Coming Home to Share Healing
After our guests graduate from the Eugene Mission, many of them come back to share their love and knowledge in different ways. Some volunteer in the kitchen and stand elbow to elbow with the cooks and the servers, some teach classes or lead chapel services, and some find full-time work here as staff.
When guests first arrive at the Eugene Mission, they are weary from travel, empty of hope and often bearing heavy burdens they need to release. They are not in a place to give back.
When guests return to us in fullness and choose, in their freedom, to serve in the place where they found their healing, they declare that they found something good here. They want to share their growth and wisdom with a new group of people who need the counsel of a friend who has faced the same challenges and found a path forward.
Love isn’t always pleasant. Shaping character and bringing chaos into order is an uncomfortable process where the old is stripped away so that new life may bloom. Jesus’ disciples knew this well — the rough fishermen, the tax collector and the zealot didn’t understand loving enemies, the gentleness of mercy, or the counterintuitive command to give up their lives so they could gain eternity.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55: 8-9
In our culture, we have a difficult time saying “no”, resisting short-term solutions, and discerning between help that liberates versus “help” that hinders or grows addictions.
Instead of taking shortcuts or pursuing band-aid solutions, our staff and volunteers partner with our guests to discover and develop each person’s unique giftedness and identify the barriers that prevent them from walking in their purpose. We know their names, we listen to their stories and we work hard — together. Building relationships and pursuing a calling higher than “survival” is difficult, but worth it.
When the people who we serve come back to the Eugene Mission, it’s a testament to the power of God to transform emptiness into fullness and to help us surrender to a greater purpose in healing than the numbing of or running from the past.
“(My word) will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55 10-11
It is a very great honor and privilege to serve those who are hurting. We’re grateful for everyone, past and present, who has joined us in the service of transforming lives.
In celebration and gratitude,
Sheryl Balthrop