When Sara first walked through the doors of Gateway Mission, she felt lost and broken. “I was used to always being the helper, not the one who needed help,” she says. “I was scared and angry, and felt like I had thrown my life away.” Sara grew up in church and went to Christian schools. She had a …
All Megan knew growing up was chaos and dysfunction. “My dad was an alcoholic and there was domestic violence… you start to feel like that’s normal.” Her older sister raised Megan and did her best to shield her from the turmoil. “But it had a bigger effect on me than I thought, because I started …
As a child, Maria thought she had the perfect family. So she was shocked when her parents divorced when she was 15. “My life went down from there… I just didn’t care anymore. I started drinking, using drugs and skipping school.” For decades, Maria used drugs. First alone, and then she did drugs …
Terry still remembers the pain he felt when his parents divorced, and his beloved family members died a few years later. “I was a pretty angry youth… mad at the world. I lost my older sister when I was 17 and my grandma a few years before that.” He fell in with the wrong crowd and turned to drugs …
“The Lord showed me a different way to live.” Carl and his fiancée left Michigan and moved to Florida in search of a better, slower-paced life. Then the pandemic hit. “Immediately, neither one of us were working. We were struggling and stressed, so we fell back into some old habits,” he says. Carl …
“I’ve been blessed by so much love.” From all outward appearances, Barbara’s adoptive family seemed an ideal environment for a little girl. Yet unbeknown to those outside her home – and ignored by the adults within it – she was being abused by an older sibling. As she grew older, the pain and …
Ken grew up with parents who were both alcoholics. But in trying to escape the chaos in his house, he started spending time with the wrong crowd. “I tried to stay away from home as much as I could, and I ended up hanging out with the wrong kind of friends. I tried drugs at age 12 and it put me on a …
Scott didn’t know how to cope when he lost his mom, dad and brother in a period of about six years. “I had a lot of confusion and loneliness and hurt, and just wondered ‘why?’ I started using drugs to numb the pain and fell into substance abuse. Things went awry really bad.” Throughout his …
Owen turned to online video games as a teen to escape from daily life. “I was struggling with loneliness. Students at school were harassing me and making me feel unworthy of love,” he says. But what started as fun quickly spiraled into obsession. Owen also developed an addiction to pornography, and …
Richard spent 20 years driving trucks and enjoying his life on the road. Then a doctor’s diagnosis changed everything… “I got diabetes and it disqualified me from trucking,” he says. “I couldn’t drive, so I lost my truck, which was also my home.” Now homeless, Richard also felt completely alone. As …