COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - Preparing for 3 days of living like a homeless man requires some shopping. Like most men, I need help.
After all, if I want to blend in with the homeless crowd, I have to look the part
With my wardrobe picked out, I head out on the street. Once I'm out walking the walk, I realize this is the hard part. Not so much physically, but mentally and emotionally.
The thoughts quickly turn to my wife and two children I have left at home. I'll be gone for 3 days. They know what's going on of course and I'll be back on Friday.
As I eat, sleep, and pray side-by-side with the homeless, I miss my family, my home, work, and life as I've always known it.
That feeling is a luxury out on the streets. Most of the men I meet along the way want very little to do with their past. In many ways, their past is what pushed them to the streets. Not me. I can't escape my past, and I don't mind.
It's now Wednesday evening just before 7:00 p.m. and I look inside a building to see reminders of my reality: four TVs all tuned to different news channels. And I realize I haven't watched the news in a while.
The stories on television mean nothing to the ones I've been hearing from the men at the Oliver Gospel Mission.
Back at the shelter, I meet up with Jolrancy Talley, or JT as he's called around here.
"I was just so desperate," said JT. He knows how tough it is to let go of his past. When he knocked on the doors of Oliver Gospel Mission, he was desperate with death not too far behind.
"I was at a point where I don't know if I would have took other measures," said JT.
Physical and emotional pain pushed JT into a life of addiction. Pills, marijuana, and alcohol, all used to "self-medicate" as JT puts it, for years.
This time, in his darkest hour, JT sought the help of God and Oliver Gospel's recovery program to help beat his addictions by healing his mind and heart.
Through 9 months of daily chapel and scripture sessions, intense therapy, and tough love, JT endured.
"They reassured me and told me I was in the right place, that I could definitely get help if I wanted it," said JT.
Living an independent life with addiction not too far in your past presents plenty of challenges -- like managing money and old habits trying to pull you in. But folks at Oliver Gospel, like Ed Lugo, say going beneath the surface works.
"What we see in an iceberg is what's on top of the water, but we don't see what's underneath and how big that iceberg is," said Lugo.
Chiseling away at the mess hidden deep below the addiction is not a job to Lugo. It's a calling.
"My God tells me we'll always have the poor," said Lugo. "We have the responsibility to help provide for them and not expect anything in return."
The job may not make him a wealthy man, but what Lugo gets back is seeing a life transformed right before his eyes.
Hope has taken JT a long way. Now a graduate of Oliver Gospel's recovery program, he's on track to graduate with an associate's degree in computer programming.
It's a future JT sees with a clear mind free of addiction now being filled with the skills to one day be a business owner.
"I'm happy to be attending school, I'm happy I got my own place and vehicle," said JT. "I'm back on track."
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