MEET Christine and Jeff

Christine was seven years old the first time she drove a car.

Her parents were too drunk to drive, so they put their little girl behind the wheel and she drove them nearly 20 minutes home.

Seven years old.

And it wasn’t the last time.

As Christine told me that story in Billings, Montana this week, I kept looking across the table at her and Jeff and thinking about all the roads these two have traveled just to be 

sitting there with me.

Some of those roads are incredibly hard to hear about.

Both endured childhoods that included foster care, instability, and exposure to drugs and alcohol when they were still just children.

They tasted alcohol at five.

By eight or nine, they were using  marijuana.

By fourteen, their minds and bodies were gripped by much harder drugs.

Jeff has attempted to take his own life several times. Once, Christine literally saved him.

He’s open about this. In fact, he wants me to share it. He wants people to know where he’s been and what he’s survived.

And so, sitting together in a Subway inside a Walmart, I found myself telling him the same thing again and again.

“The world is better with you in it.”

Always.

It’s been a struggle, but Jeff and Christine are sober. It’s the longest stretch of sobriety they’ve had in years.

Christine just started a new job. Jeff is interviewing and looking for work.

They’re living in their car right now, without air conditioning, caught in one of those cruel circles that can make climbing out of homelessness so difficult.

It’s hard to find housing without a job, and it’s hard to find and keep a job without stable housing.

And this week, thanks to those of you who support the Kindness Card Movement, I had the privilege of helping them along the way.

They became the first recipients of Kindness Cards in Montana!

Another state on our map, yes.

But I’ll remember Montana for something else.

I’ll remember a seven-year-old girl somehow getting her family home.

I’ll remember two people smiling across a table after trusting me with stories that weren’t easy to tell.

And I’ll remember looking at Jeff and hoping he believed me when I said it.

The world is better with you in it.