Everyone Has A Story

We left everything behind when we moved to Germany to take care of my mother. We knew this to be the path God wanted us to travel. At the time we already had our three children, the youngest being three months old, so traveling wasn’t easy, but it was nothing compared to what awaited us in the country which had recently been reunited. Due to large numbers of people migrating from the East to the West housing was impossible to find. Jobs were also pretty much non-existent. There’s nothing worse than being willing to work any job available and being rejected for dubious reasons. The first two months we stayed with my sister, sleeping on her living room floor. The landlord was against any long-term visitors, so we had to hide regularly to avoid serious consequences for my sister and her own family, who were in constant fear of getting kicked out for disobeying the landlord’s wishes. We were in the woods often, feeling like Jews in Nazi times! Finally we found a short-term housesitting deal just to get out of this insane situation. Our meager finances had dwindled significantly by then – we felt like beggars! It seemed that nobody wanted to help, or even cared. Right after our big move we had sent out letters (B.C. = before computers) to all area churches, asking for assistance, yet the ones who were our biggest hope either just criticized or ignored us the most. “Mistake” was written everywhere! Many hot tears flowed in those days, at night when the kids were asleep. Our confidence in God’s clear guidance waned more and more. Had He sent us to the wrong place? Did He even care? Prayers bounced off the walls without any answers. When the housesitting came to an end, we still had not found a place to go to. We were already figuring out how to sleep in our car. Five people in a Mitsubishi hatchback! Homelessness became a likely reality to us, and with it all the emotions: Anger, frustration, pain, hopelessness, even rage. Ever since then do we fully understand those who smash a window or do anything else destructive just to vent or attract attention to their situation. To make a long and complicated story short, God did come through. We were offered an apartment for the upcoming winter and things never became quite that bleak again. The lessons we learned were to see through the eyes of the homeless and thus find compassion for them, and to realize how much worse the people who rejected us will be when they face the Judge of all deeds. That’s why we have to pray for our adversaries – they need our compassion as well!

~ Hardy Loeffler