Lucy has six kids. Five of them she has struggled to raise. Her low paying job must provide not only for her family but for an unemployed room-mate whom she keeps around for daycare. Lucy's sixth child is being raised by one of our volunteers. Chaos is the defining word of Lucy's day to day. But still she's managed to keep her family together. That is, until last month when her apartment was sold and she had days to find a new place.

We were hopeful because there was a three-bedroom apartment right here in the neighborhood. It was subsidized, only $550 a month, and would be vacant in days. All Lucy would have to do is fill out some paperwork and apply. I had trouble containing my excitement. This would be a step up for a family who all slept together on the couch. More than that is was affordable housing, an ever-growing rarity in the neighborhood.

But Lucy never picked up the paperwork. She received her tax refund that week and it was sizable. Lucy cashed the check at our local grocery store, pocketed the money and let her worries drift away. With the cash Lucy was set. She could buy the kids new things, take her girls to the kid's amusement park and buy her sons a Nintendo. So without much thought she took the check, paid for another week in the hotel and went on a spending spree. The fact that she didn't have a permanent place to live took a backseat to the ready cash that she spent on fast food, new stereo equipment, a TV and VCR.

Lucy doesn't have a savings account, I imagine she's never walked into a bank. She cannot pay for dental care, her oldest daughter's teeth are literally rotting out of her mouth, and yet she finds enough money to buy three cases of soda, every week. Lucy is not a bad mother, on the contrary, she is one of the best this neighborhood has. She loves her children. They love her. It's just a different world.

A week later we made a visit to "Westside Budget Inn". We walked into the hotel room. Two beds, filthy and stained, a bathroom and a counter, serving as a sort of kitchenette. Perhaps 200 square feet. The floor was littered with trash and old toys and the air thick with smoke. I began to count…two adults, five kids, one boyfriend, a tank of fish, a large lizard and four cats. And there in front of me was a stack of movies, half-eaten bags of fast food, the brand new VCR and one of two large TVs.

The next day they moved to a trailer where they will divide one and a half bedrooms between seven people. And I can't figure out if I'm frustrated because I want them to be more like me, with my long term plans, savings account and retirement funds or if I'm legitimately concerned for the safety and well-being of her kids. Her life is like a foreign language to me.

As is the way of the neighborhood, she will survive. But survival is simply all it is, life will keep happening to her. In moments of crisis she will step up just enough to keep her family off the street…but no more. And not because she's unmotivated, not because she's unintelligent, nor because she doesn't value her own life or the lives of her children…only because it's all she knows. Most likely she will maintain her family's poverty without even a dream that there could be something more, something better.

Perhaps Lucy is happier than the double income families who live in mansions two miles away. I don't know. But I do know that Lucy looks tired. Her two little twin boys looked so sick last time I saw them and her daughter desperately needs someone to fix her teeth. Lucy lives on the very edge of the edge, often hooking back up with the father of her sixth child simply because he's around.

As we left the hotel we were unsettled, confused and frustrated. It's taken me a couple days to realize that my heart was so heavy because Lucy has no future. I want to storm in and change her world, establish values, boundaries and self-worth. But I can't. It's not the life she has chosen. A future doesn't fit into the cycles she was born into, the same cycles she will leave to five children as a heritage.

Hope is the seed of the eternal. God came to give us a future. And somehow we must plant that seed, again and again, hoping one day it will take root. An IRS check can sustain us through the month, but God can hold us through eternity.

So whether we're picking up kids from the housing projects, helping a class at school, teaching club at church or visiting a mom in her apartment, we find the holes and cracks, drop the seeds in…and wait.