She was 19

Tonight I went with my home church (I'm back home for a month to rest and raise support for the next year) to a meal in downtown Fort Worth that feeds mostly homeless people.

I've been to this weekly meal probably 4 or 5 times now, it's different style than many soup kitchens because volunteers sit with the guests and we eat family style.
So I was a table "host" tonight to 7 people, one homeless man who'd been at my table I'm almost certain the year before, a blind man with a female companion, a woman in a wheel chair with a male companion, and another couple. All were black except the last couple--a white girl and an older hispanic man, both looking to be mid to late 20s.

When the last couple walked in, the woman looked annoyed--I asked her name and tried to start a conversation but she blew me off. The man with her was very friendly and said she was suffering from heat stroke (it's upwards of 90 most days here now) from being outside all day.
Within 5 minutes she was talking non-stop.

She started talking about how her baby had been taken from her because she didn't have a place to live--her 9 month old. I gathered a lot more through the one hour with them. She grew up in child protective services herself, the child of two drug addicts who unashamedly talked about using drugs. She said she met the guy she was with at Salvation Army, he didn't like the story of how she got there because it involved her being raped alot. She said she didn't care about being raped because it had happened to her again and again over almost her whole lifetime--I think she said age 3? I asked if it was a family member, she said yes.
She had lost the money she was saving to start renting some place when being raped another time and couldn't keep a job because of health problems--she was hypoglycemic and carried a few prescriptions with her.
Yes, I do know many homeless suffer from mental problems so it is difficult to be sure of the validity of many of her stories--but it was heart breaking to hear. Defeat after defeat.
And all this in a setting where for the most part people don't go on pouring out their life stories....they simply come in and eat, engaging with simple, polite conversation but rarely anything more.

As the church service part of the evening started, everyone else at the table had left except this couple. A baby across the room started to cry and she started to lose it thinking of her own girl. After awhile they offered anyone interested to get communion. They both got up and I followed them, taking the opportunity, and probably out of a lot of curiosity to ask how old she was. She was 19.

My guess--maybe 26? surely older than me. Of course, there's the fact that she's younger than me, having been pregnant and now depending on an older man, very nice mind-you, but someone she met at a shelter. But actually it was the realization that as my heart broke for her--and I started to cry for the first time in a setting like this, I'm usually the strong, seasoned volunteer type.......realizing I work with 19 year old women all the time. I lead a bible study of 19 year old women, watched them grow, develop and blossom. And here was another 19 year old in a completely different station of life. How far she seemed from the whimsical women of Georgetown!

I felt my heart wanting to do the things I usually do with 19 year old girls, sit them down, listen, follow up with them, pursue their needs. But like this program facilitated, I watched them walk through the door. Who are the people out there doing my kind of job with girls like her? How different my skills would need to be! I was surprised to see my gut reaction to her pain---and yet the commonality--how she talked about how when she came into a church she usually just found herself "talking and talking, then praying to Jesus---and it doesn't make the pain go away."
Somehow, unlike when i've heard similar comments from people of older ages who I don't think I'd know how to respond talking about spiritual difficulty or the pains of being in poverty except to say "i know" or something equally moronic--I somehow thought I could relate a little better, having been that young before......though how worlds apart our lives have been.