February 2018 Newsletter

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Faces Of Homelessness Changing

Rebecca, her husband and four children were a family. She worked full-time as a cashier in a retail store; he worked full-time for an industrial fabrication company. There was addiction and stress in their home. An incident occurred out of anger. The father inflicted harm to one of their children. They reported it to a school counselor. A safety plan had to be put into place. A Child Protective Services caseworker contacted Rebecca. This was an urgent problem. The father had to move out of the house. There was a no contact order put in place between him and the children. A year later, he was sentenced to three months in jail. Rebecca was torn between her husband and her children. She could not be with both anymore. The children lived with an uncle, while she was with her husband. But eventually choosing their children strained the marriage. Rebecca and her children lived with her sister-in-law for a time. One day at work, Rebecca received an unexpected text message that read something like, “Its too stressful. It would be better for you and the kids to go to Samaritan Inn.” She was flushed with fear of losing her children. She did not know that she could be here with them. She left work and map searched Samaritan Inn. Along the way, she thought, “What am I doing? Where am I going? How can I do this?” Walking and crying, she knew she had been set up to lose her children by a now vengeful ex-husband. The faces of homelessness are changing. The other night, there were 98 at Samaritan Inn, with 18 mothers and 28 children. Our society has increasing issues with domestic violence, addiction, a lack of marriage commitment, and a decreasing network of family and friends. So a family of five moved into our Samaritan Inn. Rebecca described her children as hostile and angry at first. But she said that after two days, they mellowed out. She liked the structure for meal times, bed times, no video games, and the scheduling of chores for each one. When they move from here, she is taking those routines with them. She said, “I got back to being mom to my kids – having consequences to behavior, not parenting out of guilt.” After eight months, she said, “It is amazing here, this is home. I was actually crying last week that I have to leave, because we have a place to go.”

Rebecca became a Christian through the influence of her grandfather. When she first arrived at Samaritan Inn, she said, “My relationship with the Lord was broken. I couldn’t understand why He was allowing all this to happen. The more I listened in chapel, the more He was speaking to me. It was like a still small voice that was saying, ‘Don’t be afraid.’” Her favorite Scripture is Psalm 46:5, “God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.”