Who would of thought that things could turn out as they have. I thought that we lived our lives as good Christians. Yes we were not perfect but we tried. Sometimes when you're so busy with your own family and self, it's hard to see what is going on around you. God is a good God. He allows us to see the hard things but carries us through. I never realized how important credit is. Maybe more so to God than anyone else. Not paying your bills is just like stealing. Unintentional but true. Taking products of any sort and not paying is not different than going to the store and writing a bad check on purpose. Now that sounds pretty hard, but maybe it sounds hard because it is. The late payments to the electric, phone or even car payments don't seem bad. We might be going through a hard time and had the intentions to pay but life happened and so we are short of cash. Life happens". That's an interesting phrase. Doesn't life happen to everybody. I had every intention to pay all my bills especially the rent. Unfortunately life happened to throw one of its' curves and I missed. Medical bills are a real jewel. Kids get sick I made too much money for med-i-cal and to little to make a $250. a month payment for insurance. So I took them to the Emergency room for Anti-biotic prescriptions for ear infections and asthma attack treatments. I thought, "Well they will have to stand in line with the rest of the bill collectors." I tried to pay cash for everything and usually tried to pay the utilities before the disconnection. Sometimes I had to get help from the county agencies to pay a bill or two of electric and gas during the winter months. Bad habits only get worse. When I finally had a credit card I tried to pay it on time all the time. For many years I did great. Than life happened and well that bill was never paid. Then my husband and I got cars and tried to make payments. Well those cars were repoed very quickly when more life happened. Then we lost one home after another and our credit went from C to F. Still I didn't realized what a big hole we were digging. I always wanted to earn enough money to pay all the bills on time and be a good steward of the money God blessed us with but priorities were to feed my children. Sometimes thats all the money we had enough to do. Once in a while we would apply for food stamps and then when we got on our feet we would get off. We didnt want to go to the government for help it made us feel poor and we wanted to pay our way. Unfortunately we weren't doing a good job of it. What a spiral of a mess. Does any of this sound familiar. Most of all we really wanted to pay all our bills and God knew our hearts we just couldn't pay. Were we stealing? Were we so bad? Well to the landlord who needed to make the mortgage payment, we were very bad. To the grocery store that the check bounced to and we couldn't pay back, we were stealing. How does it sound to go to a business and say I need this food but I may be able to pay if I get more hours of work this week. They wouldn't be so happy. Credit is so important. It tells people that you are disciplined to only take what you know you can afford. Not what you hope you can, or maybe can, but what you know you can afford. We didn't want to live in the bad area of town where we could afford. We wanted our children to live in a safe area that we couldn't afford to pay. We tried so hard but kept on failing. We went from home to home and then finally from hotel to hotel. For almost a year we were living in hotels and sometimes in our car or a vacant church for a week or two till we got enough money to pay for a full week at a hotel. What a nightmare. No one would rent to us with evictions and bad credit. Five children and two adults in a hotel room or a two seater truck with a small back cab space that three of the children squeezed into and a newborn baby in a car seat on my lap. Not safe or stable. The children suffered the uncertainty of not knowing about tomorrow. My oldest 17 at the time stayed from place to place from friend to friend. A one point a hotel manager of a very nice hotel let us stay there paying only $29 a day and we paid as we got the money sometimes for 5 days or 15 days however we could. He only could do it for 3 1/2 months and it was blessing more than I could ever say. After that we had to go back to pay $1200 a month. That's how much the hotels were. It wasn't that we didnt have money. It was that our credit was so bad that no one would rent to us. Since we really struggled to pay the $1200, sometimes we would check out of the hotel so we could have money for food. We couldnt apply for food stamps because we would be reported to child protective services since sometimes we had to sleep in the truck or vacant church if we didn't have enough money. At one point we only had either $50 to pay at a hotel for a night or take the kids to Hometown Buffet. We figured, well we can sleep on the floor of the church but we can stay at Hometown for hours eat take a break and eat some more and at least the kids are well nourished. . We wanted the children to at least have hot nutritious food. Cold cut sandwiches and dry cereal can be depressing not to mention not very healthy everyday. Although we did go shopping at times to fill a small refrigerator in the hotel. At first we only had our toaster and coffee maker.. I remember putting the hotdogs in the toaster (not smart) but we ate hotdogs. I also tried to make soup, mashed potatoes, gravy, and vegetables in the coffee maker. Then we went to the thrift store and bought a electric pan for only $3. I could cook a lot in it. And then a friend gave us another electric pan, and other gave us a toaster oven God sent people to help us though the storm. Finally someone offered to get an apartment for us. It was one bedroom for the 7 of us but at least we could afford the $715 a month and our kids could go to a good school. We were truly blessed. There are so many people we met at homeless food distribution centers. When I use to think of the homeless I thought of someone who was crazy or on drugs or alcohol. I discovered families with children who's parents were injured at work on workmans comp, or laid off and working a minimum wage job that doesn't pay enough to provide for the family. I met people with college education but couldnt get a job for what ever the reason. Many people learning hard lessons in life. Most people look down on the homeless. Once you are homeless it's so difficult to get out of the hole unless someone picks you up out and carries you for a while. There are organizations that try to provide shelter to the homeless but there are more homeless and not enough shelters. Sometimes a shelter is the last place a homeless family will go. I didn't want my children to feel embarrassed to sleep in a strange bed for a night and pack in the morning to go to the car. It was better to just sleep in a vacant church or the truck. There are some places that will let you stay for 3 months to get on your feet but there are not enough. I went to apply there was one apartment available and 20 applicants all with children. The lady had to decide who she felt needed it the most and who would benefit from the program. The program helped drug and alcohol dependent people. Since we didn't have that particular problem we were not eligible. Many of the places assume those are the main or most common reason for homelessness. Not true. Many hard working people with bad credit and little income are homeless. Even the city has programs to house the low income. The catch is you have to have good credit. I give credit to the smart low income people who some how have managed to have low income and still pay all their bills. It's all about priorities. I would like to see programs for people to help them learn to budget on a shoe string. Our grandparents had to during the depression. I still am learning. But today I look at homeless so differently. People think that someone chooses to be homeless. It's not so simple. There needs to be more help for the homeless. Hand outs are nice and can get you by for the day but the answer to the problem is more difficult. More apartment style shelters are needed. also credit repair legal actions for people in this dark hole. I learned that the city would not take a person with bad credit but if you file for bankruptcy they will. This is important to know and no one will tell you if you don't know. There are organizations that do try to help, but so much more is needed. In a country with people who have mansions and multiple homes. There shouldn't be children living on the streets and child protective services threatening to take your children if you go for help. This is the sad truth. At one point I went to the welfare office to apply for homeless assistance, which only helps you for about 2 weeks or so I was told. Because I was working I didn't qualify yet I couldn't get an apartment with my credit and I didn't have enough to pay for the full month at the hotel. I did qualify for food stamps but since I couldn't afford the full month at the hotel and one week would be in my truck or church floor the caseworker told me She would have to report me to Child protective services. Needless to say I took my application back and left as quickly as I could.

How can people help? This is going on in every town in America. I don't have the solution though I wish I did. I tell this story for 2 reasons. One is to make Americans aware of the situation. Hopefully someone will open their doors to a family in their own church. Every church knows of homeless families. Maybe people can put up a family for a month or a week and take turns feeding them till they can find a place. Maybe if you're a landlord you will give some uncreditworthy person a chance to rent again. Maybe you will get burned. But maybe you can work out some kind of extra deposit to cover a few months. Maybe a church congregation could collect for an extra deposit for insurance in case the landlord gets burned. People generally want to pay their bills but sometimes life happens and it hits hard and long. I look at life so differently. I am more humble and I know everyone has their story of embarrassment and hard times. We need to be more compassionate and not so quick to judge. My fault is this. Yours' may be something else. But God has no respect for persons. We should help however and whoever we can to be the vessel God works thru. I thank God and the people he used to help my family. If it wasn't for kind hearts to help the definitely unworthy, we would still be in a hotel today. We are not out of the woods yet, but at least were not in the dark hole of the jungle. Help someone, help a family. Find out if there are homeless at your own church. Then brainstorm with the congregation to find a solution one family at a time. Not a hand out but a help out of the hole.

What is needed to help the homeless?

Where do we begin or continue. Although there are many programs out there that are doing a great job, there are also so many that fall in the cracks of these programs. "The poor will be with you always", Jesus said. So Im not saying we can ever solve the problem perfectly. There are so many churches that can help. Right now many feed the needy and give clothes. Sometimes help with rent or utilities is often a great way to help a family get through the tough times. Helping families before they become homeless by helping them with food, so they can pay other bills, Helping people with car repair so they can get to work. One thing I learned. No matter what, pay your rent first. Even before food. Unfortunately, there are families that become homeless and free food is only good for the day you pick it up. You can not cook or store food when youre homeless. With children its even harder. There are laws right now that prohibit RV to be used as living quarters on some ones own property If every church could house one family we would take a huge bite out of the homeless situation. People think a homeless person is choosing to be that way. Not so. People think that if youre homeless you will go to a shelter and do whatever they say to get help. Maybe to an extent. If Im homeless and I have a car with my children and our belongings, the car will be very packed. To go into a shelter for the night and then to be forced to leave in the morning, I might as well stay in my car. I can take a bath in any sink in any grocery 24 hr store or McDonalds open very clean restrooms at 6:00 am. Do I sound ungrateful. Maybe to someone who doesnt understand. I was homeless. We had a 2 seater truck with a small space in the cab. Our 3 children squeezed back there sitting on blankets or pillows. They often cried and complained of being squashed. By three children I dont mean little. My 17 yr old couldnt fit at all. My 15yr old folded his legs tightly and my 9 &7 yr old also squeezed back there. Its funny the 15 yr old seemed to stop growing. He was about 4 or 5 inches shorter than me and once we got our home he shot up to about 6 or 7 inches taller than me. I joke and say God stunted his growth for a year till we could get on our feet. I had my 2 month old baby on my lap in a car seat carrier and my husband sat in the driver seat. With all our belonging in the back of our truck. We could not leave it outside with out unloading it. We also had to make sure there was plastic on top of it if it rained. To go in a hotel cost $300 a week. They charge per person especially when you have 5 children. Oh I didnt mention my 17yr old had to fend for himself and catch the bus to where we were. Times we didnt have the money for the week we had to stay in the back of a church room on the floor. We would sneak in late at night when everyone had left for the night. We also stayed in a church Sunday school classroom for a week. Thank God for kind people who worked it out for us to pay $29 a day to stay in a Best Western Hotel in a very good area of town. We had continental breakfast and made service. We were fortunate. God allowed us to see the fire, yet we didnt get burned. I always say we went through homelessness in style. Even during the worst time, we acted as if we were on a vacation. May be you could say we went on an adventure. During the 4th of July we went to Palm Springs. We had to pay for a hotel so why not there. We barbequed like everyone else. It was great. We went to San Diego for a convention that we were given comp tickets to for the press. Although it rained that weekend and we stayed in the car the first night the second night was in a lovely hotel. It was summer and we wanted the children to not feel the pressure. We wanted them to feel like a vacation. You say why didnt you just pay for an apartment. That would have been great but our credit was so bad no one would rent to us with an eviction on our record. I didnt blame them but we needed a place to stay. We had money but our credit prevented us from being able to find a place to live. It is a basic need to have a place to live and when credit can prevent that very basic need there is a serious problem. I know I need to correct my credit. But how many people realize this too late. I never knew how devastating it was until it was too late. There are many credit repair places that charge you and if you dont have money for rent how do you chance money to them. It would be great for someone to teach people at the shelters to repair their credit. That would be a class well used. Also to find away to get the eviction off their record if that is possible. Starting over is difficult especially if you are in a negative state to begin with. I was blessed because someone opened their heart and put their name on an apt for us. If not we would still be in a hotel today. Thank God for kind people who dont judge and take a chance on the unworthy.

Each of us has an opportunity to make a difference in someone's life. Make it a part of your every day life not just a once in a while thing. Look for how God can use you and be open to be the vessel He uses.

Where does the strength come from to deal with lifes trials. Why do we have to struggle? Often people wonder Why? But what they don't realize is that they never walk alone. They never are on their own. When times were the hardest, Jesus was there. The trials prepare us for what we need in life. A good example are the times I didn't have a car. I found myself walking a lot here and there. I actually loved walking. It was great exercise and I got a great shape because of it. But when I had a car I found I had no time to exercise and gained weight. I couldn't eat as much since I didn't exercise as much. Something as simple as walking due to lack of a car. Sometimes we are forced to do things we wouldnt do normally if things were easy. Those times we are forced to do things are generally blessings in disguise. Think of times you have had to do something the hard way. Did you appreciate it more. Did you find yourself enjoying things you never thought you would, when forced to go somewhere or do something out of your comfortable zone. Life's hard times give us a different perspective of things in this world. These things we see differently are the beauty that we miss everyday in our own busy selves. The next time life takes you for a ride. It may seem like a rollorcoaster, but aren't roller coasters suppose to excite you with a turbulent ride. You scream yet it's fun. Enjoy the ride of life. The things hard and difficult are there for you to enjoy and get excited. Think of how boring and mundane things would be if you had everything you ever wanted. Things you didn't work for or put any special effort into. If you could snap your fingers and have all the jewelry you wanted would you appreciate any thing you wear. If it was something you saved for and had to wait for you would cherish it and take great care of it. If you could drive any car you wanted with out working for it would you take care of it. Maintain it and keep it up. If you knew you could just get another easily you might not take such good care of it. It goes with everything. A home, money, or anything that you are just given. Now I'm not saying that everything that you are given as a gift or blessing from God that you wouldn't appreciate it. You might win $1000 today. Of course you would be excited. But if money meant nothing to you, if you had no difficulty paying bills, you might not spend it carefully. Life has its good. We are always glad when the good times come. God wants to give us good things. He blesses us everyday with good things. But sometimes we get complacent. We get so comfortable we miss out on so much more that God wants us to enjoy. So when you get a kick in the pants and it takes you somewhere you don't want to go. Take a closer look. See what God may be showing you. Look for the good and you may be surprised at something special. God always uses all things for His glory and good. Even the hardest times and tearful times will bring joy if you look deep. Life prepares us to trust God. How can we trust God if we can fix things ourselves. God wants us to go to Him in those hard times. It's the closest we get to God when our hearts hurt the most. When we can turn no where else we finally turn to God. Its when we submit our whole heart and soul and give in to whatever God wants for us that the biggest blessings come. Don't be afraid of the ride we go on in life. Enjoy every moment where ever you are at. Discover the blessings we never even thought of and discover how blessed you truly are.round you

I tell this story to tell someone out there that God loves you and though you may feel heavy burdened and all alone that Jesus said that He would never leave you nor forsake you. Every step you take He is with you and when you fall He still loves you. These trials will pass and you will see a happier day. What you are doing now is learning and growing. One day you will have a testimony of how God carried you through so you can help someone else know how to go through. If we don't go through the hard rode we won't know how to direct someone else how to make it through. Jesus went through the hardest rode on Calvary and died for us to have a connection to the father. We need not carry the burden alone. Jesus carried the burden for us. We should do for our fellow man as Jesus did for us. Reach out to help the needy however you can. There are many needs of people around you. Not all are for the homeless.