A Prayer for Rhonda

A Prayer for Rhonda

Rhonda (not her real name) stopped me as I walked by the coffee line.  Rhonda is a difficult person.  She is not homeless now but has been in the past.  She still comes to Manna House on a regular basis for coffee and some level of companionship.  Few, however, seem close to her, which perhaps isn’t so surprising.  She has what might be described as a “prickly personality.” 

She is easily angered and quick to take offense.   She can also be garrulous, cornering another guest or sometimes a volunteer for a lengthy monologue.  There is almost always a cigarette firmly planted in her mouth.  She is a voracious smoker.  Her hands shake when she tries to light a cigarette with the dying embers of her previous cigarette.  Years of smoking and other hard living have made her voice raspy and deep.  And in that voice she asked me, “Do you have the pictures?”  A couple of weeks before I had taken her picture, and she had made me promise to get ten copies. 

            “Yes, “ I replied, “I have your pictures.  Hold on, let me get them.”  Over the past few months, I’ve taken photos of guests who wanted their pictures taken, and then shared copies with them.  This was the first time, though, that a guest wanted so many copies.  I’m not sure what Rhonda wanted with ten copies of her photo.  I had asked her, and she had answered by glaring back at me like I had asked her a very inappropriate question.  So I got the number of copies she wanted.

            I returned from the kitchen where I had kept the photos and handed them to her.  She smiled and thanked me, “These look real nice.”  And then she said to me, “Pray that the Lord will take this sickness out of my mind.”  As she said this she pointed to her head and grimaced.  “I’m not doing very well, not very well at all.”

            There’s a river of suffering that runs each day through Manna House.  Some days that river isn’t quite visible; other days it can’t be missed.  This has been a week of bitter cold and the river of suffering has overflowed.  Guests today were especially shaken to have heard of a person on the streets in Memphis who had frozen to death.  Nobody knew him, but everybody knows that death from grinding cold and grinding poverty follows all of them around.

            Rhonda’s eyes looked tired.  Her hair was unkempt as it almost always is, and she said with insistence, “Don’t forget. Pray for me.”  I said I would. She walked away with her pictures and a cup of coffee.  She headed out the front door. I didn’t see her again the rest of the morning. 

            So tonight I’m praying for Rhonda, and I’m praying for our other guests, and for the man I didn’t know who died this past week in the cold. I take up the ancient words of the Psalms and join my voice to the pain I heard in Rhonda’s voice, “O God, hear my cry for help.  From the ends of the earth I call; my spirit fails.  I pray that you make new this heart.  Lead me to a place of rest, for you have been my refuge, my strength against the foe.  Let me dwell in your presence forever; hide me in the shelter of your wings” (Psalm 61).