I shared my first post-college apartment with six recovering drug addicts and a roommate whose naiveté was matched only by my own inexperience. Emmaus Ministries recruited us both to live in community and serve as staff members for a newly opened residential recovery home: Emmaus House. Our compensation was room, board, medical insurance, a CTA card and $20 a week. At first, it seemed like we had very little to offer. Neither of us could draw from our experiences living on the streets. We lacked clinical training. And the apartment that was supposed to provide shelter and hope and transformation struck us as meager at best. The carpet was worn and threadbare. Our off-white walls were completely bare. Bunk beds had been constructed, but the bedrooms lacked any semblance of privacy. The only furniture was donated, and the only full bathroom still seemed dirty after hours of scrubbing and scouring. HGTV could have spent an entire season on that single apartment. We had come together to offer a home to men who desperately needed someplace warm, inviting, and safe. Looking around that battered first floor flat in Uptown, I feared that our little community would seem woefully inadequate to future housemates.
What I failed to realize then was that our apartment was something special. Our guests slept on clean mattresses beside dressers and night stands. We ate dinner around a small table, but we broke bread together as family. My roommate and I were staff members, but we were also community members and our tiny hovel of a room was the smallest in the apartment. When my housemates walked in the front door after a long day of meetings and job interviews, they did not notice the carpet…or walls…or furniture. Music played in the family room. Smells wafted from the tiny kitchen. Laughter echoed from the front porch where our guys smoked together. I cannot deny that we had very little to offer those men, but I came to realize that a home was more than a physical place. Home meant being more than a statistic. Home meant having housemates that wept with you. Home meant shelter from not only rain but from the constant weariness of the streets.
Finding my way home involves fairly little struggle: I have a loving family, a double income household and every demographic advantage imaginable. Living at Emmaus House taught me that sometimes finding the way home is a lifelong struggle against all odds where one day offers respite and the next day another setback. Each and every man who called that apartment home was simply stopping through along a much longer journey. But for a while, at least, they knew a home whose chief attribute was not skylights or wall hangings but grace. Our little house hosted many residents and screaming matches and heartbreaks and lessons. But two years later (yes, my roommate and I stayed around for two years) I knew that we had provided a place where weary travelers could find their way home. And when you have been homeless, the color of the walls means far less than knowing someone will leave a light on for you. Every single night.
