This is a redemption story about one who was lost, for quite a while, in the faceless and sickly fogs of homelessness.

When a person becomes dark all over, they have known the streets too long. This kind of gray becomes a definer, and a camouflage of invisibility to the bright colors of the people who come and go. This is not the gray of old age, but a hoary color that takes on the street’s oils, its accumulation of road debris, the odors of an untouchable, and its filth found only in the hidden corners where the homeless cringe. It is the grizzled look of one who can only steal a toss of water in the face from a public restroom.

The ashen demeanor of the homeless also takes away much meaningful speech, and truncates it to a wilted salad of words driven by the harsh winds, or the powerful beating sun, or the unprotected storm, or the occasional alcohol that makes the confusion seem more tolerable for a while. I often think with such distress about what it must be like the first time when a homeless person sits down on a curb as their only furniture.

My dear friend Brother William was one so oily, and so darkened by the streets that he was gray from his poorly shod feet to the top twist of his untrimmed and wild hair. The only thing that would not submit to the layers of tar that coated him were his sky blue eyes that refused to ever go dark. Actually William’s eyes hunted me down with the searching beauty of faceted gems shot through with an otherworldly light. Shining out from this battleship gray wall they were so incongruous as to be alarming.

When my husband Jim and I met William it was more than a decade ago. He regularly appeared around our neighborhood supermarket. Many people knew him--from the store’s staff to hundreds of neighbors. Local restaurateurs saved evening meals for him that he never requested. He was usually quite affable, when not disoriented, and because of this many people willingly gave him money or food.

Under the thick layers of street dirt he seemed to most to be a homeless person who was approachable to give a hurried bit of charity and even a greeting of acknowledgement. I never felt that William went hungry, or that he lacked the money that could have served him better. He really didn’t care too much at all about anything material.

William needed something more that was profoundly lacking at his core, that no one was yet able to give to him, and nothing had been found to assuage a grief too deep to be uttered. The story of each person is so beautifully unique--each one of us--our background so exquisite in the dignity to survive. I learned from William that the homeless are not a stereotyped hoard, but individuals with stories that any of us would thrill to hear at the best dinner party. And then one terrible thing, or a convergence of events, sends a heart into the wilds of a harsh exile from which release comes with great difficulty

My story is about the blessing of how William was reunited with his loving family in Texas after more than a dozen years of living in alleys, behind rocks at the San Diego shoreline, curled in local hedges, or under the eaves of the buildings closed for business at night. I would find out much later that his one big thing that had sent him into this extended wilderness trial was his military duty in Desert Storm, with an honorable discharge, that rendered him unable to live in a house, or an apartment. The battlefields had left him endlessly tramping, unable to care for himself, and unwilling to be anyone but an outsider and a street-specter.

It took many years to break through to find out some of William’s story. Some times his speech was so confused, or he might be in a kind of a protective trance, or alcohol had kept him warm during the night. I had a special entrée with him as I had to be at the local bus stop each weekday morning at 6:00am. He was usually there upon rousing from wherever he had slept that night.

I would bring breakfast for him, and we would talk and pray together over our ever so differing days. William knew full passages of Scripture that gave me the hope to ask him if we could pray together. I asked him if he wanted Jesus to stay by his side, as his Savior, on the long lonely days and nights, and he said yes! We prayed for Him to be the Lord of William’s life. This so joyously blessed him. I will always be blessed by the simple authenticity of his prayers for me just before I boarded the bus for a busy day of work at UCSD--me in the rarefied worlds of academia and William on the streets where he was sometimes reviled and verbally abused by strangers, or by other homeless people who wanted what looked like his prosperous sites.

I found out, after many years of mutual trust that was grown, that before his military service he had driven trucks for a Christian publisher delivering parcels of books to local bookstores. Also, he told me that his parents had both died when he was very young, and that he had a wonderful aunt and uncle who had raised him as their very own, along with his cousins, who were like his siblings.

This wonderful family of his had a thriving business right here in Bird Rock where we both lived. When he returned from Desert Storm they would try to keep him off the streets, and would rent apartments for him that they would find unused. They wanted him with them, but he was unable. They would give him money that he would give away to anyone else who asked, or even if they didn’t ask.

William has a remarkable memory especially for sports’ statistics ranging from skateboarding, to football, and baseball. This made him a great friend to many of the young men who worked in the supermarket. These men truly revered William, as Jim and I did. But he would not be moved off the streets no matter how much we cared for him. And so his wounds went unhealed because it was hard to be around him for very long due to his lack of continuity in speech and his erratic unsociability.

He told me that the time came when his aunt & uncle sold their business and retired to Texas. They tried everything they could to get him to come with them, but he would not go. San Diego, because of the climate, is one of the more tolerable cities to be on the streets. And so they left, always searching the streets for him when they would return for a visit, and missing him in his new local haunts.

It was around 2000 when I asked William if I could just try to find his family for him. It was still not a time that tracking people on the internet was as fluid as it is now, and as well his family had a fairly common surname, and we were not sure of the city they had moved to. William was not fully ready for this, but he said I could try recognizing that I had little to go on. Phone calls with people on the other end of the line who didn’t know anything about my story, and many returned envelopes filled the next years, and still William wasn’t ready.

In 2005 William was going to become 50. I told him about what the 50th year, or Jubilee, meant to the Israelites—that it was a time of being released from a past servitude into a new freedom. He told Jim and me that he didn’t think he could live another year on the streets, and that we were given his full release to find his loved-ones.

Another neighborhood friend had given William a radio and kept him replenished with batteries. This helped immeasurably in his coherency and his sociability. As he listened to his beloved Padres and Chargers games, continuous and steady speech was coming back to him.

I started in earnest with names from him for family, no matter how distant in relationship, that were uncommon names that might also reside in Texas. With this information I found a phone number for a distant cousin to his Uncle. I was so full of excitement as I flew back to work from a lunch break that had finally eventuated in a call that found people who knew all about William’s story, and with the promise that his Aunt would call me back that night. She wept as we spoke together to hear the news that he wanted to come home, at last.

I had to really hunt that evening to find William, but when I did he also wept at the reality of a real homecoming of family love that was right before him. I stayed and watched as relief flooded his sore back, and as I told him about next steps and how we all agreed with him, that things should now move very rapidly

The next important details were overcome: getting him his CA identification so he could board a plane, his aunt sending the tickets, and the night before the flight cleanup and shave for boarding. Jim and I took him the next morning to the San Diego Airport. Before we left there was a touching send-off in the supermarket parking lot from numerous friends who wanted to say goodbye. These many people who had loved and helped William in this transformation were all weeping for joy as he gave a final wave to them from the car. We all marveled at the new flesh-colored William, in button-down shirt, with no wild hair and beard--a bit overwhelmed, but excited to go home.

I still can’t imagine how brave it was for him to enter such a busy and public place as a modern airport. I had it set up that an airlines attendant would meet him at every gate so that he wouldn’t be afraid and overcome. Jim and I prayed with him before he went through the security lines. The people in San Diego were so kind as to let me be the one to take him to his initial boarding place as he left the city of his long travail.

When we got to the gate, just before the flight, I called his aunt to let him speak to her and to give him one more bit of encouragement for the trip. When I turned over the phone, his statement: “I’m coming home, Mom!” was the blessing of a lifetime to me. Before he walked down the tunnel to board, my amazingly courageous Brother William--formerly the untouchable--kissed me on the cheek and told me that he loved me. I sat there and watched with my heart pounding (it seemed as loud as the plane’s takeoff) as the supernatural flight took my Brother to loving freedom, and a family with open arms and hearts.

They called me when he arrived in Texas. He had done so well. Soon he was in their warm and massive home that has many acres of ground. He had an upstairs to himself, and is so beloved by his whole family, including nieces and nephews with sports interests. He also attends local major sporting events. With their dogs (for a while he had a dog as a homeless man) he walks the acres, no longer a cruel trek, but one in which he fixes fences, and enjoys the regularity of getting home in time for a lunch of tender fellowship. His mom tells me that it was many months before he was able to sleep on a bed, and also that he talks freely about his days on the street with his trusted family, and they cherish his authenticity in this.

We are in touch throughout the year, especially on holiday and birthdays. Three years after his return to his family I was in a city close to their home for a conference. Brother William and his mom visited me. What a bright and attentive conversationalist my brother is now. As our eyes met, I knew that he was still my brother, but happily now with a real address—no longer in my neighborhood, but always in the close vicinity of my heart.

I will always call him Brother William because I wanted him to know that he was still part of the family of our hearts even in his times of wandering and bereft loss. Whatever had been lost in Desert Storm had now been replaced by the clarity of the love in his fountain of life family. We revel in thinking of his heaven blue eyes cutting through the fogs of battle to the open fields of glory!

Jesus in John 1:38-39 buoys my heart with His answer to the question the disciples posed to Him: “…’Rabbi (which means Teacher), where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and you will see.’….” Our Brother William was braver than any soldier in any sandstorm when he went to see clearly how much he was loved by the Lord to always give him a home with Him, and with a loving and surrounding family of his own.

In any state of being alone the Lord will always say: “Come and you will see.” Just ask Him where He lives. It will always be in the place of love’s greatest adventure.