We are all faced with people experiencing homelessness. Maybe it is someone we know or the familiar panhandler on the corner. We must see the homeless population as real people – not addicts or drunks or prostitutes. Instead, they are people made in the image of God. The homeless are indeed some of …
“I was broken and so tired of being alone…” All his life, Dennis craved stability, but it never seemed possible. “ I hated being around home, as a kid. My father was an alcoholic… he would get drunk and break things, screaming that he was going to kill himself.” When Dennis went to live with his …
Mollie experienced childhood trauma at the hands of family members that left her fearful. Drugs and alcohol became a way to cope with her past. They helped numb the fear – until they created a new type of fear. “Addiction began controlling me,” Mollie says. “I had no friends and nowhere to live. I …
Justin grew up in a loving home, with caring parents. But as he grew older his insecurities got the better of him. “I was always made fun of for being the smaller kid… I took it a lot harder than I should have. Then I started making excuses and looking for things to fill those voids.” His breaking …
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 …