standing with hope

by Jake Swogger

The companion perspective to my wife’s process of being reborn in Christ and compelled to sobriety was also a journey of reconstruction and self-discovery for me. In the fall of 2016, we had tired of apartment living and were presented with an opportunity to rent a century old house from a family friend in a streetcar suburb of Dayton. My wife was still grieving the loss of her brother and battling her addiction, but we accepted this informal arrangement to move in and make livable an otherwise uninhabitable home, in large part because of the ways that God had been unwittingly preparing my heart and mind for this decision for years.

The home had no heat or functioning bathrooms, had several missing or broken windows, exterior doors which did not close or lock, plumbing which constantly leaked throughout the home, dangerous and inadequate wiring, and active roof leaks in several locations.  Used drug paraphernalia was a regular sight on sidewalks, and evidence of people using the house for shelter and transiting the property were abundant. In other words, it was a typical dilapidated house in a formerly prosperous neighborhood that had seen significant disinvestment over the past 50 years like many thousands of similar properties throughout dozens of Midwestern cities. But for us, and especially me, this was an opportunity to do something different, and to find restoration for myself in the exercise of mental and mechanical skill in the midst of watching my wife suffer.  I had no experience and almost no relevant skill in any of the tasks that would be required to restore the home. However, I had a few key moments where ideas were implanted in my mind and my true interests were revealed to me through events in the past which, in hindsight, God obviously arranged. And those ideas and interests, in conjunction with the labor and specialized skill of others, were the only things needed to make this endeavor a success.

There are two foundational hurdles to clear before accepting such an opportunity in life makes some bit of sense: one practical, related to requisite skill or experience to tackle the needed renovations, and the other mental, related to being able to look past the issues of a neighborhood with a majority of households living below the poverty line to see the beauty of humanity and to not see the working poor as a threat to your security.

An experience addressing the first issue – my mom bought me a set of woodworking chisels as a Christmas gift in 2015.  Those chisels, which I would come to learn were actually quite terrible, were the inspiration to begin attempting to build furniture for our family and friends. As I scratched out several bad pieces of furniture in those early years, I began to learn about basic tools needed to make things, and about the foundational building material to human civilization known as wood.  I also started to learn about my passion to make which would have been otherwise unrecognized without this gift.  This interest which was uncovered with a simple gift from the one person who knows best became the catalyst to develop all of the other skills needed to repair our future run-down house.

To address the second issue, this work to recalibrate my heart to see the potential beauty in all humans is fundamentally a work of the Holy Spirit through the application of the gospel over the course of years.  A great amount could be written on this front, but for the purpose of this blog, please accept this one truncated example from a past email exchange with a saintly woman from our church who is no longer living life under the sun due to breast cancer. Their family chose intentionally to live below their means by living in and raising their children in the city of Dayton in a neighborhood of similar characteristic to where our future house would be situated.  To summarize an otherwise lengthy reflection on the potential impacts of where we choose to live, she boldly explained her perspective for Christians to be people who live in and among communities where the needs of humans are the greatest, believing that the returns of the gospel would be greatest in such a place. This idea really resonated with me and lay dormant in my mind until such an opportunity to truly engage with it presented itself.

Original second floor bedroom.

It was with this framework that we accepted the opportunity before us, and moved in and set about stabilizing, securing, and adding a heating system to the house.  In another tragic turn of events, the family friend who we were renting the house from fell very ill and was in a position where selling the house to us was in the best interest of her life situation moving forward. So, in May 2017 we were able to make a cash transaction to buy the still badly ailing but somewhat stabilized house from her.  I need to emphasize that this was quite a leap for Sarah and I – up until this point, our arrangement in this home was non-binding. But actually taking on the task of restoring this home at the cost of literally all of our earthly wealth was put before us.  But because of ideas sown in the past and recently cultivated interests, we accepted the opportunity to rehabilitate this home with an all-in approach.

In this same timeframe, Sarah surrendered her heart to the gentle mercies of Jesus and maintained sobriety beginning in August 2017.  Sarah likewise decided that she wanted to be baptized as an adult the following month, and I was given the great privilege of baptizing my wife in the Mad River on September 30th, 2017.  The participation in the sacrament of baptism for my wife is one of those core memories which symbolizes not only her commitment to faith in Jesus, but punctuated her repentance. 

2nd floor bedroom remodel.

Also among the core memories forged in this timeframe are the works of rehabilitating our home in earnest, most of which I truly did enjoy – foundation and wall repair, window and door replacement, chimney removal, roof repairs, complete interior and exterior plumbing replacement, air conditioning installation, and all of the interior fit and finishes work was commenced.  But we did not address these issues alone.  Because of the networks of people in my professional life as an engineer working in facility maintenance and repair, as well as the vast population of people in recovery that we had become acquainted with in Sarah’s journey, we were able to involve numerous people in the restoration of our home to supplement the shortfalls of my time or skill for a particular task in ways that were quite surprising to me.

In a variety of labors, we found kinship with people in the early stages of recovery and transitional housing as they were seeking a financial restart and new networks of people to befriend to distance themselves from the destructive relationships that they had in their addiction. We were seeking to hire laborers for a variety of tasks that are made easier with many hands.  The partnership was natural, and we shared life and work with an unusual community of people through Sarah’s recovery journey that we otherwise never would have met.  And our relationship was not merely transactional – many meals were shared, Bible studies and church services attended, and prayers exchanged together.  It was the surprising work of the Spirit to pair our needs with the desires of others for the mutual flourishing of both of our lives.

What was doubly surprising to me was the categorical cross-over between the recovery community and the aforementioned networks of skilled trades people I knew from my professional life.  As we hired skilled laborers to perform some tasks that I could not, and I labored beside them as a helper, we exchanged our life stories and the gospel flowed out of those conversations. And to my surprise (I am slow on the uptake), some peculiar commonalities were discovered.  Every one of the skilled tradesmen that we had hired were also in recovery from drug or alcohol addiction in their past.  Again, I would have never had awareness of their stories if our relationships were merely constrained to the boundaries of the professional, but bridging that gap and truly getting to know those who I worked around allowed for this sort of uplifting exchange, all on the backdrop of repairing our home.

Original 3rd floor.

Our entire journey of restoring the house has been with people in recovery, whether it was initially in our awareness or not.  And what’s more, the process of manually laboring for countless hours on every project provided me with time to reflect, pray, listen to sermons or podcasts, and generally re-engage with God after a season of hardship and doubt in His goodness in the midst of trial.  And so, the restoration of wood and plaster and wiring and plumbing functioned as a process of recovery for me as well.  The truth is we are all in recovery – the weight of sin on humanity presents in many forms, but we all know the curse, and we all are seeking recovery from the manifestations of the curse in our lives.  You don’t need to believe anything higher to know that to be true, just live life under the sun for 30 revolutions or so and it will become apparent. 

My belief is about the response to this problem as explained in the storyline of the whole Bible arcing around the person and work of Jesus Messiah.  He delights to recover that which was lost (Matthew 18:10-14) and he became the curse on our behalf, and by doing so redeemed us (Galatians 3:13-14).  The weight of the curse no longer applies to those whom Jesus has adopted as sons (Galatians 4:6).  To be viewed as a son of God and an heir to his righteousness is the greatest good news of the gospel.  Let us rejoice in this offer, and may recovery come to you and your house wherever life may find you!

3rd floor remodel.