When her health deteriorated into a disability, Christine found herself falling back into a dependence on alcohol after 18 years clean and sober. “I came [to Nashville Rescue Mission] to get myself together again,” she says. By God’s grace and with your support, she found hope here . . .
“I had a lot of people pass away,” Christine shares as part of the reason she decided to leave home and come to Nashville to start over again. That and trying to cope with her failing health—and starting to drink again to escape the pain.
“I’m battling a bunch of different things,” she says. “I have PTSD,” and more immediately, dangerous, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Christine explains that is a clogged artery in her heart that cuts the oxygen off to her legs.
But moving to the city only left her more at risk. “I stayed with my niece, but her house burned down,” Christine says. Disabled and on her own, she found herself “hopping from place to place,” as one friend called it, until finally, “I spent about a month in my car, in winter: it was scary. Horrible.”
At the same time, she was really struggling with the condition in her legs. “I was having a real hard time staying at work, on my feet eight hours a day, and just being able to get through the day,” Christine says.
Sometimes when she felt stronger, she was able to work so she could “get motel rooms here and there. But that would only cover a week or so, and then I was back in my car . . . ” where she was cold and miserable—“I had a tin can with a candle, and that warmed it up.”
But God saw Christine’s suffering and brought her to Nashville Rescue Mission for help, for love, for hope . . .
I was pretty hopeless when I got here: I didn’t see any reason to live . . . [but] I don’t want to die anymore!
Like so many others, Christine needed to heal her heart rather than just find a program to overcome alcoholism. “I’ve been through sobriety for so long, and it seemed worthless,” she says. “I’ve been in many programs. My problem was faith, my trust in God: I didn’t have any.
“The Mission has helped me. I have such a close connection with God right now,” she says.
“Having faith and humility helped me to step back and look at the whole picture, instead of just trying to deal with this tangled mess myself. I always wanted to fix everything myself, control it myself. I never gave God the opportunity to give me direction. I lost that connection, but I was able to regain it here,” Christine says.
The hope she’s found by regaining her faith is helping her heal emotionally as well as spiritually.
“I do a lot of praying—and letting go of things I don’t have any control over,” Christine says. “That was the biggest thing I learned: letting go. If I can’t control it, if I don’t have any choice in what’s going on around me, or any changes I can make to have it be better, I just leave it alone and it will all work out. As time goes by, it works itself out, with God’s help!”
As Christine grows stronger in the Lord, she’s giving back by sharing her hopefulness with more guests at the Mission: “I do a lot to try to help others, and I am reaching out,” she says. “Getting back into my faith and spreading the Word, the message”—her plan for “the rest of my life . . .”
Sharing the good news found in the Good News of Christ’s salvation is the greatest expression of love and hope we’ve been given as a ministry—and a Mission. And that is only possible through compassion in action like yours. That is LOVE. That is HOPE. Thank you!
