Dear Anonymous,
They are waiting and it's not even 5 AM.
One gentleman I don't know well is introduced and we are able to set him up with a backpack, some extra large shirts, socks and a coffee card. He smiles.
This one takes a coat for a girlfriend. This one takes a coat for a young woman up the street.
Someone else stops by on his way to work, living in the shelter and needing to get to work by 5:30 AM. He needs socks, working down on the wharf. I look at his shoes. Insufficient at best. I pray they have boots for him.
I hear a difficult story involving some folks I know out here. Good people. But desperate. And desperation creates some pretty awful, and most often, regrettable behaviors.
My heart sags a bit. Maybe folds just a bit.
But watching these men light up just for a moment is the gift, the lesson reminding me to stay with the love. Reminding me to be too busy with love to feel those stabs of resentment or disappointment or anguish or all that other wreckage. Stay with the love. Stay with the love.