Homelessness at the Rest Stop

I tried not to make eye-contact but she stared at my kids hanging onto my two hands. Her sign was an old pizza box-top and had something about being stranded scrawled in Sharpie. A few minutes later, we emerged from the stench of the roadside restroom. She looked eighty but appeared about forty - the tracks of meth all over her as she hunched in a dirty blue sweatshirt.

I gave her thirteen dollars "from Jesus" and she looked at my son and said, "you be sure to say your prayers." It was one of the saddest sentences I've ever heard. There was a preventative longing in her voice. I put my hand on her bony shoulder and prayed for her in her abandonment.

Turned towards the car a minute later, anger burned hot as my eyes caught a quick movement. Her 35ish year-old pimp quickly pocketed the money, lit up, and disappeared back in to the background, leaving her waving half-wittedly at my car-seated family as we took the clover-leaf back onto the south-bound.

What should I have done? What should I be doing? Under The Overpass by Mike Yankoski shines some Jesus-light onto this situation.