I’m so grateful to be here. God’s got me exactly where he wants me to be.

Jana says, “I came from a good home. They did all the right things. I still ended up here. To me, that just shows our life is a series of decisions and choices, and I made some bad choices.” But God offered her the choice to start over again at Nashville Rescue Mission, through support like yours . . .

Jana never thought it would happen to her but, “you hear the stories,” she says: “I’d been in a relationship for 13 years. It wasn’t always bad, but it had gotten pretty toxic, pretty abusive.”

Worse, that toxic relationship drove her down the long, deadly road to addiction.

“They used to come to school and tell you, ‘Don’t do drugs,’” she says, “I never thought I’d pick up the habit of meth.”

And before she knew it, the escape into meth, “turned from an every-now-and-then thing . . . to an every weekend thing . . . to an every day thing,” Jana says. “It took over my life.”

This sounds like a country song, but I lost my job, lost my home,
lost my dog, all within a couple of months. Then I tried to take my own life.
I never would have thought. Never.

But God recognized Jana’s hopelessness and answered her call for help: “I remember crying out, ‘God, why did you put me here? . . . Help me!’”

“I didn’t know that He was answering my prayers in taking all these things from me, pretty much breaking my spirit, so to speak, so that I’d come to Him. That’s what happened.”

It happened here! God brought her to Nashville Rescue Mission for help and hope again.

“I knew about this place,” Jana says, who, like so many others struggling in Middle Tennessee, hear about the true life change we’re privileged to offer.

“So I called and said, ‘I messed up.’” And she was blessed to hear the caring soul on the other end of the line say, “Well, that’s why I’m answering this phone.”

“I just started crying,” Jana says. And after receiving a meal, a safe place to sleep, and other Christ-centered services, she was offered hope again through our Life Recovery Program. “Part of me was like, what am I getting myself into?” she recalls. “Six to seven months?”

But I’m so grateful to be here. God’s got me exactly where he wants me to be.

“I keep getting confirmations of [God’s leading],” Jana says. “It’s just hard to explain some things—if they’d have happened a year ago, I’d have just called them coincidences. Now, they’re signs from God! I’m right where I need to be.”

“I love being here!” Jana says, appreciating, “the counseling you get every week, the community, and just learning that I’m with God. I’m who God says I am. God is building me up!”

Beyond that, Jana wants to give back by reaching other broken lives: “I have a heart to help.”

That “heart to help” is exactly what compassionate friends like you bring to this ministry, helping neighbors beat the heat, hunger, homelessness, and hurt this summer—and all year long!