Skip to content

It’s the Thing that is Different Around Here by Katherine Dinsdale, Board Member

It’s the thing that’s different around here. It’s what helps grease the wheels and turn the cranks. It butters the bread and floats the boats, it brings tears and cheers and dollars and sense.  It’s relationship.
It’s why we love this ministry. Because, again and again, it works to sit across a table and speak what’s true. Not because we know it all or because we’ve been there or because what I say can fix you or heal you or straighten you out. But because my story is worth telling and maybe someday it might strengthen you. And your story might encourage me, propel me, chasten me, inform me. Help me see and know Jesus. Breaking bread and being present beats back isolation, distortion, corruption, despair. It’s a the best defense, a good offense, against what we used to think was “other” or even evil itself.
And besides, I like you. You make me laugh and sometimes snort milk out my nose.
One of the new places relationships are booming at Family Promise is on Monday nights at the Day Center at our graduate support classes. A super-star team of therapists and bankers and in-the-thick-of-it graduates teach on topics as diverse as financial literacy, saving on your utilities and surviving the holidays. Our graduates–and now there are seven years worth!!–show up. Volunteers (they keep coming out of the woodwork, God bless them!!) serve homemade food and care for a swarm of kiddos for one golden hour. During that time the grown-ups laugh and learn and bond and rejoice and encourage.
Dana keeps bubbling over about those nights. “These are the times,”she says, when we see the fruit of this work.” “This,” she says, “is where the important transformations are happening.”
Trust, belief, courage, stamina. All nurtured on Graduate Support nights with good old Vitamin R (Relationships). Most effective with food. Part of every healthy diet. Get you some today!