“One of our values is service, and my role as a chaplain is to serve through active listening and create spiritual direction for residents. It’s about active listening, being available for crisis.

“I remember the first time we had a memorial here for one of the residents who passed away. We have various times where people pass away from addictions. That was an experience that I’ll remember. It was chaos, chaotic, but I still got to see beauty out of it when every one of us got together and we had a talking circle. That shed some more light as to why I wanted to be a chaplain. I want people to be able to talk and communicate because I want to be able to talk and communicate – what I feel is what I want for them too. I want spiritual care to be in everything that Grace Mansion is about.

“I don’t attack people with my ministry, it’s more I lay back and when they ask, I engage. Which I think is the proper way of doing things. With our spiritual stuff, we want them to come forward with it. It’s this whole picture again in spiritual care that you love God with all your mind, heart, soul, strength. That’s what I want to teach residents but they have to be willing and ready to receive it.

“Spiritual care is looking after what’s going on inside biologically, physically, mentally, socially, emotionally. We all have this connection to something bigger than ourselves. We can even call it our ‘higher power’ or I call Him God. The staff might not get the idea of spiritual care, but they’re actually a large component because they deal with the residents on a daily basis. Even practical stuff like getting housing, finding a job, those are all components I would say are spiritual care because it is developing the whole self. Grace Mansion believes in a biopsychosocial component to programs and spiritual care.

“Who was someone you felt you influenced as a chaplain?”

“Silently, I think Ahed is one. From when I [saw] her in the beginning to now, she was very quiet and timid, but now she kind of jumps at you energy-wise. She’s very energetic and she wants to be out there. I see some influence in that. I find hope in that and what I do and what the staff [are] doing.

“I believed in God from a young age. I grew up in the Salvation Army church with my family – they call it “corps.” I grew up in a broken family. Parents divorced, adultery stuff, and my dad remarried. That kind of took my life a little bit. But I knew that God was there because I went to church and had some experience with who God and Jesus [were]. But never really experienced the relationship I have now. Coming from a broken family, you think that that’s what God is like or you think that that’s what your dad is like. I connected my father with God a lot.

“I’m not very religious or traditional because I don’t like religiosity. I believe that God created me and humankind to be people who care, people who don’t just live for tradition or religious things.

“About 10 years ago, I started developing a relationship with Jesus. And so, then I kinda [saw] that this whole ‘God thing’ isn’t about religion – it’s about relationships, connection, community, and engaging. But I had to break myself down to see that. Break my own pride, break my own addiction down.

“I realized I had a problem with it about five or six years ago but I didn’t completely deal with it about a year or two ago. It stems from a broken home, which caused a lot of pain in my life even now. I won't say what the addiction was but it was heavy enough that it caused a lot of rifts in my marriage. I started to heal it and got forgiveness over it. If I’m going to help men or women here as a chaplain, it’s pointless if I’m not looking after my own addiction, my own pain, my own mess-ups.”

This story is part of Hey Stranger’s partnership with The Salvation Army Belkin House.