Steve

When Steve was seven he traveled with his mother and sister to Baltimore for his grandmother’s funeral. His mother left him with his grandfather. He thought she would be coming back for him and was worried that he would not be home in time to give her the birthday card he had made her, but she never came back. Steve never got over it.

Soon after, his grandfather remarried, his new wife didn’t want to keep Steve. “She told me ‘your mother left because she didn’t want you’ – I cried and cried for the longest time.” They sent him to live with his real father (a man he had never known) and stepmother. She abused him verbally and his father beat him almost daily.

“He was a big man and as soon as I got there the beatings started. They were real bad. I still suffer from some of the head shots I took.”

In high school Steve played football and was recruited by several colleges. “I didn’t really like football, but it got me away from my home situation.” When he was a senior the school system shut down for three months due to a teacher strike, so he dropped out. One snowy night he met a girl whose family asked him to stay the night because of the bad weather.

When he called his dad to tell him where he was, his father told him not to come home, so at 17 Steve forged his birth certificate and joined the Army. When he was discharged after four years, he wandered from place to place and job to job. Eventually he returned to high school to earn a degree and enrolled in college, but dropped out after a year. He was troubled and didn’t know where to turn, so he turned to alcohol and drugs.

“It was an escape and I did it well. The drugs almost killed me. I had two heart attacks and a stroke.” Over the years he married three times and has a 28 year old son, but hasn’t seen him in several years.

Steve turned to The Union Mission Ministries. “I was terrified when I first came. When you hear about homeless shelters, it scares you, but Eric (a staff member) saw how messed up I was. He pulled a book off the shelf and told me to read it. It was a Bible. Now, I can’t put it down. This is the last place I thought I would feel a sense of security, but now I’m happy every day. I’m not mad anymore. This place has transformed me. People here really care about me.”

Recently Eric’s neighbor’s child gave him a Bible “to take to the place where you work and give it to one of the men.” Eric immediately thought of Steve and gave him the Bible. Steve carries it everywhere.