BY: Jennifer Stottlemire

What does it mean when a junkie gets a home?

When that heroin addict has a solution that breathes life where there once was none?

When an alcoholic can finally put that bottle down long enough to see a future beyond a 12 pack?

When needles, pipes and cut off straws no longer exist in a daily….who am I kidding…hourly routine?

When the hopelessly lost becomes immeasurably strong?

I will tell you what it means.

It means someone didn’t give up on them.

It means someone showed them they were worth it. Someone loved them til they could love themselves. It means someone had something in life that they wanted; and this time it wasn’t material. Someone surely gave them hope, even if it was just a glimmer.

And that someone, well, they believed it was finally possible, even when it didn’t seem like it.

[There’s that “glimmer” again]

Glimmers are good for us addicts and alcoholics.

So yeah. We got a house. A home. A roof over our head.

All by ourselves, well at least literally speaking.

It took a lot of people to get here. It took family, in the traditional and nontraditional sense.

It took a fellowship and brothers and sisters for life. It took a program. A book. A spiritual shot. It took a treatment community that saved our lives: me once, my husband, twice. Thank God for second chances.

It took a foundation that gives hope to the one’s everyone else gave up on, including themselves. It took them saying “they are worth it.”

It took a church that looks at the broken, not the perfect; the sick, not the healthy. A pastor who says “come all who are weak.” It took a body of believers to speak truth into an unbeliever.

It took many.

We fought hard? Yes, but man have we been blessed with so many rallying along.

We both sit here this a.m with so much to be grateful for.

We’ve been homeless. Lived in drive in movie theaters and tents. We’ve went from couch to couch. Basement to basement. Had to heat water on the stove for baths and use candles for a tiny glow of light just to escape the immeasurable dark. Sleep by the fireplace for heat.

Those things are and always will be real to us, but today? Well today its different. Today it’s, “home sweet home” and a huge thank u to you all.

About The Author: Jenn is an emerging young writer, Mother, Wife, and all around amazing women in recovery. She resides in Columbus Ohio with her husband David and wonderful son Jackson. As Jenn always likes to say

“To God Be The Glory!!”