We Were in Darkness

Glenda

“I was with someone strictly for the drugs, the drug money. He was abusive. He was mean. He was violent. I came here with a missing tooth, a front tooth gone…The hitting part was not as bad as the stuff he said to me. He’d tell me how ugly I was and that my kids didn’t like me and that I was pathetic. But I stayed because I was so addicted. I just wanted to get high.” – Glenda

“Once my parents divorced, my mom kinda went off the deep end and lost her job and lost her house, and I went from being spoiled and having everything I wanted to being on the streets with a baby in a car.” – Cambria“I was put up for adoption with seven of my siblings. We were dropped at the doorsteps of CPS…My childhood was like, What am I here for? What did you adopt us for? The money? Where’s the love? I left home at the age of 15 and lived on the streets. I was raped, never dealt with anything. I just survived. To me, that was normal.” – Elizabeth

“I lost my job. I lost my apartment. I was staying in my car, but my car got stolen. I was staying with my ex-sister-in-law, but she got mad and kicked me out. It was in December, and she kicked me out in the snow.” - Theresa

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned” (Isaiah 9:2).

The women living at the Crisis Shelter range in age from late teens to late sixties. They are high school dropouts and college graduates, successful career women and welfare moms, addicts and non-addicts, but as you listen to their stories, a common theme emerges: They were in darkness. Not nighttime darkness, but shut-in-a-dungeon, suffocating, no-way-of-escape, insidious darkness that seemed to be both within and without.

Elizabeth & Kids

Elizabeth has three children with three different fathers: “I’ve been mentally, emotionally destroyed by men. I don’t trust anybody.”

Theresa became homeless for the first time in her 50s: “I couldn’t go to my son’s house. I couldn’t go to my daughter’s…I just felt like I was out in left field somewhere screaming and hollering for help. So I turned to my drug of choice and that just took me in deeper.”

Glenda’s comfortable, middle-class life fell apart when she became addicted to opiates: “I stopped believing in myself. And it’s a vicious cycle ‘cause being high made me numb so I didn’t care. It’s such a sickness and such a vicious cycle that I didn’t see any way out.”

Cambria was homeless for three years before coming to the Shelter: “I’ve been doing drugs since I was 15. I was scared to come here. I was really scared to lose my kids. I didn’t want to ask for help. I stayed at drug house after drug house. I did the best I could until eventually all the places I had to stay ran out.”

The Crisis Shelter on East Sprague may not look like the city on a hill described in Matthew 5, but for these women, it was the light that penetrated the darkness and led them out.

Glenda said, “I think I was led here by God; I really do, ‘cause once I got here, a complete peace came over me. You can just feel God is alive in this place.”

Elizabeth described being welcomed into the Shelter with “open arms, love, appreciation for who you are and the walk of life that you have. And not being judged.”

Cambria

Cambria, who was living with her three children in an apartment without electricity before coming to the Shelter, said moving toward the light still took courage. “When I first came here to the Crisis Shelter, I was really scared. The image I had in my mind was totally different from what it really is, but I knew I wanted to change my life. It was a big step.”

Glenda concurred: “You feel so pathetic. When you make such a mess of your life, when you had everything, and then you have nothing, where do you even start to clean that up? It’s easier to stay down where you are than it is to climb back up, but it’s not happier. It’s not better. Just easier.”

Living at the Crisis Shelter with somewhere between 70 and 90 other women and children certainly isn’t easy, but Elizabeth, Cambria, Theresa and Glenda expressed nothing but gratitude.

Cambria: “Coming here, it was just so awesome because I’ve learned so much about Jesus Christ. I’ve been clean for two months now, and I’m somewhere where they’re not using.”

Elizabeth: “I’m learning more about the Bible, about Jesus Christ, about God, than I have anywhere. We’re really being blessed left and right by being here.”

Glenda: “I’m staying clean. I have no desire to go back to where I was.”

Theresa

Theresa: “Without this shelter, I don’t know where I’d be. When I first came in here, I was in darkness. I was not altogether. I was in pieces, here and there. It’s a battle every day, but I’m fighting in here. I have my bad days. I have problems, but I also have the Lord behind me backing me up. I have a safe place and food to eat, a warm bed, a shower, nice people to comfort me when I am upset and lost. The staff is wonderful, very loving, very caring. Always there when you need them.”

“In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet in the way of peace” (Luke 1:78).