More Commentary

• Commentary: Bill aims to help American Indians in urban areas
• Commentary: Albuquerque Public Schools just can't admit they let down the children of Navajo Elementary
• Commentary: Volunteer vets provide animal care to New Mexico's pueblos and reservations

MOST RECENT TRIB STORIES

• ABQTrib.com to remain available
  08:48 a.m., February 25, 2008
• Congressman is indicted
  08:37 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Series of attacks target Green Zone
  08:36 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Iran is defying U.N., agency says
  08:35 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Waterboarding approval probed
  08:34 a.m., February 23, 2008

TRIB IN THE BLOGOSPHERE*

• Ty Murray Invitational thrills fans in Albuquerque
• Is Rome Burning?
• Ominous Skies
• The Road to Invalidation
• Albuquerque company participates in “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”

*Note: The Tribune does not create and is not responsible for the blogosphere's headlines and stories. These links to blogs talking about ABQTrib.com are automatically generated. Use them at your own risk.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

SHARE THIS STORY [?]

These days, Downtown Albuquerque seems to be home for an ever-increasing number of homeless people.

They stream out of Downtown missions in the early morning hours carrying backpacks, sleeping bags and quiet desperation.

Some, for whatever reason, have made the streets their "home." My heart goes out to all the homeless I see around Albuquerque, and I wonder what agonies they have endured that have resulted in their present plight.

I grieve as I watch the obviously uncomfortable reaction of many people who pass by the homeless. They shift their eyes, look right ahead and ignore the troubled human being so close to them, whose body, heart and soul is silently screaming for help.

Is that discomfort due to a lack of compassion, or just an inability to know how to help? With the ongoing generosity from New Mexicans and the goodness of the Lord allowing us to sustain Joy Junction - a large faith-based Albuquerque ministry for homeless families - for over two decades, I opt for the latter explanation.

But at the same time, I also wonder what would have happened to me if I had been ignored because of people's discomfort just over 25 years ago when I was also homeless on the New Mexico-Texas border.

Back in 1982, I was in a terrible predicament from which I couldn't emerge on my own. I was also experiencing a terrible emotional roller coaster of failure and worthlessness. Life was just too much for me, and I didn't know how to make it change.

On a cold, late January evening I stood by the road as cars sped by, but no one was stopping. As the hours went on, I got progressively more weary.

I didn't have enough money for a hotel across the street and a phone call to a church offered a night's sleep on the floor, but it was five miles away. The prospect overwhelmed me. It wasn't that I was too lazy to walk five miles on an unknown Texas highway. I just didn't feel emotionally able.

After trying to sleep in a secluded, uncomfortable grassy area, I thought desperately, with tears beginning to cloud my eyes, what could I do now? I ended up in storage shed behind a restaurant sleeping on a piece of fiberglass.

I got up early the next day (fiberglass is not my first mattress choice) and on the highway a trucker soon stopped and gave me a ride to Phoenix. By this time, I was starving. Without my asking, the kind trucker shared his sandwiches with me.

Looking back almost 26 years later, I can see the Lord's hand in my life. Back then I was just another scared, depressed, dispirited, homeless person on the road - and one who felt his life was going nowhere fast. Now I am the founder and CEO of Joy Junction.

That transformation came through God's grace in my life and is told more fully in my book "Homeless in the City: A Call to Service" (www.homelessbook.com).

One recent Sunday afternoon I decided to return to that place so many years ago and took the approximately three-and-a-half hour drive to the New Mexico-Texas border. But despite going to towns on both sides of the border, I was unable to find where I had been homeless that eventful night so many years ago. Perhaps I was in the wrong town, perhaps that little town I still have vividly pictured in my mind from over a quarter century ago had grown up, just like me.

Disappointed and hungry after my wanderings, I stopped at a restaurant in Las Cruces to get some supper as nothing more than an anonymous guest three hours from home. But was I in for a shock!

The hostess who showed me to my table looked at me and said, "Aren't you Jeremy Reynalds from the homeless shelter in Albuquerque?"

I acknowledged that I was, and asked her how she knew. She said she had volunteered with her parents at a recent holiday meal we had held at Joy Junction. Although she lives in Las Cruces, her parents live in Albuquerque and she had joined them.

I ate and was on the way out when another woman stopped and looked at me and said, "Excuse me, are you Jeremy?"

Again I said I was, and this delightful lady thanked us for the work we do with the homeless in Albuquerque and told me how much she appreciated it.

It dawned on me that 25 years ago I would have been invisible to everyone, but 25 years later I was recognized 300 miles from home by caring people who have made a contribution to Joy Junction.

A quarter century ago I was helpless, dependent for my next meal on the kindness of people like the trucker who shared with me. Now 25 years later, the Lord has allowed me to be a helper by heading a ministry that feeds hundreds of meals daily.

God is truly so good!