Thank you for giving Keith a new beginning. Because of you, he has joy in his heart this Easter!
“I just couldn’t take it anymore…”
Keith’s life has been a long, tragic self-fulfilling prophecy.
“My mom remarried when I was 12,” he says. “My new stepdad always said I was stupid and that I’d never amount to anything. From that point on, I hated myself. I didn’t do well in junior high or high school. I never fit in anywhere – and I started drinking when I was 15. It just escalated from there.”
After high school, Keith left home. After serving in the military, he started drifting, always looking for purpose and somewhere to belong, but drinking always got in the way. In 1997, he finally met the love of his life and settled down. But after she died in 2011, Keith’s drinking grew, as he says, “out of control.”
“Now I feel like I have a purpose.”
When he fell into homelessness, Keith started drifting again, hopeless and alone. He even tried to take his own life.
“I just couldn’t take it anymore,” Keith recalls. “I swallowed 25 pills, lay down in my truck, and I said, ‘God, please forgive me,’ and I told my late wife I was sorry. The pills didn’t work though, so I tried again less than a month later. I ended up in the hospital in bad shape, but I lived. I never tried it again.”
Finally, tired and unable to stop drinking, he turned to your Evansville Rescue Mission.
“I’m 64 and I’d had enough,” he explains. “They accepted me into the Oasis Program, and now, I’m going to classes and Bible studies. I was always treated with absolute respect.”
Because of the help he received, Keith finally broke free of his stepdad’s prophecy.
Now, with Jesus’ love in his heart and hope for the future, Keith is grateful for your support this Easter. “Thanks to this Mission, for the first time in my life, I don’t hate myself anymore and I feel like I have a purpose. I’m thankful they gave me a new life. I hope the donors continue to support the Evansville Rescue Mission, because there are a lot more people like me who need this place.”
