“The Lord has made a path for me”: Ken's journey to recovery

“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9)

Although providing meals, shelter, medical care, and job training is an urgent priority for us when our guests first arrive, the gospel of salvation is the only permanent solution we offer to those desiring life change. We know that when the Lord shines the light of His truth into the broken crevices of the heart, true healing can begin. We don't want anyone to merely profess Christianity; we want them to experience the mercy, the unconditional love, and the power of Christ to transform us from the inside out.  
Ken had a plan for his life: to be a millionaire by the age of 40. As a teenager, he found a good job, worked his way up the ranks, and became a regional store manager by 19. Soon, he was earning a six-figure income. “At any point in there, if you’d told me I’d end up at a homeless shelter, I would have laughed in your face.”

On October 9, 2019, Ken walked through the east door at the UGM Men’s Shelter with nothing but the clothes on his back and a file box with his prison number on it. 

“I said if my daughter is there at the bus station to pick me up, I’ll go with her, but if she’s not, I’ll head to Union Gospel Mission.”

Ken had been charged with burglary for taking a police matter into his own hands. He says he had become a “high functioning meth addict” who would climb to the top of any career he started, only to quit at the peak of success. He was angry, volatile, and controlling, and had surrounded himself with equally toxic people. But he didn’t think he needed to change.

He’d come through the Mission before, in 2016. He’d entered the Employment Ready Program and gotten back on his feet after having sabotaged another career. But he had never addressed the root of his problems. “My whole goal when I returned to UGM was to get a safe place, get a job, and go buy a bag of meth again. That was it. That was going through my mind the whole time.”

“My whole goal when I returned to UGM was to get a safe place, get a job, and go buy a bag of meth again. That was it. That was going through my mind the whole time.”

Ken had some wounds that had never been brought to light. In a 2020 interview for a UGM blog, Ken admitted candidly that he’d endured sexual abuse as a young teen. And he said, “To be honest with you, I think everybody needs that LIFE Recovery program. If I’d known I’d be here this long, I would have gone for it.” That quote started a series of events that changed the course of his life. 

“Joe [UGM intake specialist] came to me and said, ‘Is there something more we need to be addressing?’ He had read the blog. He suggested I pray about entering the recovery program. I said, ‘No I don’t pray.’ I believed God had thrown me away years ago when I was molested. I was very angry, and I did a lot of stupid things in my life because of that.”

But Ken did pray about it. “It took me a couple days… I said ‘Lord, I don’t know what’s going on right now, but I need your help.’” Over the next few days, the topic of recovery seemed to come up everywhere he turned. “People who had no reason to think of me as anything but successful—I was lead deskman, I was doing very well—would just come up and ask me if I was going to start the program.” The next time he met with Joe, he told him, "God didn’t say anything to me, but I had all these people come to me and ask me about joining.’' And Joe said, "Don’t you think that’s God’s way of talking to you?" And that struck a chord with Ken. "To be honest, that was probably the only way I would have listened.”

Once he entered UGM LIFE Recovery, Ken says he never regretted the decision for a moment. “I got to the point where it was, ‘If I get one healthy day out of this, I’ll be happy with that.’”

“God started to show me a better way to live. He taught me to trust His plan, to be content with what glorifies Him instead of what glorifies me.”

Through counseling, intensive therapies, self-evaluations, and life in community, the gospel began to transform him. Ken began to peel away the layers of coping mechanisms that had both kept him “safe” from the pain of his childhood and kept him stuck in a cycle of self-sabotage. “I learned what ‘healthy’ was, and God started to show me a better way to live. He taught me to trust His plan, to be content with what glorifies Him instead of what glorifies me.”

Ken completed Recovery in the spring of 2022 and got hired at UGM Thrift Stores where he continues to work today. He’s maintained his sobriety, and he’s back in contact with his daughter, working to rebuild that relationship from the ground up. “While staying in recovery is my A-1 priority, I’m trusting God to open doors in relationships with my family. I don’t want to force anything; I just want to do whatever He has for me. I am content with where He has me. He has made a path for me, and it’s so much better than the path I’d made for myself.”

Ken will be sharing his story in-person at the 2023 UGM LIFE Recovery Commencement.