A Shelter from the Cold

Our church is serving at First Light Shelter for Homeless Women and Children in downtown Birmingham this week.  We have been providing dinner and overnight volunteers all week.  This experience is always a joyful one, even though the women and children who are guests at the Shelter are living in periods of great distress and crisis in their lives.  I had the joy and privilege of going to help serve dinner on Monday night, and there were lots of women gathered in the dining room, looking weary at the end of a long day as usual.  But, there were also about eight very small children at the Shelter that night, and they were like all children--running and playing and laughing, full of energy and joy.  It always feels especially poignant to me when there are children at the Shelter--they are so full of the innocence and joy of all children and yet their little lives are also filled with chaos and hardship and I know they have experienced fear and deprivation of the kind no child should have to experience.  Those little ones that night were mostly going to be sleeping in the "overflow" section at First Light, which meant they would be sleeping with their moms on mattresses placed directly on the floor of the dining room once dinner had ended.

Our menu was fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, peas, biscuits and fruit, with cookies for dessert.  As always, the women expressed their deep appreciation for those who come as volunteers each night to make sure they have a good, hot meal and a warm and welcoming place to stay.  Every single night of the year, volunteers go through the doors of this wonderful shelter and cook and serve a meal to 60+ women and children; other volunteers come and spend the night as volunteer hosts in the dormitory on the second floor.  Every night, these volunteers receive smiles, words of gratitude, and big hugs if there happen to be children in the shelter that night.  Every night, you look across the counter as you serve dinner at women who are precious and beloved children of God who have fallen on hard times.  You can see the weariness in their eyes and in their bodies, but you can also see the hope that First Light provides them-- a place of safety and warmth, a place where they are welcome and loved, a place where there is a caring staff to help get them back on their feet and into a home they can call their own.  Every time I serve at First Light, I return to my own home more grateful for a warm bed I can call my very own, a kitchen where I can make what I want to eat, a bathroom I am not sharing with dozens of others, a quiet bedroom in which to sleep undisturbed, a home that rises up to welcome me when I come through the door into my own, safe space.

I will return tonight to serve dinner again.  I am already anticipating the smiles, the hugs and the words of gratitude.  But, really, I am the one who is grateful--grateful for the opportunity to give and receive love; grateful for this wonderful place in downtown Birmingham where women and children are safe and loved and sheltered from the cold; grateful for the staff of First Light who work with women who are struggling and in pain every single day and who never give up but always find new ways to provide hope and help, grateful that I have a home of my own and the resources to provide help to others who are in greater need than I am at the moment; grateful for the privilege of looking another child of God in the eyes across a serving counter and see in each face I encounter the face of Christ, reminding me: "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, thirsty and you gave me something to drink..."  I am especially grateful this week, as the weather turns colder, that First Light exists on the corner of 4th Avenue North and 23rd Street, a beacon of light, of warmth, of hospitality, of hope and love.

If you would like to help out at First Light, please call me or email me.  I can guarantee you that you will come away from the experience a more grateful person.