Caregiver struggled just like mothers

Just think about it: The woman God picked to be the mother of His son was a pretty unlikely choice.

She was young, maybe as young as 13. When she got pregnant, it was nothing short of scandalous. She was poor, frightened, outcast. She couldn't make sense of what was happening, and probably thought she was delusional -- after all, she found out she was pregnant from an angel named Gabriel. She felt like nothing, a nobody.

Sharon Cash knows the feeling.

Today, she is director of Renewal Place, a transitional housing facility run by the Salvation Army that's special for a very important reason: It allows homeless, drug-addicted mothers to keep as many as three of their young children with them for as long as it takes to get clean, up to two years. The facility can accommodate as many as 15 women at a time, and is nearly always full.

But Cash can identify with Mary, that frightened, abandoned, essentially homeless mother, for another reason: She was that woman.

She can still tell you the day -- Sept. 6, 1991 -- she finally decided to kill herself, just for the relief. Cocaine and alcohol addiction had lost her jobs, pushed her with her teenage son from family member to family member, and had recently gotten her evicted again. It was raining as she drove down Chelsea toward Bellevue that day, and when she stopped suddenly, an insurance card from an old restaurant job ("they didn't require a drug test") fell out on the car's floorboard. That card led to a desperate call to Methodist Outreach, and her journey and healing began.

"I don't know if I cried, I don't know if I prayed," she said. But she knows that God ordered her steps, which eventually led to jobs in the same recovery community that saved her own life, as well as a degree in applied psychology from Christian Brothers University.

Cash is clear: There's only one explanation for how her life got back on track. "God has demanded that I understand that it's Him" who has led her to Renewal Place and the work she does now, she said. "I see miracles daily.

"I see women who, more than likely, her first child belongs to a family member. I see women who have been abused since the age of four, emotionally, physically, sexually. I see women who did unimaginable things for $3. I see women who are afraid to hold their children, they feel so worthless.

"Then they get here, and whatever God has said, they find the strength to get up and try again. The resilience of spirit in these women ... I can't convey it in words."

Her biggest regret at Christmas time: That only 15 families can come in from the cold to try to be healed at Renewal Place. She knows there are so many other women out there.

"When you see a woman walking along Jackson with a coat that's too thin, it might be a momma. It might be a sister ..."

It might be Mary.

http://citizen.commercialappeal.com/iDiva/

By Leanne Kleinmann
idiva@idivamemphis.com
December 24, 2006