West Franklin Baptist Church has become my new church home. I've been attending since late August. When I first started going there, I did not tell anyone about my situation being homeless. I didn't ask for anything. Slowly, over about a 6 week period, they figured it out. They have been the most caring. loving, Christlike congregation I have ever known. Yesterday, a lady came up to me and handed me a little gift bag for my daughter. It was simple, a stick pin, a Christmas ornament and some cookies. But it was especially for Morgan and she wanted her to know she was loved and cared for. This is particularly wonderful, because Morgan has never visited this church with me. The lady never met my daughter. She just saw a need and acted in love.
I was abandoned to my bewilderment and pain by the last church I was a member of. There were a few individuals who truly cared, and they know who they are. But the leadership in particular, chose to let me walk through the loneliest years of my life, through a desolate, wearisome, soul-crushing desert, alone. No little gift bags for my daughter, no phone calls of encouragement, no congratulations for completing my college degree while living in my car, or writing books, or choosing an excruciatingly hard path because my daughter needed me, and it was the only right thing to do. They chose to ignore me in the hopes I'd go away.
So I did.
But the hurt they caused did not. I choose not to expound on this. But I will say, West Franklin Baptist Church...you have been family to me. You earned the right to call me "brother." Long before you did anything tangible, I felt your love. You may have saved my life in the process.
Well done, good and faithful servants.
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