THE TRUTH IS...

The truth is, there is no good night to be working the streets.

Every night spent working on a corner, 
walking by glow of a streetlight, 
approaching strangers in the dark, 
is a bad night. 

Every night, the risk comes 
from a boyfriend, 
a pimp, 
a john, 
another street worker, 
a passerby, 
an overdose, 
a dirty needle, 
an unforgiving environment. 

Every night the social ills that come 
with poverty and greed, 
lust and abuse, 
addiction and apathy, 
get played out on hardened streets. 

But on nights when the temperature drops to artic-like degrees, 
when the wind howls and swirls the bitter cold around exposed bodies, 
through thin layers of hoped for warmth, 
those are the worst nights of all. 

Those are nights when 
the poverty and greed, 
lust and abuse, 
addiction and apathy, 
won't loosen their hold 
to give even an evening's respite from the brutal frost 
that threatens to bite fingers and toes
in less time then it takes to turn a trick 
or inhale a scavenged cigarette. 

Poverty and greed, 
lust and abuse, 
addiction and apathy, 
are unrelenting taskmasters, 
demanding service 
even as extremities turn pale and lifeless 
and hearts turn hopeless.

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I wrote this poem last week, on one of the coldest nights of the year. I had received a message letting me know that there were a number of women out working the streets, even though there was an extreme weather warning as the temperature hovered close to -40 with the windchill. As I cried out to God in the middle of the night, thanking Him for His love for these women and asking Him to protect them, these words came to me. After writing them down, or more accurately, thumbing them into my phone, I felt like the poem was unfinished, yet there seemed to be no words to finish it. It left me hanging, feeling hopeless and wanting more. 

Tonight, I was praying about how to finish the poem when I realized that it is meant to stay exactly as it is. It leaves you feeling like it is incomplete because that is how you should feel when reading words like these or experiencing situations like these. Whether it is in the heartbreak we see happening around us or difficult circumstances happening in our own lives, we FEEL like there should be more because there IS more. 

There is more HOPE. There is more LIFE. There is MORE.
There is JESUS.
He is HOPE! He is LIFE! He is MORE!

If things feel incomplete or unfinished in your life or in your circumstances, it's because they are. There is more. He is more.