By the age of 9, everyone Oscar ever loved had died. Drugs helped him stop crying. But would he ever find healing?

When I was 5 years old, life was good. I was an only child and my parents cherished me. Life was one big party. But the party crashed that year when my mother was murdered. I was too young to understand much about God, but I had issues with Him from that point on.

Then it got worse. Six months later, my dad died of cancer. I was sent to live with an aunt and her alcoholic husband, who would tie me to chairs and beat me bloody. When I was 9, I discovered I also had an older half sister, who came to live with us. I made her promise she’d never leave me. But she soon died of a heroin overdose. Everyone I’d ever loved had died. People said, “God took them all home.” All I wanted to do was cry.

That all changed when I took my first hit of marijuana in 6th grade. Suddenly I didn’t want to cry anymore. I didn’t feel anything. Marijuana and other drugs — including crack and various opioid-based painkillers — kept me numb for the next 40 years. I never got high to get high. I got high so I never had to cry. So I could check out and never feel.

A year ago, however, I realized I owed it to myself and my wife to change that. But I needed help. So I came to Union Rescue Mission to help me deal with the God who took my family away, to face the pain I’d hid away for more than 40 years, and to reconnect with people again. To feel joy and love again.

When I got here, I started reading the Bible. The more I encountered the real Jesus, the more He filled me and transformed my life. But I really wasn’t going to change until I faced the 5-year-old wounded child I’d hidden away for so long. I had to face Oscar — and I couldn’t do it alone.

My chaplain, Albert, walked with me every step of the way as I met that hurt child and faced the pain. He held my hand as I cried, he prayed with me, and he led me through the darkness.

Today, I don’t have to hide anymore. I have a true relationship with God, myself, my wife, and others. I am myself. And thanks to people like you who support Union Rescue Mission, I feel loved.

God created us for relationships. For children to mature into healthy adults, they need to experience love and safety, especially from their parents. If they experience trauma and broken relationships instead, the pain is so overwhelming they will search for anything — including drugs and alcohol — to escape the trauma.

Oscar, whose story is featured in this newsletter, experienced extraordinary trauma in his young childhood, losing his mother, father, and half sister all before he turned 9. He learned early on that marijuana, crack, and opiates took the pain away.

Today, more people than ever, just like Oscar, are turning to various opiates (heroin, painkillers, fentanyl) to deal with their pain. Opiates not only block pain, they release endorphins in the brain that mimic love, safety, and pleasure — feelings they lost in childhood. But these same drugs eventually turn on them, leading to destructive addictions, health problems, and even death.

Men and women who come to us for help need more than just to get off drugs. They have to deal with the pain and traumas that led to their addictions, and they have to learn to reconnect again with others in loving relationships. That’s why Union Rescue Mission, with your support, is committed to helping our guests develop new, healthy relationships with God, with themselves, with family, and finally, with their community. Only then do they experience true recovery and true healing — today and for eternity. Just like Oscar.

Thousands of men, women, and children all over Los Angeles County are overwhelmed with the traumas of homelessness, addictions, loneliness, and despair. A lifetime of broken relationships, abuse, and loss have left them isolated and hopeless. But thanks to you, there is hope.

Often, that first spark of hope comes with a hot meal at Union Rescue Mission. Then, with renewed hope, many people will connect with the long-term services they need to rebuild their lives. Your gifts literally give hurting men, women, and children the hope and the tangible help they need to transform their lives.

Your generous gift of $25, $35, or more will help provide hurting men, women, and children with hot meals, safe shelter, long-term help — and hope for new life this spring.