The Jeans - Love Hurts

Several weeks ago I was approached by one of my homeless friends out in the parking lot of Safehouse Outreach. He told me that he thought we were the same size and wondered if I had any jeans that I wasn’t using that I could give him. I told him I did and that I would try to remember to bring them to him. Fortunately I remembered and gave him the pants a few days later.

About a week or so after that exchange I was on a city walk with a team of teenagers. We bumped into my friend and I noticed that he had on the jeans. So, as a way of starting a conversation I said to him, “are those the jeans I gave you?” He quickly denied that they were for some reason. However, I could tell that they were, in fact, the pants that I had given him.

Little did I know, but when I asked him abut the jeans I had hurt his feelings. You see, my friend did not like feeling like a “charity case.” He did not want others to know that he was wearing used/ donated pants. So, when I came to the park and said that I hurt his feelings and embarrassed him in front of his friends and my group.

It was not until this past weekend that I learned I had offended him. I lead a team to Hurt Park to do some outreach when I ran into my friend. He was already chatting with a few guys from the team when I approached. I asked him how he was doing he responded very curt with me. I could tell he was upset.

I pushed him a bit further and then he became very upset and started verbally attacking me. He began to use statements that I had made in the past out of context to try and make me look bad in front of this group. It was then that the real reason of his anger came out.

He looked at me and told me that he had washed my pants, had them bagged up, and was going to give them back to me the next time he saw me. He told me that he did not want my charity because I only gave them to him to make myself look good. I tried to defend myself for a few minutes. I then realized it was futile and I left him alone.

As we were finishing up in the park I went over to my friend one last time and told him that I was very sorry, and that I did not mean to hurt him with my words. I told him I was simply trying to spark up a conversation and the jeans were something we had in common. I then told him, “Keep the pants or throw them away. I meant them to be a gift of love.”

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You know… this is one of those things I don’t like about love. You try to reach out to help someone and they end up hating you for it. You show them love and they end up hurting you in the end. Or worse, you show someone love and they receive it as hate.

All I have ever done is try to help this guy. I have connected him to two programs, given him my own clothes, found a house for him to live in for free as long as he didn’t use drugs, established a mailbox for him, and feed him every night for years. I have bent over backwards to help him and still my actions caused hurt in him.

Sometimes love hurts. That is a reality that too many people are not willing to accept. We think relationships should just be a walk in the park. Love takes a lot of hard work. And sometimes, it hurts real badly because the person you love does not reciprocate. This is where we have to push past the hurt and choose love anyway.

The only reason I have been married for eight years is because my wife and I love each other unconditionally. She has done many things to hurt me, and I don’t even want to think about how many ways I have hurt her. Still, we choose to love each other through the hurt. The best part is we always emerge on the other side stronger and more in love.

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After I walked the group back to Safehouse Outreach I went back to the park by myself to find my friend. By this time my apology had sunk in and he was receptive to me. We spent the next few hours together just hanging out talking about life, homelessness, faith, and family. It was awesome. We were both on the other side of the pain and our relationship had become stronger than ever.