Good Works, Inc.

I grew up in Nelsonville, just down the road from Athens. My parents got divorced before I was two years old, so for most of my life I drifted from one house to the other on a weekly basis. We didn’t have much. Though my parents didn’t tell me at the time, they both were probably receiving government assistance for most of my life. God always provided what we needed, and I was able to participate in Cub and Boy Scouts, band, and other activities, though we were getting help from people to cover some of the expenses of things. Maybe it was my grandparents doing this or my friends’ parents helping out with that. I don’t know everything, but I have my grateful suspicions.

When I was in middle school, my dad got cancer. It eventually went into remission, but the chemo wrecked his body so badly that he wasn’t able to work anymore. This, plus my stepmom deciding to leave my dad, led to our house ending up in foreclosure. From then through most of high school, living with my dad was actually staying at my uncle’s. Around the same time, my mom started getting diagnosed with health problems too, so she was also not able to work anymore, either. We then lost four close family members in four years, and she sank into depression on top of her physical disabilities. Because she had a very keen and administrative mind, we continued to get the assistance we needed. In both households, though, I had to become much more responsible than many of my peers. Not to mention that my best friend through elementary school, who was like a brother to me, became my bully, leading me to quit Scouts, band, and most other opportunities for peer-to-peer friendships. The growing responsibilities at home also made me feel like I could take less and less of those opportunities, leading to growing social isolation.

As my high school graduation neared, my mom and I both developed a belief that our issues were locational; that if we could just get out of southeast Ohio, everything would be better. I see this in many people, both in southeast Ohio and elsewhere.

To cut a long story very short, we moved south, but it didn’t go well, so we ended up packing our things into a storage unit and driving back to Ohio with our Dodge Neon packed to the brim with what we could fit. We were officially homeless. I stayed with my dad for a little while, but he was by then living in a HUD-subsidized apartment, so I wasn’t legally allowed to stay there for long, so I also stayed on the couch of a friend’s family. My mom went to live in a shelter called The Timothy House.

I suppose, in many respects, I had been homeless before. Shifting from one house to the other is very transient, but it was routine, and I had never really known any different, so it seemed stable to me. When I stayed with my dad in my uncle’s attic, we technically didn’t have our own home, but, again, it was family, so that felt “fine.” But being evicted after only 4 months and feeling the shame of driving back to Ohio from North Carolina as an 18-year-old after not being able to get quite enough money together to go to the private college I’d been admitted to, and for some reason failing to find a job that would hire me (it’s not like grocery stores only hire people with extensive experience)… this was different.

My mom and I found community at Good Works, something that had been sorely lacking for years. We were accepted, and we had hope and help. We started volunteering and going to Friday Night Life after we got an apartment. My mom’s health eventually worsened to where she was unable to continue volunteering, but I kept going. When I started going to Ohio University for math education, I got involved with the student organization that Good Works led on Ohio University’s campus, Service Living. Then I did two Summer Service Internships with Good Works in 2015 and 2016, during which I began to have a relationship with Christ. When I graduated in 2018, I applied for teaching jobs, but nothing really felt right. I started to feel over the course of that season like God was calling me to Good Works, so I began working at the Timothy House.

Now, I am the Director of Caregiving at the Timothy House. Basically, I oversee the day-to-day side of the Timothy House. In the 12 years I have been around Good Works, this position has always been held by someone who has a background in social work—something I notably don’t have—or someone with life experience raising a household and working with “the system” for assistance—something I have notably not done.

I come back to Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians: “For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me” (15:9-10). In some ways, I feel like I am the least of the Directors of Caregiving I have known. I didn’t go to school for this. I spent many of my formative years retracting from social situations. But by the grace of God I am what I am, leading people in how to care for other people in a highly social role. God has raised me for this role my whole life. It is not I who has achieved to this station, but the grace of God that is with me.

Outside of ministry at and through Good Works, I spend my time playing video games, building community with friends through tabletop games, reading, and leading a small group through my church.

“In self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm not only of all creation but of all being. For the Eternal Word also gives Himself in sacrifice, and that not only on Calvary…. From the foundation of the world He surrenders begotten Deity back to begetting Deity in obedience…. From the highest to the lowest, self exists to be abdicated and, by that abdication, becomes more truly self, to be thereupon yet the more abdicated, and so forever.” –C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

And so forever. 😊