Slice of Life Tuesday

Tuesday is Slice of Life Day. Slice of Life is by Two Writing Teachers, who have a blogging challenge every year in March. July blogging has a higher rate of probability for actually happening for me, but I do both challenges. BTL blogging challenge is during July, challenging us to write everyday in the month of July. I have missed one or two days out of 19, that is not too bad.

Well, in Kansas it is no longer Tuesday. But I am in Oregon tonight and it is 10:30 p.m. here. I am here for the C.H.A.M.P.S. conference and it's been a busy learning experience. But the sight-seeing.... wow. I've never been this far west and it is gorgeous. It is nearly perfect here. The weather has been lovely. Perfectly lovely.

I'm learning about myself when I'm here. Not all of it is pretty. Yesterday we went to VooDoo Doughnuts, ah-maze-ing!

But the trip there was revealing. I am a HUGE advocate for poverty and the homeless of Portland would definitely qualify for those living in poverty. But I clutched my belongings tighter to myself and looked away like the homeless were not even there. I ignored their pleas for money. "anything helps..." even though I know longer really buy into all the "don't give them money, they might use it for drugs" hype. They might. But guess what? They might need that fix. Some of them use it get by, to escape their situation, and some of them may have become homeless because an addiction stole their life and withdrawals are deadly, so they need a fix. But I am so sad that I so quickly joined the masses that looked away.

I know my kids would be appalled and want to help these homeless brothers and sisters. I was overcome with how many people there are. Everywhere. Our hotel is NICE. In a nice neighborhood. But just a half a block from here are homeless sleeping right beside the road.

So I feel like a hypocrite. In theory, I love the homeless. I think their plight is real. But today my true colors showed. I didn't want their situation to actually touch me. I pray that I am different tomorrow.