My couch smells like joy.

Take a deep breath. Sniff down deep under the layers of Febreeze, and day-old potato chips and you can smell it.
OK, if we had really had scratch and sniff going on, it would actually smell like unwashed bodies and possibly five-day-old alcohol breath.

But to me, and those I work with, it smells like joy.

Yes, I run this little corner of the universe called Hope Ink, but I do it in association with Youth With A Mission Pismo Beach. We’re a little conclave of a much larger international group of Christian missionaries whose sole joy is sharing the love of Christ with those we meet. In addition to my editor duties here at Hope Ink, I spend a lot of quality time loving on people.

One group we particularly reach is the homeless community. You would think that in an idyllic setting like the Central Coast, you wouldn’t see people with such hardships, but homelessness is quite prevalent here. Take a walk in downtown San Luis Obispo, or cruise Highway 1 through Oceano, and there they are. Lounging on the grass, pedaling single-speed bikes laden with cans, playing guitar barefoot.

You would think they are so visible they would be unavoidable, but after three years here, I’m pretty sure that Mary Poppins was right: Some people cannot see anything past the end of their own nose.

Sadly, when I first moved to California, I was one of these people. I had not really had any interaction with the homeless, and it made me uncomfortable to be around people who came from such a different background. Then one day my friend Cody brought some home so he could feed them some lunch.

My mind revolted. Clean, good-smelling couch + dirty, smelly homeless person = dirty, smelly couch. This did not sit well with me, but the polite Southerner in me could not deny anyone hospitality.

That first day, I kept busy, trying to avoid contact as much as possible. I kept busy to avoid the smell and the ugly looks I would undoubtedly give them as I watched them turn my clean couch to a dirty one.

But one day, I started talking to one of the women who came to our house weekly for dinner and conversation.
Patta was the most belligerently drunk person I had ever come in contact with. She made no effort to hide her drunkenness. The years of alcohol abuse had whittled her 60-something-year-old brain down to the most basic of child-like needs.

Of course, there was pity there, but Patta was also full of spit-fire. She had a grip that belied her frail frame, and she could hug with the best of them.

Beneath the drunken exterior beat a heart of gold, and my heart reached out to this ragged, flawed, but infinitely precious woman.

For two years, I saw Patta through dark as well as light times. Times where she would beg me to take her money so she wouldn’t spend it on alcohol, only to come back a week later to ask for it back.

Times of repentance, where she would go into a safe house away from the streets, and moments of frustration when we would find her back on the street.

Patta once told me that she loved all of us, and we were her friends, because we took the time to listen to her. Not that we fed her, or gave her clothes, although we did those things too. We didn’t do much, perhaps, in the eyes of the world, but we filled one of the needs she most lacked: a sense of dignity.

Instead of just another ragged face on the street, she became a friend, reconnected to a society that had left her out.
Patta is now off the street, living with a Christian woman in Oceano, hopefully for good. It is her image that I keep in my mind with every person I help.

Now when a street kid comes in and has a seat on my couch, I think of all that simple act of bestowing dignity can mean.

And I think of the joy that they will leave there when they are gone.