Union Gospel Mission

Family Matters

 “This is my mom!” Sarah said as she pointed me toward Tammy, an older African-American women. In my confusion I said, “But she’s black; you’re white,” noting that Sarah was fully Caucasian. “She’s my street mom!” Sarah corrected.

This actual interaction plays-out on the streets continually. Persons experiencing long-term homelessness often form pseudo-families of brothers, sisters, moms, dads, aunts and uncles when there is no actual biological or legal relationship at all. There is just something in us that seems to drive us toward a sense of family. When we don’t have one, we find one.

In fields of research, “family” is one of the areas that have been the most studied in recent years. The findings are as irrefutable as they are profound. As it turns out…family matters! Research is telling us that what goes on in one’s family is the greatest single predictor of how the life will go. Of course, our great-grandparents tried to tell us this long ago.

In short, when the family system functions properly, each generation improves; when it does not, a cascade of generational dysfunction begins that is extremely difficult to reverse. In an ideal family system, the child grows in a warm and welcoming home, nurtured by attuned loving parents. When this happens, children generally grow to be good parents… and the cycle continues. We have all seen what happens when this goes badly… That is where we come in.

The Union Gospel Mission of Salem works hard to reverse this cycle. We help those who come to our door to understand how God’s system works. We begin by welcoming them into our warm, welcoming UGM family. Then, the Gospel message reflects the heart of God’s intent for family. For most of our guests, we are their first real glimpse of what good love looks like.

With a supportive family, our guests get the courage to embrace life change. We become the safe home from which they can venture out and then return; just like a family. Over their time here, we pay special attention to those areas in each life where family wounding has occurred and show them how to apply the Gospel to those wounds.

Being a family for those experiencing homelessness is a significant contribution to their lives. Our greater joy comes, however, when we help moms and dads to become better able to provide “family” to their families. Currently, we have a husband and wife staying with us who are each enrolled in the New Life Fellowship programs at Simonka Place (for women) and the Men’s Mission. This couple has determined to break the cycle of addiction and family dysfunction. What we are working toward with this couple will affect generations yet to come.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 3rd, 2011 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.