note but felt this was more important. You see if you look at the baby in the tree image and once you see it you will know where I'm going here. This is the new face of being homeless. It is the new face of poverty. Children do not ask to come into this world. Those who bring them into the world have a certain responsibility to provide at least the bare minimum of necessities of survival. More so they aren't and that really hit home with us for this vacation. Our furnace had been acting up and our youngest was off for three weeks so we suggested a bit of house sitting, food and amenities provided. The offer was accepted so we could relax and enjoy ourselves while away.

When we returned we learned a friend of our youngest had stayed as well. This friend was recently laid off, is waiting for unemployment insurance and is homeless. He's not a bum or a panhandler or an addict or any other negative connotation you could come up with for homeless. He's a young person with hopes and dreams, seriously down on his luck with no parental or family support and no place to call home. No where to call home! Can you just imagine the hopelessness of that? Our youngest never asked if it was ok for his friend to stay or whether it would be ok to share our food and give him a safe, warm place to stay. He simply acted knowing we would have approved. I'm proud of him for acting as we would expect.

Our philosophy has always been to help those in need. That philosophy has been well instilled in our kids. I can't count the number of young folk who have eaten at our house and whom we have fed more than one meal a day knowing full well that may be the only meal they would eat that day. No child should ever have to go hungry, ever! I always figured if I have enough to put on the table for ourselves, there is always enough for another hungry mouth. And for that matter we would never turn away their parent or anyone else that is hungry.

The next time you worry about cutting back your food dollars or complain you can't afford to go out for dinner or even the price of ordered in pizza, think about these young folks. They are just starting their lives out. The way things are going they are destined for failure before even getting a chance at life. If you know a child in need or even a young person do whatever you can to help. Often they really just don't know where to turn for help and they just don't have the resources to get the help. Anytime you can help a child even just one child is one way of helping the next generation. [sorry I really want to express this a bit better but have writer's block]

Garden Gnome
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