FocusOnTheFamily

Back on the bus

Written by Amanda Smith Regier

It’s midnight according to the ancient church bells, a sound that seems out of place amidst the dark warehouses surrounding us. Four of us sit bundled in our red Teen Challenge coats, thinking we’ve seen the final “lassie” of the night, when two women approach the bus.

The first, in her mid-30s, bears all the evidence of 17 years of addiction and prostitution: sallow, sunken skin, missing teeth, chipped nails and torn stockings. She tells us stories of losing her children to City Council and attempts to get into a drug clinic as a last ditch effort to get off heroin.

Here in Aberdeen, my adopted Scottish home, addiction and prostitution are as hard to miss as the giant oil tankers that cruise in and out of this North Sea port all day. Every Saturday night, a team from Teen Challenge sits in a converted bus, making tea and toast, talking to the ladies about healing from addiction.

Each of the girls in the harbour has her own unique personality. We try to know them by name, but the truth is, they all share the same story.

Moments later, the second girl clambers on. She’s a year younger than me, rosy-cheeked, clear skin, healthy figure: a picture of suburban youth. Even her street clothes are well-concealed under a modest jacket.

I make her a milky tea while trying to reconcile the scene in my own mind: What is this beautiful, clean-cut girl doing here? I soon learn. She doesn’t yet show the signs, but she has the same tale: years of drug abuse and addiction.

Us and them

She tells me that at one point she had made a genuine effort to get clean and lasted four months before loneliness drove her back. Every friend she has is a user. To her, getting clean means living a life of seclusion – a lifestyle that's hard to maintain for long.

I share with her how my husband and I moved from Canada, knowing no one, but went to a church and met some amazing friends. Perhaps she should give it a try. When I offer to meet her in front of my church on Sunday, she supplies a half-hearted “Maybe.”

We chat some more and she leaves, planning to work through the night to fund the next day’s fix.

As I watch her go, it occurs to me: what would happen if this girl showed up at my church the next morning? I would sit with her, of course, or another volunteer would. We would invite her to coffee – maybe a few times – with many good intentions. But would we really be friends? Would I call her up for a movie or invite her out to dinner?

No. Even in my occasional flickers of genuine altruism, the answer is no. And I'm not sure if it's a problem with me, with the Church or with society in general.

Where did I develop this “us and them” mentality? Am I really as accepting as I’d like to think? For a week I ruminate over these questions, bouncing between guilt and blame, questioning my upper-middle-class Canadian upbringing, wondering if I can simultaneously view someone as a charity case and a friend, and if Jesus ever saw a distinction between the two.

The church family

A month later, I’m back on the same dark street. New legislation eliminating the city’s “tolerant zone” means most girls have left the harbour to work busier streets, and not a single one has been on the bus all night.

In my boredom, I read the stories Velcroed to the bus walls – stories of women from this same harbour. Each is accompanied by “before and after” photographs. A story captures my eye; it shows an image of a skeletal street girl at the top of the page and a healthy, beaming woman at the bottom.

I’m shocked to realize that not only are these photos showing the same person, but this person is making tea a few feet away from me – it’s one of my fellow volunteers on the bus.

Claire* was a heroin addict for 11 years. She’s been clean for nearly two, thanks to a Teen Challenge recovery program. She’s now married to a fellow Christian and about to have a baby. Now here is a woman who can shed light on my questioning, I think.

When I ask her if she felt like she belonged when she first stepped into the church, she tells me frankly, “I was a Christian for nearly a year before I got clean and, at the time, I did feel like an outsider – especially around people my age. But in fact I was different, because my priority was still drugs, not God. When that changed, all my relationships changed.”

In retrospect, she feels it was also her own insecurities – her perception that she was not worthy to be part of a loving community – that made her feel she couldn’t belong. “Fortunately, there is this amazing group of older women in my church who always reminded me how tall, wide and deep Christ’s love is and that my sins weren’t too bad for Him to get around.”

These women didn’t make her feel there was a Christian mould to fill. Her acceptance wasn’t the result of assimilation, but of growing together with a group of women. Though it took time for her to feel part of the church family, she could see that the new relationships she built there were different from those of her past.

On equal terms

Claire knows many of the girls on the bus from her own days on the streets and explains that while most of them are the products of family cycles of abuse and addiction, some of them – like the young girl I’d met a month before – come from families like mine: safe and loving.

For Claire, working on the Teen Challenge bus is her recurring reminder of the change God is capable of. For me, it’s an ongoing revelation of the way I am meant to love people.

Witnessing the transformative work of Christ in the lives of Aberdeen’s prostitutes has opened my eyes to my own folly: any time I’ve reached out to those in need, I’ve mentally drawn stark lines between those who are “family” and those who are objects of my “good will.” Talking to Claire, I realize that, without Christ, the only line that actually separates me from the girls in the harbour is a few bad decisions.

Some time later, I spot a familiar face at the supermarket – the young girl from the harbour. She never did join me at church, but then I never gave her enough credit to wait for her outside the intimidating front doors.

I realize that it’s likely she lives not far from me. We’re neighbours. We’re both taking advantage of a rain-free afternoon to do some shopping. And I can’t help but notice we’re wearing the same brown sneakers. Here in the produce aisle, she and I are equals – surely it’s no different in the family of God.

*Names have been changed.

© 2008 Focus on the Family (Canada) Association. All rights reserved.