Where is the hope

Happy endings are what every good show ends with. Right? And they lived happily ever after. The end. Roll the credits. Then you walk out of the movie theatre or turn off the TV and its back to the real world.

I was jolted back into reality during worship service today when my eyes settled on the names hanging in our sanctuary on the baptism board. I began to well up with tears at one of the ladies names who passed through the Green Valley recovery program. She had done so well in the beginning. Unfortunately, due to lack of appropriate housing, she had to move away from all her supports that had helped her overcome. Tina and her two girls went back to Springfield Massachusetts. She told me when she was here and sober that she could never go back there. She had no ability to resist the murmurs that would call to her from her past life as a drug addict. She knew it. She spoke it. She tried to avoid it. In the end there was nowhere affordable with the structure she needed here in Northeast, CT. The place where she was found by Jesus, baptized and her healing began. The place where she felt loved and safe had nowhere for her to live outside of the program she had finished. Her memory and face still remain in my prayers. I returned my attention and singing to the worship service with a heavy heart.

I had heard from this woman at Christmas. She called me from a laundry in Springfield where she was wandering around homeless. She had left a situation with a male roommate because “he was inappropriate with her daughters..” Her vagueness suggested she was not sober anymore and living again on the edge of death. I got her on the phone with 211 and made arrangements to go get her so she could have the shelter bed that was available. By the time Red Cord drivers arrived she was nowhere to be found.

The names of the women on the wall at my church that had begun a new life in Jesus and then had nowhere to live at the completion of the recovery program they were in is not limited to just one. There are several. These are only the ones I know about. Friends, we need a long term shelter for these women who want change. They can’t succeed when they have no home and no time to regroup after finishing rehab programs.

Red Cord Ministries is here to persist in bringing this cause into reality. A home and shelter where mentoring, discipleship and growth can take place. What is missing is the funds to do so. Pray and consider joining this local mission field. I know that it can be done through Jesus Christ.