Coworkers With God

This article was written by Jennifer Cumberbatch,

Associate Pastor at Agape Christian Ministries

The young CPS worker on the other end of the line was about to end the phone call and paused. She compliments our involvement with parishioners and asks if she can have a young mother call me personally, as further assistance from her agency is outside CPS purview. The mother calls. Hers is the strained voice (all too familiar to a pastoral counselor) of one at the end of her rope. I pray with her, encourage her and pledge I will help. She has been to every agency to which she’s been referred, filled out the paperwork and done everything she has been asked to do. There simply is no housing that she can afford on a cook’s budget. The shelters are full, and she and her children are living in a shed with a sink and no toilet.

She cleans the kids each day and the oldest gets all of them on the bus for school. She cries as she laments failing her children. Just a couple of years ago they had been middle-class suburbanites in a comfortable home with cars and both parents had good jobs. Now, she scrapes together pennies for food, laundry and bus fare. She never misses a day of work, and the children are always at school on time, but they are still at the edge of despair.

Weeks pass. I check every agency I know. Each apologizes and delivers the same news.
There’s no housing in Austin in her price range. Besides, each has a lengthy waiting list of people in similar circumstances. Affordable housing in the surrounding areas close to the bus lines doesn’t exist. Each new hope born of endless bus rides and countless appointments is dashed like clockwork. Each week requires an infusion of prayer and encouragement to press on.

Then, an unseasonable rain destroys the family’s few remaining possessions. The young mother calls, distraught. I have to act quickly. The burden of knowing the situation makes me responsible. Suffering humanity makes us all accountable. But solutions are complex. Not long ago, battered near death, she resolved to rebuild. With determination, she found safe housing, good schools and even donated bikes. Just when she thought she might make it, the youngest child was hit by a truck, forcing her to stay home from work to nurse him. The same child’s autistic outbursts and the mother’s lateness with rent garnered an eviction. But she regroups. Now, she assures her children that they are on an adventure camping under the stars.

A local seminary houses the family for a weekend; the search continues. With the help of a fellow pastor we secure an extended stay suite for a week. Another friend joins the team. Groceries come in; the kids make it to and from school; birthdays pass; paperwork is completed; credit checks and deposits are donated. Hotel managers are saintly in their patience with the cobbled-together donations and the autistic child’s tantrums. Still no permanent housing. Then comes the dreaded call. There’s been an incident, and as of 5:00pm the family will have to vacate the hotel.

Travis County Integral Care springs into emergency mode and nine months after our first contact, the woman and her family will have permanent housing, with furniture, and a new reliable car, thanks to her timely tax refund. The stress has brought on a bout with cancer, but the mother’s health is stabilizing. For now, the children are safe with a myriad of wrap around services and support.

This is just one family in our fair city on the nation’s list of most prosperous destinations. Beneath the surface lurks a financial divide, pushing people of faith to advocate for the homeless. For, “pure religion, undefiled before God and the Father is this: To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction” (James 1:27, KJV). We are coworkers with God in restoring the world to good. It is our challenge and our honor to minister to the homeless who are helplessly outside the city’s infrastructure and non-profits’ capacity. Let us not grow weary in their struggle.