REunite

Erin was her name.  She was the girl we met the very first time I went out with the 70x7 prostitution street ministry.  She was a white girl.  Short hair.  Eerily familiar.  She was on my side of the van so my window was down and as Donna prayed for her, I just stared at her.  Deep desperation ran through her eyes.  Broken.  Exhausted.  Waiting for the next hit.  But I KNEW her.  How? 

We parted ways, she went one way and we drove another way.  The moment we hit the end of the street I knew, She was friends with my brother.  My brother, who almost two years ago, died of a heroin overdose.  They were friends.  I thought to myself, there is no way.  She looked too different.  Way too different.  I graduated with her brother.  Good friends with her brother actually.  I knew the heavy set, bleached out hair, Erin.  Not the short brown haired, skinny Erin wearing raggedy clothes and an old pair of tennis shoes.  My heart broke.  I was so shook up.  

Last night we went out again.  When we finished Lindsey and I were not ready to be done, so we got dropped at our cars and went out again.  Before this happened we prayed and asked God to show us specific things we needed to know about the people we should find.  Our treasure hunt.  Among other things REUNITE was on our list . We stopped at a coney island to find a “bridgette" on our list.  No dice.  So we drive on our way and just outside the coney island is a women waiting to be bought.  We were going to stop and noticed it was the crazy lady we prayed for earlier so Lindsey said, “keep driving." Then we see the girl next to her.  Grey ragged shirt, brown scraggily hair, a huge mess.  I thought to myself and maybe out loud, “Wait, is that a boy or a girl?" She turns to face us and my immediate response out loud was, “Oh sh** , that’s Erin."  Lindsey thinking nothing says, “Hi Erin, we are from the prayer van, we don’t have food but we would like to pray for you."  

Im looking into her eyes and my heart is pounding and my hands shaking.  Before she answers Lindsey, I look her in the eyes and I point, “What is your last name Erin?" Without hesitation she answers me with the last name I expected to hear.  I almost lost it.  I fumbled for my seat belt, dropped some more four lettered words, covered my mouth as I cannot believe what just came out of it and ran around the back of my car to her.  

I look her dead on and with a hand over my heart I say, “I am Jaime Davis.  I am Mark Davis’s sister." 

"Oh. Sh**,"  She says.  Her heart sinks.  My heart sinks.  I grab her and pull her away from the car and we hug forever it seemed.  She cried.  I cried.  My whole body shook.  I couldn’t even believe who I was holding in my arms, rubbing her back, feeling her boney spine with my hand. 

"How are you? Does your family know what’s happening? Are you working the streets? How are you? How are you? Tell me everything" 

She explains she’s been waiting for her girlfriend for over an hour now.  She hasn’t come back yet.  She is planning on going to rehab in a couple days.  She spoke with her family not too long ago and sometimes she works the streets.  She has to.  There is no other way.  We get in my car and I pray some more for her.  We talk.  "Do you want to be free from this?"

"Everyday"

After Lindsey asks about the relationship she had with my brother she told us, “He was the first person I got high with."

Followed by a mumbled

"It was the hardest funeral I’ve ever been too."  

We prayed for her.  We prayed the chains of addiction would be broke.  The scars on her arms would be gone.  Every area she ever stuck a needle would be healed in the name of Jesus.  The blood in her body would run clean and Jesus would replace it with His.  That She would never desire another high.  That she would have the strength to walk away and to get on the plane to south dakota and start fresh.  That this night would be the first day of the rest of her life.  We called out the destiny and purpose for her life.  

We prayed three times with her and every time we were done she was wiping away her tears.  Lindsey told her she had a vision as we prayed the last time of her living in a nice house, with a family and a husband, with money.  That blessings are coming her way.  

Lindsey gave me twizzlers I never even intended to eat.  And so Erin, starving, gladly accepted our twizzlers with a, “yeah i want those, im fu**ing starving." She got out of the car.  I hugged her again, “I Love you. If you need anything call me.  Today is a new beginning, I fully believe that."  And we went on our way.  

Today as I was praying for her, this verse came to me, Hosea 2:14 

“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, 

and bring her into the wilderness,

and speak tenderly to her."

And 15 continues to say, 

"And there I will give her her vineyards

and make the Valley of Achore a door of hope.

And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,

as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt."

Verse 14 is hers.  If you read this, that is what you pray over her.  She will walk out of the darkness.  Lindsey told me last night that me REUNITING with her gives her hope beyond belief.  It reminds her of what will happen if she doesn’t get clean.  My brother’s memory will be a lasting impression of why she needs to get better.  

Lord give her the strength to move on.  Supernaturally interveine.  This God - His way is Perfect.  

Amber

"She’s not with us anymore" 

My heart sank to its deepest.  I knew.  

"What do you mean she’s not with us anymore? Like she’s off the streets? Or she’s gone to be in heaven?"

"She’s passed.  Found her two weeks ago in an alley.  Overdosed on Heroin" 

Detroit seems to chew people up and spit them out. This girl was so beautiful.  She was a child at heart.  Most people would take one look and think prostitute, drug addict, worthless, her fault, her choice, her life, she could change it if she wanted to.  And most people would be completely ignorant, to put it nicely.  

Four weeks ago she spilled her guts to us about how she wanted to be clean.  She just got done with rehab, only had one hit since. “Sorry I’m talking so much, I had to much to drink" with a bottle in her hand.  She applied at a kmart, didn’t have anywhere else to go - so she’s back on the streets.  She had nothing to live for.  A debilitating disease she found out.  She’ll die soon anyway, why not just make it easy on herself and do it.  We offered her a hope that surpasses all understanding.  We prayed with her.  We loved her to our core.  She walked away and chucked her still full bottle into the field.  We all sat shocked that this broken, bruised, and battered girl who never spoke a word before just told us everything.  Everything.  She was done and she wanted out.  We let her know her worth.  Which was much.  

The whole conversation was reminiscent of mine with Mark before he died.  He was hopeless.  He sat there thinking there is no way out.  This recreational drug I did for fun overtook my life and I can’t even tell you when, where, or how it happened… but now I’m here.  And I looked him in the eyes and with a Love that wasn’t mine I told him his worth.  I told him there is hope.  

Six days later he died.  

If you think it’s so easy just to quit, you’re wrong.  Imagine the most hopeless you’ve ever felt and then multiply it by 1000 and that’s how they feel.  There is LITERALLY no escape.  Heroin, to them, is the skin that covers our bodies.  There isn’t even an option for us to take it off - we would never even think to, it protects us, it keeps us living, it is apart of us, we like it, we’ve come to know it, it is what makes us and holds us together.  That is what Heroin is.  There is nothing funny about it.  It’s heart breaking.  

My heart sank knowing that she had a family.  Yes, their battle is over and so is hers, but the emotions that come with that.  She was someones DAUGHTER.  She was someones SISTER.  She had a face.  She had a name.  She had a purpose and a place in life.  She was not some girl on the corner.  

Someone gave birth to her.  Someone carried her for 9 months in their stomach. And somewhere along the way, this life creeped in… inch by inch… step by step… until she opened her eyes one day and said, “where do I go from here? There has got to be more than this." And then one day she took her last breath.  

And no one would ever even blink an eye because of it.  

54 and 12

"He was the 54th person I knew that has died in 12 years. I’m not talking Facebook friends, I am talking 54 close - inner circle - friends of mine that have died in the last 12 years."

My heart broke as one of the girls on the streets shared this story with us. Most of us will probably never see 54 close friends die, let alone have the opportunity to have 54 close friends. In a world where you see another friend die due to overdoses or murders as fast as you change your nailpolish, you have nothing left to do but find a new friend and wait for them to die. At least that is how it seems.

She continued on to talk about her 12 year old daughter and how if she died her daughter would never see her again. Her words, “if I die, I’m a nobody, Detroit isn’t going to contact my family, I’m just another dead girl" and as they came out of her mouth my heart sank even further. I come from the background where my brother was a nobody and Detroit couldn’t even tell my family he was dead until 2 weeks after the fact. The only person to see my brother again was my dad when a Detroit morgue vehicle pulled in our driveway and showed my dad his dead face for identification.

We never saw him again. No open casket. We literally never saw him again. And everyone deserves that.

And I told her that. I told her I never got to see my brother again and he died alone In a field in Detroit and nobody cared. And her daughter deserves to see her again. And she cried.

This was the first time ever she has expressed interest in leaving the streets. And for that we are hopeful because if we don’t have hope we have nothing. We will never lose hope for these girls. What we see seems impossible but we belong to a God who is the God of Impossible.