Dry Bones: Q&A – How do these kids end up on the streets?
The short answer to this question is that the kids end up on the streets for a million different reasons.
I would like to tell just one of their stories. Tally has lived in Colorado her whole life. Her dad was never part of her life and her mom has always struggled with a drug habit. Tally was passed around among relatives for as long as she can remember. When she wasn’t living with her mom, she was living with her grandparents or aunts and uncles. She never felt welcome.
In fact, when she was only 10 years old, she remembers her uncle asking her when she was going to run away. No one wanted her, so when Tally was 11 years old, she ran to the streets.
On the streets, she was able to find a group of other kids who had similar life stories and who acted as a segregate family to her. Before entering the street life, Tally didn’t have a drug habit. It didn’t take long for life on the streets, the echoes of the hateful things her relatives had said to her, and the undeniable cold to drive her into the drug scene. At first, it was just alcohol, then pot, and soon the heavier drugs. Now, with only a seventh grade education, a drug habit, terribly low self-esteem, issues from being raped and abused in many other ways, and no home, Tally found herself desperate.
Tally’s story is just one of many horrible and “hopeless” situations in which we find young people. Dry Bones is desperately seeking to show the love of Jesus to these kids, gain trust, and lead them to a LIFE with Christ. We believe that Christ’s love will give them a new identity. We believe this because we’ve seen it happen over and over again. We believe this because it happened with Tally. How do these kids end up on the streets? The answer remains, “For a million different reasons.” How do we lead them to LIFE off of the streets? This answer is the same every time.
It is the same answer that Christ taught to His disciples – Love.
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Nikki – What a hard, but true story of so many kids out there who largely feel invisible to the world around them. Thanks for being there to give these kids, but a small introduction to a Christ that heals all, even in the midst of it hurting more. I am grateful to you all myself for having been a Dry Bones “kid” who needed to know the scandalous love of God. Thanks.