“This is the happiest I’ve been in 3 years!”
Wendy’s bedroom at the Julia Greeley Home is literally bursting with hope and new possibilities.
Tucked into one corner of the room is a sewing machine, a measuring graph for making patterns, and other seamstress equipment. Standing on a dresser is a pretty 12-inch doll in a ponytail wearing an exquisitely made, pale-pink dress.
No one is more surprised than Wendy herself at these new expressions of hope. When she she joined the Julia Greeley Home in the late spring, she was living in a long shadow of losses, including the end of her 22-year marriage and the fading away of her home and financial stability. Escalating housing costs in Colorado had locked her out of the hope of immediate housing. The succession of crises had left her in a position she never expected to be: She was homeless.
She remembers shivering in a public stairwell, desperate to get out of the cold. “I was devastated,” she says. “It’s not something I ever anticipated in my life. Some things change in the blink of an eye and are beyond our control.”
When she joined us she asked,”What do I have to offer?” She figured that her most realistic idea was to find housing for “the elderly and disabled.”
Our image of Wendy was very different. We saw a well-spoken, refined woman with a youthful smile, who had raised a family of three children and had a variety of skills to offer. She began helping out in her parents’ cafe restaurant at age 13. As a wife and mother she served as a school volunteer and teaching assistant. Over the years she had worked in various offices and retail settings.
And she was an expert seamstress.
While she pursued her plans to become self sufficient, we urged Wendy to pursue her seamstress abilities, too. It turned out she had more than 100 slides that showed off her exquisitely designed doll clothing that she had fashioned years ago.
She retrieved her sewing machine, serger and other equipment from storage, started hunting for materials, found a doll, and began sewing again.
The new creative life she has found with us has, in turn, renewed her self confidence and self worth. Recently she found the apartment she had been dreaming about. She will be moving in shortly after Thanksgiving 2019.
We are thrilled that Wendy will still be with us for Thanksgiving dinner — she is a member of the Julia Greeley family now! Wendy feels that way too. She plans to return regularly for dinners and fellowship and she wants to keep attending bible study night.
In fact, Wendy says that since she found the Julia Greeley Home, everything in her life began changing for the better: “This is the happiest I’ve been in the last three years.”