Without a real sense of what I was doing, yet knowing I had to start from somewhere, I reached out to The Bethlehem House in Omaha, Nebraska because something was telling me to help the women there.  I didn’t know what that meant.  And yet, I trusted it.  More like hope it made sense once I showed up on their doorstep.  I will never forget the Family Life Director, Gina, asking me what my helping these women looked like to me.  What was my vision?  How will this work?  What kind of a schedule are we talking about?  And so I gave her the only answer I knew for sure — “I don’t know.”

But this pull I was feeling would not go away.  I found myself needing to trust what I couldn’t see.  That is hard.  And then without warning, I found myself collecting truck loads of donated clothes, purses, shoes, and other necessities for the women who resided there — you see, the women of the Bethlehem House are homeless and pregnant. There is an application process and there is only room for 11 women in the entire facility.  One of the requirements of staying at The Bethlehem House is that the women must be working and/or going to school.  But most people that do not have a permanent residence do not have much of a wardrobe.  Through the generosity of friends who donated on a whim or as part of a “drive”, we were able to give these women many options that they otherwise would not have.

But my purpose there wasn’t quote over.  I felt tugged in another direction that included teaching a program that I created just for women like them — women that have no place to go but up.  This program is different than The G.I.F.T., my women empowerment group.  G.R.I.T. uses my first book, “It’s Time: Changing Your Life Starts Today” as a guide and resource for these women as we read the chapters, discuss their topics, and share stories on how they can relate the message to their own lives.  We have met every two weeks for the last four months and I can honestly say that I have learned just as much from them as they have learned from me.

And in a funny way, I guess it was a reminder to me as well.  That even though I didn’t have the perfect plan or really knew where I was being led, I also could not ignore the message I was being told.  It did not come from somewhere or someone else — it came from within, as if someone was sitting on my shoulder and softly whsipered in my ear.

[bctt tweet=”When something calls to you and you ignore it, it never really goes away. It stays with you until you listen to what it has to say. “]

Thank you, Bethlehem House, for believing in the vision before I really knew what it looked like and allowing me to share my talents and gifts with women you serve.  Mostly, I want to thank the women who may not have known what to expect when I showed up that first day in January, but allowed me in to their lives as I shared my life with them.

Michelle A. Homme 2015 ©