Habitat Makes Homeownership a Reality

Bad became worse when her parents' house caught on fire and everyone was displaced. Lisa shuffled the kids between friends' houses and rentals paid for by insurance while the fire damage was repaired. When she called the local Habitat office for the first time she laid it right out. She needed a house RIGHT NOW. Her patience had dwindled and she was desperate. But the homeownership program is a process, not a quick fix, as she learned when she called that day. When she spoke with the family service coordinator, she was tremendously impressed with his awesome attitude and empathy. "Bless his heart," says Lisa. "He never said 'no.'"

With encouragement from the affiliate staff, Lisa was able to gather the strength she needed to sign on for a year or more of hard work. She prayed and cried and went on ahead. Twice, Lisa had tried to purchase a home the traditional way, but the options were either unaffordable or in neighborhoods where she wouldn't feel safe raising her kids. She even applied for Section 8 housing, and found out that it came through the very day she was offered her Habitat house. Lisa wouldn't take the easy way out, though. She persevered for her children. They had been troopers for too long.

God's Hands

Last May, I was sitting at my college graduation ceremony. As I sat there listening to our speaker laud the achievements of our student body, I started thinking about how much of the credit for my achievements belonged to me, and how much belonged to the many people who had helped me to finally arrive at that assembly. I had completed my college education with the academic help of teachers, advisers and good friends, in addition to the generous help of scholarship supporters who had made my education financially possible.  Certainly they deserved just as much, if not more, credit than I did.

Looking beyond those college years, I remembered the countless people who had helped me to get on the road to college. I wondered how many of them ever knew how they had helped me. How many of the Habitat volunteers knew that helping my family move from my grandparents' drafty unfinished addition to a warm insulated house brought an end to my constant illnesses and allowed me to study? Does the aged electrician who taught me about electrical currents remember the little girl who watched him with wondering eyes? How much credit belongs to the volunteers who spent countless hours building our house and taught me that it was possible to overcome seemingly insurmountable circumstances?

My family's difficulties had seemed completely overwhelming before we learned about Habitat. My father had lost his job and we were losing our rented house all at the same time. I remember the paralyzing fear I felt watching my father cry, and thinking that if my all-knowing parents didn't know a way out of our predicament then there couldn't be one. But unbeknownst to us, there was a way out for us, and hundreds of people who had never met us came together and provided it.

I've frequently heard people tell those who are struggling that "God will provide a way." And it's true, He does. But even as I am thankful for God's provision both in giving our family a home and in helping me get through college, I am also thankful for the uncounted number of people who chose to be God's hands — who gave their time, money and supplies toward my family's future and my own. And as I pray and thank God for my blessings, I thank God for those individuals and pray that, like them, I will become one of God's hands.