Today has finally arrived and I'm so excited I've been up since two something.
Today is the day Jesus walks the streets of Montgomery.
Today is the day my main Ride or Die's that can make it will come and be a part of something bigger than them.
Today is the day I see all those faces I love, my people.
I'm sitting here with soaking music on, bursting at the seams with ideas and dreams and expectancy.
God is doing a huge work in my heart and in my life and things are accelerating, growing, becoming so much more right in front of me.
The streets are not for everyone, but God just won't let me leave them.
When I look back at that life, how we made it, what our camp looked like, all the cats and dogs, it wasn't all turmoil and hell, it was life. We happened to live in a tent in the woods, underneath a magnificent magnolia tree.. It was a place to call our own, to lay down and sleep, to be alone together.
No one bothered us because we had dogs, they were afraid to come in the woods and I heard all kinds of talk about snakes and never saw a single one.
Thank God I wasn't alone, my son was with me. Thank God I didn't have to struggle day after day to get money for a room.. He kept us.
As I sit here listening to the rain, it doesn't matter, I'm still going out.
They are still going to be there, waiting for us, hungry.
I don't know how all of them ended up there, but feel sure I will before the journey is over. I have bits and pieces of some of their stories, some I'm still learning names, but they are my people.
They are there, for whatever reason, people the same as you and me, they just have different needs.
One by one people are catching on fire and catching others on fire and this is just the beginning.
I remember being so hungry I thought I was going to die. The people who did come to the boulevard only came once or twice a year, always asking me if I knew where I was going if I died that night, so I totally avoided them, knew what they had, didn't want any of it.
There are more men here than where I come from and you don't see the girls like you used to, but that's because they get taken care of, people rent them rooms, buy them food, buy them clothes, give them money for those types of things. I don't know where they are, but I've been going for well over a year now and the women are few and far between. We might see one or two, more if we go to the Salvation Army, they just aren't as visible as the men. They don't walk the boulevard anymore, not that I've seen and some of them are actually trying to stay out from down there.
Where I come from there are lots of women, tired, hungry, beat down, strung out on dope, looking for the next car that comes along.
It's something to be thankful for, not seeing them. I don't mean out of sight out of mind, I mean it just doesn't seem to be a thriving business here any longer.
I remember when I first started all those years ago, one girl, I would chase down to give food, had a pimp who was scary and never parked very far away. She didn't even want to take the food half the time. They used to walk up and down the boulevard, out in the open, all day and night.
They've closed down most of the hotels, tore down plenty more, the boulevard is slowly dying, building by building, block by block. There's a plot on the corner of Mobile Highway and the Boulevard that would make a perfect spot to build a shelter.
I have a picture of a motel type setting, horseshoe style, private rooms, unless people are willing to share the space for the night. After the shake down there's no in and out, just a safe warm or cool place to spend the night and get clean.
Plan on putting in a laundromat, pool room, public showers, clothing closet, kitchen, and chapel.
These are dreams I'm having, don't have the first clue as to how to see them come true, I just keep dreaming them and letting God put the pictures there.
He's showing me so many things right now. He's planting more dreams and ideas in me than I've ever had in my life.
He is as passionate about them as I am, as my people are.
We are the misfits, the ones willing to do something, the ones with lots of healed places in our lives and more still to be made whole. We are exactly the people we are inviting to the feast.
Pretty soon we'll be having services, maybe once a month, lots of praise and worship music with a short message. Would love to rock the boulevard that way, take all my people with me.
The church is without borders, the gospel is good news and I'm amazed at this life He gives me, this one thing I get to do that's so much a part of me. The bible says "and greater things than these ye shall do." I can hardly wait to see what that looks like.
It doesn't make me special, it makes them special to me, each and every single one, the workers and the people in the streets, the homeless, my people, God's people.
I may never see it all come to pass but there'll be someone who may reap the benefits of my dreams either way, who will inherit these things of God He's given to me.
I'm going to keep dreaming, keep hoping, keep going and keep screaming, "Send me God, I'll go!"
Today is the day Jesus walks the streets of Montgomery Alabama, February 4th 2018!
It's going to be glorious, rain or shine.
