When Your Life Changes Without Your Permission

Some changes in life arrive gently.
Others come without warning—reshaping everything before we’ve had time to prepare.

In this episode, Laura sits down with Karen Davidson, a deaconess and co-creator of Suds n Buds, a ministry that offers laundry support and care for those experiencing homelessness in her community.

What begins as a conversation about practical service becomes something deeper—an honest reflection on what it means to show up when life doesn’t look the way we expected. Together, they explore how small, ordinary acts of care can restore dignity, create connection, and remind us that presence often matters more than solutions.

This is a conversation about compassion, about meeting people where they are, and about the quiet ways God is at work in places we might otherwise overlook.

If you’ve ever found yourself navigating change you didn’t choose…
or wondering what it looks like to care for others in a real and meaningful way…
this conversation is a place to sit for a while.

Pull up a chair.

About Karen

Karen Davidson is a deaconess and co-creator of Suds n Buds, a ministry that offers laundry support and care for those experiencing homelessness in her community.

Her work is rooted in simple, meaningful acts of compassion—meeting people in everyday needs while offering presence, dignity, and care.

As a deaconess, Karen walks alongside congregations and communities, helping them find practical ways to care for others in real, tangible ways.

She lives in Huntsville, Alabama with her husband and enjoys time outdoors, especially biking and walking with her dog—preferably when it’s a little warmer than freezing.

Sometimes care looks like doing something.
Sometimes it looks like simply being present.

As you move through your week,
notice where you’re being invited to show up—
not perfectly,
just faithfully.

Resources & Ways to Learn More

If this conversation stirred something in you and you’d like to learn more or support this kind of work, you can connect with ShowerUp:

• Learn more about the Huntsville ministry: https://showerup.org/huntsville/ 
• View locations and upcoming opportunities: https://showerup.org/huntsville-calendar/ 

Breath Prayer 

Let’s take a slow breath together.

Inhale: You are seen

Exhale: You are not alone

Closing Blessing

Hear this blessing, my friend

As we come to the end of this conversation,

may you remember that care doesn’t always have to be loud to be meaningful.
That small acts—offered with love—can carry more weight than we realize.

May you notice the spaces in your own life
where you are already showing up,
already offering something steady and good.

And if you find yourself in a place of needing care,
may you be met with gentleness, dignity,
and someone willing to simply sit beside you.

You don’t have to do everything.
But what you do… matters.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to At the Counter with the Baking Pastor. I'm Laura. Pull up a chair. There's no rush here. This season, we're sitting with the hard days. The ones that don't resolve quickly. The ones that change us in ways we we didn't ask for. Here at the counter, nothing needs to be fixed. You don't have to have the right words. You don't have to have it all figured out. You can just come as you are and stay a while.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

This is hard days at the counter. Some days, care doesn't happen in the big moments.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

It happens in small, ordinary places like a laundromat. Places where the hum of machines become kind of a background music, and where something as simple as clean clothes can restore a sense of dignity and a sense of being seen. This conversation is about fixing anything. It's about what it looks like to show up, to care in ways that are quiet, practical, and deeply human. Today we're sitting at the counter with Deaconess Karen Davidson, who is the co-creator of Suds and Buds, a ministry supporting the unhoused in her community with laundry support and pastoral care. In her role as a deaconess, Karen supports congregations and communities to care for people through compassionate programs and practical services. Her work is rooted in simple, meaningful acts of compassion, meeting people in everyday needs while offering presence, dignity, and care. As a deaconess, Karen walks alongside congregations and communities, helping them find ways to care for others in real and tangible ways. She lives in Huntsville, Alabama with her husband, enjoys outdoor, especially biking and walking with her dog, but preferably when it's a little warmer than freezing. Welcome, Karen. We're glad to have you at the counter.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Thank you. It's good to be here.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

I can appreciate that not freezing weather. That's chilly. Yes. So can you tell me about Suds and Buds and how it began? Because it's such a cool name. And I learned about it when you were being consecrated as a deaconist sister of mine. And I got to come and hear about it. But I think it's a message that listeners need to hear.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Um when the invitation came along to art a laundry support ministry at a laundromat, we were I'm a co-creator and we were just storming how we would make it happen, coordinating with the owner of the laundromat. And just one morning the name came to me. So Holy Spirit. But the pressure was so strong that I visited a local printing place and they did the image for me. And we had now we have t-shirts and little tote bags. We have something to put on the um side of our trailer, our laundry trailer, and so it it was necessary. So sometimes you just gotta listen.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Yes, you you do need a logo and you do need to listen when the Holy Spirit gets all up in business. Yeah. So how did this idea even occur to you? I mean, you weren't just like walking around looking for a ministry, were you?

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Yeah. No, I was not. So I was a clinical pastoral education student, which is part of our competency as uh diet conal education and formation. And I was serving at first stop the name of it. That was my site, my clinical site. And I'd been there about six months, and they were uh in the process of tearing down that building so that they could build a better one. It was a big, big capital campaign. And one of the, I should say, first stop is a day center for unhoused people. So it opens at eight, closes at one. Uh you can come in and get breakfast, we served lunch, you could take showers, and you could wash a load of clothes. And that had been there for 20 years, maybe almost 30 years. People were very accustomed to the services being offered. When the time came to tear that building down, we moved to a temporary location that did not offer the ability to have showers or laundry. So there's where it was born, and so I was asked um if I would be willing to help people wash clothes at the laundromat that was nearby. And I said yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Was there like a standout moment where you knew this wasn't just an idea, but it was something that was meant to happen and something that you were meant to do?

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Yeah, I'm the co-creator. Uh, the the other person who created it with me, the Reverend Rosie Beale Eby, is an Episcopal priest. And at the time she was my supervisor, CPE supervisor, and that morphed into an intern supervisor. So we were working closely together, and she was very good at at sort of just letting me take care of it all. You know, she her part of it was she talked to the laundromat owners, they said yes, and then she said, Okay, Karen, you're free to do whatever you want. And uh I have a background in business, so um I had we had a small budget. Uh the laundromat was coin operated. So I used to carry around a little red box filled with $400 worth of coins in it, and just my natural business sense um kicked in. And so I knew how to budget, knew how to do things, and how to run stuff. The laundromat owner um trusted me explicitly, gave me keys to the laundromat, you know, keys to the back room, I locked things up. And so before I knew it, you know, I was the one person in there with, you know, all the clientele washing clothes and then helping the neighborhood people who were coming in and washing clothes and didn't know how to operate stuff. So um that I think is an innate skill that's in me that kind of just kind of comes out. But I think that what I realized that you know I could run that smoothly and make confident decisions about the budget and work with expectations. Some people came in with buggies just full of clothes, you know, and making decisions about whether or not I could afford a bigger washing machine that takes nine dollars and get everything done and get them dried, or could not, you know, and that was always on a daily basis. The budget, you know, kind of moved up and down. I knew I only had $450 and it had to last me the month. So yeah, I I kind of it it kind of just was like, yeah, you know, I can do this. Like I have skills already to do this, but never thought I'd be applying them in that way, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Were there ever moments when you were close to the end of the month and people still had needs and your little red box had no more money?

SPEAKER_02 8:40

Yeah. And sometimes I would reach into my own wallet and pull out a 20 and change it. But you know, the interesting thing is God always supplied. There was a time where I thought I will not have enough money to make it to the end of the month. And there was a special circumstance because of that. I didn't mismanage money, but we we had opened a warming center and we had agreed to wash the blankets, and that kind of depleted the budget. And so um a woman came down from up on the mountain. We live here in in northern Alabama and we're surrounded by the lower end of the Appalachia Mountains, and she was from a church up there, and she brought me down a huge container of quarters, and she said we got word about you. I forget how she heard about us. Um, we were never on the news or anything, but she got word and they collected quarters, and we didn't put anything out that there was a need, but they collected quarters and she came on down the mountain and she said, Here you go. And it was just complete blessing and a complete surprise. And she would after that make several trips down that mountain with quarters, and God just kind of always supplied the need. There was a time or two where somebody came in with a whole buggy, and I had to say, I'm sorry, I can only do a normal load. Um, and they, you know, they they're not happy, they they get mad, but you know, they get over it. Next week is another week, you know, come on back next week.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

So I guess you learned a lot about people through this work.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

Yes. Being out in community, I used to say the laundromat was the great equalizer because, you know, we had contractors come in and wash clothes for the people they hired. We had unhoused people in there washing clothes, we had community neighborhood people coming in to wash their clothes. We had a gentleman who uh was rather wealthy, had a business, but he liked to work out midday, and he didn't want to bring his sweaty clothes to his wife to wash. So he'd swing by the laundromat and throw them in the washer and and he'd sit and talk with us. And so it really was a place where there was no class, you know, everybody was there for one thing, and that was to wash their clothes. They got to uh interact with each other. Some people were more open than others, but everybody got to be at the same place.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

So I get the suds was washing the clothes, and the buds I'm I'm guessing is the pastoral care aspect. So you were like their bud hanging out with them while they're laundry washed.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

Yes, and the interesting piece is that typically pastoral care, you're seen by someone routinely, right? Maybe you'll see them once a week or twice a week. Maybe you go once a week. And so this was a great opportunity. We had chairs set up in the laundromat. The owners let us occupy the back end, and so people would come in and they would load the washers and they'd sit down with us. And sometimes they would talk to each other, but often we would talk and we would help them navigate. Not everybody was as open about their life, but the majority of people are. Many have lost everything, so telling you about it, they're not going to lose anymore. Um, we had a they were able to use the restroom, which is a big deal when you're unhoused, and they could charge their phones. And so we had a nice little nested area back there, and so people would sit down and we would be very cautious about how we approached them. But if they seemed open, we would talk and so they would tell us a little bit about their story, and sometimes we could offer assistance, maybe how to navigate the city if they were new to it, where to find resources. We had a resource booklet we could hand out, but mostly people appreciated being listened to.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

What does something as simple as clean clothes mean for someone in that moment?

SPEAKER_02 13:13

It restores dignity. If you have clean clothes, you can go to that job interview confidently. You can walk into the supermarket and get yourself a lunch and a drink. You can walk up and down the street and look like everybody else and smell like everybody else. And so dignity is a big thing. Retaining your dignity is a big thing. Not everybody that's unhoused wants to look like they haven't bathed or washed their clothes in forever, or like they just emerged out of the woods.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Can you for those of us who who may be struggling because we're visuals, can you share what a typical day would look like on your serving days? Okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

So right now we're in a trailer. We're in a mobile laundry unit. We evolved from the laundromat. We went into a mobile laundry unit, and it is stationed on Tuesdays at a place called the Living Room, which is right in the middle of the demographic area that we serve, the 35805 area. And it's very close to where our tent city is and some other areas uh that others like to stay. So they'll come, they'll get there about eight in the morning, and we will uh open the trailer up, start the generators, and they will come to us and put their name on a list, and we'll take their clothes and put them in a bag to get it ready for going into the laundry machine. It takes about 30 minutes to launder clothes. They come out, we put them in a dryer, it takes about 30 minutes to dry. People don't come into the laundry room uh unit, it's just those that are serving. So they come up to the unit and they we give them a bag and they get a number, they put their stuff in there, and then we take it from there. And so we have chairs set out, and while they're waiting, they sit in the chairs. Uh, we we put out snacks, we have water. We also have donated clothing. So we put a table out, we have clothing laid out. We sometimes will offer lunch. So sometimes organizations will come, they'll make a soup lunch, and they'll set up. Sometimes it's sandwiches, sometimes it's back lunches. People in the community know we're there, they'll pull up, they'll have donations. Hey, can you use this? Yeah, you know, we'll take that. And so um, it's very, very grassroots. It's like a neighborhood kind of thing. There's there's no registering, there's no belonging, there's no expectation, there's no do this and you'll get that kind of thing. It's just if you need your clothes wash, come on up. And at the same location and at the same time, shower up has their shower unit available. So some people will do both. They may shower and launder, or they just do one or the other.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

So we'll get back to shower up in a minute. Yeah. But you mentioned mobile laundry units. So you went from actually in a facility to now you have these units. How did the units come into picture?

SPEAKER_02 16:19

Okay. So we have one unit, and we have been in that unit, it'll be a year uh on May the 6th when we opened it up. And we were in the laundromat for three years, going on four, and the clientele had begun to expand, and we couldn't accommodate everybody, and so they would come earlier and earlier to kind of get in line, even though we didn't function that way in their mind. If you get in line and you get there early, you can get your stuff done. Well, the other proprietors in that shopping center didn't like that because it started to be a crowd. And then the police were called, and then they were called again. And you know, we would say repeatedly, please don't show up at you know, prior to nine. Come at nine. We'll do our best to accommodate you. But it just wasn't working, and and about six weeks went by with that, and uh, I really sensed that our time at the laundromat had to shift in some way. I didn't know how, but I knew in some way. And the owner was getting concerned too, and I could tell, you know, um, people wanting to come up, you know, she didn't shut the laundromat down for us, she the the whole public was being surfed, so people would pull up and they'd see this huge crowd of you know, unhoused people with bungies, and they'd be like, hmm, we might need to find another laundromat. Um, and that wasn't good for business for her. And so I was I was sensitive to that and uh aware of what was going on. And then shower up approached us, um, and they said, Hey, we're thinking about doing a a laundry mobile unit. You want to partner with us? And we said, sure. So we sat down and and talked about uh what that unit would look like. And um like most people do when you're out shopping for something, like you want it all, right? And so that price tag came in and it was over a hundred thousand dollars. And we did some um campaigning, but that's a big price tag for you know a couple of golf tournaments and people click and donate here. And so after about maybe a couple of months, Taylor Reed, the one who is in charge of shower up Huntsville, came up with another idea. And he said, Well, maybe we don't need something this big, maybe we need just four simple washing machines and four simple dryers. And that price tag was way less, and so we were able to meet that in no time. And they have the trailers built by uh some Amish in Ohio, I believe I got that story straight. And uh took about six weeks once we committed to it, and then they they rolled it down, and we did shut down the laundromat during that time for about six weeks. So unfortunately, people had gone, you know, a little bit of time without getting their clothes washed, but it was really unavoidable. It was getting a little out of hand at the laundromat.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Yeah, I I can imagine. I think about wherever Jesus did ministry, right? Crowds came. Why would there be any different expectations of a laundry ministry? Yeah. So I I want to pause here because you know, sometimes we hear stories like this and we think, what should we do next? How could we help? Where could we serve? You know, before we move into digging into this, I I just want to sit with this. What does it mean to be seen? I mean, we talked about what it meant to be clean, but what does it mean to be seen as opposed to just there goes a homeless or an unhoused person pushing a buggy? You know, what does it mean to be seen? When was the last time someone's presence not their solution, not their advice, just their presence made a difference? And you know, I hear people say, oh, well, you know, that we we have a big population here or tent city or this or that, and they need to be moved. Okay, I I understand there's a lot like with the shopping center, they didn't want the people they're distracting, but people still need services, right? So how do you see presence? How how do you see people? How has that either changed for you, grown for you, and what do you see when people realize what they are seeing?

SPEAKER_02 21:01

When I started as a clinical pastoral education student, it was a checklist thing. I thought, I gotta get this done if I want to be consecrated. And so here I am. And Mother Rose said, okay, you have to go out in the yard there and you know, do your thing because you have to sit and you have to practice active listening. And I really thought that I would find a bunch of godless people who obviously had screwed their life up so bad that they were living in the woods. And what I needed to do was grin and bear it. But what I discovered was people who had more faith in God than I did. I actually had a faith crisis. I had after a couple of weeks, I went to my pastor and said, Okay, explain this to me what's going on. Um And I discovered a joy to just sit with people in the middle of the day, not in a corporate office, not producing something, not striving, and uh listening to people's stories and not trying to change them in any way. And I found a genuine sincerity, sincere humanity, just people and I was just a person with them. And as I began to learn their stories, I realized that people find themselves without a house for all sorts of reasons, not because you know they have substance misuse or mental illness. Well, they're there. Some people got scammed out of their money and now they're unhoused for the moment. Some people suffered tragic accidents, like car accidents and lost everything. The first to usually go is the job. You can't show up for six weeks because you're in the hospital, then rehabilitation, there goes the job. And I had I had never known that. It would be a long fall to the bottom. But um, not everybody has those kinds of safety nets. And one tragic event can upset their whole life. And then they find themselves there. Um and and people are fun, you know, like when you get to know them. Like I didn't know that. They're I've made friends. Um now when I see uh unhoused people that I know, like so. When I go to the laundromat on, or not the laundromat, go to the laundry trailer on Tuesday. I have friends there now. They're my friends, they're not a subset group of people, and so I hug them and talk to them and ask them how it's going and you know how did this work out and you know, all that kind of stuff. So um, they're just people.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

It's funny that you and I have some similarities that you may not know. You may. I too thought of parts of my diaconal journey of education and formation to be checklisting. Sorry. And at one point during it, I was doing it was field work, and I was working with an organization. I'm in South Carolina, and this was on the over in just across the border into Georgia. So I'm like in the middle of the state, and I had to drive a couple hours to get there, but I was also going through breast cancer treatment. So in between when I got cleared from chemo and I wasn't quarantined, I drive the hour and 45 minutes each way, and I would go. And I got tasked with making calls to the folks who were suffering and and battling and and fighting cancer. And so they had like people who'd been put, you could send a bag to them with lotion and journals and whatnot. And however, these people ended up on the list, they they got there and they they had a chance they could check a box and get a call. Calls were kind of haphazardly scheduled and and checked, and but no one wrote anything about what was going on. And I was like thinking to myself, I know how bad I feel when the phone rings and I don't have the energy. But if somebody knew me, right, and so I started changing the forms. So if I called you today and asked you what I could pray for or what was going on, and you said you had an appointment next week for to get your next to get chemo set up, then I'd make that note. Or and I'd made notes of like what the dogs or the kitties or the grandkids or whoever was in their lives. I mean my entries were like a book, but when it came time to call them the next time, what I realized was it wasn't who called, and shortly thereafter everybody started documenting the way I did. So the next time that person's turned to call, hey Karen, you know, the last time we talked, you were getting ready to go to the doctor. How was your diagnosis, your biopsy, your whatever? And it was like somebody remembered. Or how how did your grandson's big game go, or birthday or whatever it was, and it became a big deal. So I started training some of the volunteers to to do the calls, and what I noticed was really interesting, people would get upset when the person would either they'd like answer and hang up. And I mean these these volunteers were getting very upset, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, slow your roll, what's going on? And they said, Well, how rude. They just hung up on me. I'm like, do do you know what's going on in their life? And they're like, No. I said, then don't judge. I said, is someone going through cancer? You don't know if that's a bill collector calling, that you really don't want to hear. I would call back and I'd leave a voicemail. The organization I'm calling from, I know you had this appointment last time, and I I just really wanted to follow up and and left a very nice message. Probably nine out of ten calls I made while I was still there, they called back in to give me an update. But had I just got mad because that person hung up on me, and like you said, we don't know. A lot of them were afraid they they couldn't work. If they didn't work, they didn't have insurance. If they couldn't work, they couldn't pay their car. If they couldn't pay their car, they couldn't attempt to go to work, and if they didn't have work, they couldn't pay for the car or the the house or the apartment. And oftentimes these people were raising multiple generations of families, and if they didn't have a place to live, there was gonna be a whole you know 15-20 people unhoused. And at that point, I was like, I went and talked to the executive director. I said, Okay, we need a mindset shift. Just because someone doesn't answer, we call back and we leave a message because those people need to be seen today. And so we ran revamped everything to to get that through. And I had people a couple months later say, I'm really glad you did that because I was answering the phone for the organization the day you were doing your calls. People were so grateful that that woman had left that message on their machine and to, you know, they knew out you were busy, but to let you know that this diagnosis or whatever. So I took all the notes and I wrote them in the book. So the next time it came to to call them, someone could say, you know, I'm so sorry I missed your call. It was a crazy busy day, but thank you for calling back to update. And then people started saving the number and then they would they'd they'd be like, I'm glad it was my day. And you know, there'd be times like, well, you you probably don't know what I'm going through. And I'm I'm sitting there in between lumpectomy, massectomy, and you know, I'd be just like, I said, you know, I I can't imagine what you're going through. And and then I, you know, offer something. I but I'll and then I started praying for them. But I've never done that. And I'm like, if I'm doing the calls, I'm gonna pray. So I love doing it, and I was really sad by the time my my hours were done because I missed it. And I stayed with the organization for a while. They also had a prayer ministry where they wrote cards, and so I loved getting like my 10 people I got to write to for a year. I I enjoyed that, and I, you know, so being seen, regardless of your station in life, regardless of an illness, a disability, a car wreck, whatever's going on, I think just being able to give that dignity of being seen for for you as a you know, God's beloved child, as opposed to the illness, the buggy, the way we're dressed.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

Yeah, there thank you for that example, because that's that's exactly uh the bud part of suds and buds. And so we don't just say, um, okay, here's your number, put your laundry in this bag, we'll call you when it's done. We interact with people. How'd that interview go last week? Did you did you get the job? Hey, that new job you got, were you able to wake up in time to get there? You know, it's a struggle to wake up at a specific time to be somewhere at a specific time when you haven't lived like that for several months. How's your mother? You know, you told me last time she was sick. How's your daughter? Did you get that chance to visit? You know, and you're right. That remembering what they told you is very powerful, and that's what connects us, you know. And I remember a girl coming in, she had been washing clothes, and she finally got an apartment. And she was like, I am so excited to tell you that I got an apartment, you know, and could just, you know, want to tell somebody and so it's it's a great, a great connection.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

So with shower up, you said you had a connection. Did they find you? Did you find them? And what has that partnership made possible that you couldn't have done alone?

SPEAKER_02 31:52

So when First Stop tore down that original building, shower up, they had started their ministry and they had the trailers, they have one trailer up at the the temp location, and we were down at the laundromat. So we were uh you know a mile apart. They were up there, we were down here, and so we were serving the same people, uh, sometimes on the same day. So we knew each other. And as a matter of fact, Taylor at the time was working or serving on the board at first stop. So we were, you know, we were in the same circle. So uh doing the same same stuff for the same people, and so they just approached us. We knew them, they knew us.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

And so you so you said you have four washers and four dryers. How many loads can you do on an average day?

SPEAKER_02 32:45

So we are in operation three hours at a time. Um we start at nine, we end at noon, and we can get 20, 22 loads done. That's generally where we are at this point, is you know, we don't ever turn anyone away. And we, if we do, then the next day we offer the same service just in a different location. Um, we are at uh 2020 Governor's Drive on Tuesdays, and on Wednesdays, we're at Rosa Sharon, which is you know two miles um south or east of us. Um on Saturday, every other Saturday, they're at Life Church, which is a mile the other way. Um on Sundays, uh once a month, they're at the living room again. So um there's a lot of opportunity, same trailer, but a lot of opportunity, a lot more opportunities to wash your clothes. And we are the only laundry support service for unhoused people in the city of Huntsville. So when we started in the laundromat, we were the only ones, and now we're partnered with shower up, and we are the only shower and laundromat or laundry service in Huntsville, in the city of Huntsville.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

I'm sure during the time that you have been with this ministry, there have been disaster situations from hurricanes to natural disasters, man-made disasters. What have you experienced and how have you been able to help?

SPEAKER_02 34:13

So Taylor Reed generally takes the uh trailers out. I'm not skilled enough to hook a trailer phone and drive it anywhere. So I myself have not personally gone, but Taylor has. And so he was in North Carolina when the hurricane hit there. He recently went to the town next to us, Madison County, to an apartment complex who had, I believe, a fire. And so the people were unable to use showers and laundry, so they went out there. So I have not had the privilege of serving directly with disasters, but the laundry unit has, and it goes out and it does its thing.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Wow. What would you say this ministry has changed in you?

SPEAKER_02 35:04

Well, it has underchanged it has changed my understanding of a lot of things, mainly God um and how he works. After being in the laundromat for about two years into the ministry, and I was heading towards wrapping up my diaconal education and formation. Um I thought, boy, God is so nice to help me get this training done. And then almost instantaneously, I thought, no, God is so nice that he uses me to offer this service to people he cares about. Like he knows they need the dignity of clean clothes, and so he used me for them. That was a way to get myself out of the way, my own ego out of the way, and realize the Lord, the Lord cares for people and he uses us to serve. I also learned that you can't look at a demographic demographic of people and assume. You can't assume things. I have two friends now that I met who were unhoused at the time that I served, now are housed, and they're my friends. They remain my friends, and their stories are as unique as they are. Um and um that God isn't just in the church. God and faith don't just exist in the church. I thought my plan was to become a deaconess and be a parish deaconess. I was gonna work in the church. At the time I was business manager at the church I was going to, we had a church in a school, and I was just gonna step out and get some diaconal training, and then I was gonna come back, and then I'll be a well-trained deaconess in the parish. Never worked out. I am a well-trained deaconess in the community, never would have seen it coming. Never. Not sure I even would have signed up for it if I didn't might have said I'll pass on that.

SPEAKER_01 37:19

Well, yeah, I mean, it it's funny. A lot of people honestly think that church only happens inside a building and only on Sunday or Wednesday nights or whenever their worship service meets. And I think a lot of people learned a very valuable lesson during COVID. The church is a building, but we are the church. Buildings closed, we didn't, and so you're still able to be in the world where you need to be shining the light in some really dark or dusty places.

SPEAKER_02 37:55

Yeah, and you know, pastoral care can often be a privileged thing that uh people pay for, you know, or have a pastor they can go to, and being able to take pastoral care out into the street to be able to sit with somebody and listen and then routinely see them over and over again and to pray for them. And and it's not always like I'm going to pray for you, so hold still. You know, some many of the people I pray, they don't know I'm praying for them. You know, when I go home after serving, I sit and and ask the Lord to remember so-and-so and so-and-so, and so and so. They've lost family, you know, they're all alone by choice or by whatever they're dealing with with a mental illness. And so being that presence out there in community, being with people in that capacity, I think is very powerful. And I've seen God show up in ways where, you know, he's pulled a miracle out of a hat, and I thought, wow, that's impressive.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

Yeah, like the lady with the jug of change, right? Yes, yes. How would you know? So for someone listening who feels like they don't have much to offer, what would you want them to know?

SPEAKER_02 39:12

Well, just what we've been talking about. Your presence matters. Just show up. You know, if you're thinking about it and you think, oh, they probably don't need me, or I don't have anything to offer, but your presence is enough. It's enough to offer. Just show up. Surely you'll be given a task to do, and you probably will like it, and they probably will ask you to come back, and you will, and you'll find another nice task to do, and then it'll evolve, and the next thing you know, you're part of a ministry and you're loving it.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Yeah. So, what does faith look like for you in this season?

SPEAKER_02 39:50

For me, we're pretty we're pretty settled that we've got the trailer up and we've got our little system down and we've got our schedule down. We have our volunteers, you know, they're all in place and and and they love it. So faith for me is just seeing God show up for the people now, seeing them have doors open, praying for them, seeing them get housed, seeing them get their job that they want, seeing them move on, move out. So that's that's where the faith is right now, is just knowing that it does matter. God hears and it's all in his own timing, and it it does happen. That's the faith.

SPEAKER_01 40:33

It will happen. Yes, everything is on God's timing, even for those list checker offers that that we are. Doesn't always work the way we intended. Yeah. So, Karen, as we we get close to closing, is there anything else that you want to share from your heart?

SPEAKER_02 40:52

Well, um, I appreciate the opportunity to share with people uh the plight of unhoused people and to in a way um have them be seen right here and now. And perhaps a listener might ride down the road and catch a glimpse of someone who appears to be unhoused and maybe not be so turned off by it and have a little more compassion, a little more understanding, and uh who knows, maybe one day serve them.

SPEAKER_01 41:32

Yeah, maybe a a dose of curiosity. Yeah, yeah. So let's slow for a second and take a breath together. As we inhale, you are seen. And as you exhale, you are not alone. If this conversation stirred something in you and you'd like to learn more or support this kind of work, you can connect with shower up. I will put the link in the show notes. It's an organization that offers practical care and dignity to those experiencing unhomed situations, and we will have all of the links for that, as well as I hope you'll share with me the locations that you guys are currently serving in your area so someone hears they can share those. So, my friends, hear this blessing. As we come to the end of the conversation, may you remember that care doesn't always have to be loud to be meaningful, that small acts offered with love can carry more weight than we realize. May you notice that spaces in your own life where you are already showing up, already offering something steady and good. And if you find yourself in a place needing care, may you be met with gentleness, dignity, and someone willing to simply sit beside you. You don't have to have everything, but what you do have matters.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

Amen.

SPEAKER_01 43:10

Thank you for sitting at the counter with me today. If something in this conversation stayed with you, you might want to carry it gently into your day. No need to rush past it. And if you need a place to pause, reflect, or simply breathe. You can find more at daretoliveagain.com. Until next time, take a breath, notice what's in front of you, and remember, you're always welcome here at the counter.