Broken Heart

A few weeks ago I asked a friend to help me find a family in Temple that wouldn't be able to afford Thanksgiving and I wanted to take them their Thanksgiving meal. He put me in touch with a high school teacher who knew of a student whose family would be in need of that. His name was Justin. He lives with his mother, a step-father and a sibling. Today, Nate, me and our girls took Justin's family their Thanksgiving meal.

A few days ago, when I received their address, I recognized the name of the motel and remembered exactly which one it was. I remember driving by there many times while being in high school in Temple and for some reason, I remember it always depressed me when I thought of people living there. It's just a run down old motel.

When we pulled up today, there were several people standing around outside their doors, talking, drinking and "shooting the shit", I guess you could say. One of those people was the mother of Justin. She took us upstairs and I went through all of the grocery bags with her while Nate talked to a young teen, holding her baby.

It was a very small hotel room. There were two beds, piled full of just "stuff". There was only a small trail where you could walk through the room. On each side of the trail were just...things. Boxes, old clothes, old food, trash, groceries that had gone bad. Some of these things reached the ceiling. I proceeded to step in and show the mom what all I had gotten them for dinner. She seemed very grateful and the teenager with her son, Alex, was very sweet and talked to us for just a brief second.

We told them Happy Thanksgiving and left them to eat their meal. I'm not quite sure what came over me. I have seen poverty. I have seen poor living conditions. I am very aware that this goes on everywhere. But for some reason, I hadn't even gotten to the car before I began to sob. My heart was so broken. Broken for the family of four who live in this 400 square foot motel room in just two beds. Broken for the high school boy who has probably never been able to bring a friend "home" to play or hang out. Broken that there are children who live in those conditions. Broken at how overwhelming it becomes to try to think of how to begin to change some of that. Broken for myself who isn't satisfied sometimes with my beautiful 3 bedroom home in Central Austin. It isn't big enough, attractive enough, new enough. It needs to be painted. I need a new couch. I wish we had nicer furniture in our bedroom. My house is beautiful and today I was ashamed of myself that I ever feel anything but thankful for how God has blessed our family.

I continued to sob the whole way home. Again, I'm not completely sure why but I couldn't gain my composure. It just hit me really hard. No one really said a word the whole way home and then as we pulled up to have Thanksgiving with my family, Nate said we were going to pray for their family. He led us in prayer and I pulled myself together and we went inside.

I still haven't really gotten over it yet. I feel heavy and sad. I'm not sure exactly what all God is trying to teach me in this. Maybe it's just to be thankful...I feel it's something more.