Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to Life Reviewed, a podcast by Hope House Colorado, where we invite you into conversation with teenage moms and the people who champion them. These stories of struggle, overcoming and perspective shifts will challenge you to review life as you've known it. One story, one person, one conversation at a time.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Oh, I thought I knew the kind of life that I would need.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to our Hope House podcast, Life reviewed. I'm Lisa Steven. I'm the founder and executive director of Hope House Colorado. And if you have not already listened to episodes one and two of the podcast, you can learn a lot more about how Hope House got started and just all the miracles God did to bring us to where we are today, serving 265 teenage moms and their children this year, which is just miraculous to me. And I'm so excited to be joined today by our very first board chair from back in the day, Clarine Shelley, who is one of my wise advisors. You heard me talk in the first two episodes about just how God surrounds you with the most amazing people to make his call a reality and make it possible, because we don't do anything alone. And God works in community, and he works through connecting us to one another, and he does amazing work through those connections. So I'm so excited to talk a little bit about our early connections. Clarinet now, today, what your connection still is with Hope House and how you are still supporting and championing our staff and our teen moms. But maybe we can start with you just telling me a little bit about what do you remember about first meeting me, and then I'll share my memories of first meeting you.
[00:01:47] Speaker C: Well, I received a call from a mutual acquaintance by the name of Harry Smith, and he was involved on the board at our battic covenant church at the time. He called me up and said, you know, Clarine, we've got. I was in law enforcement at the time as well. So I got this call. It said, clarine, would you mind coming and talking with these young couples? They want to start a house for teen moms, and they're worried about security.
Okay. So I ended up coming to the church meeting with you after getting off work, about 530 in the evening, I think. And I walked in, and at that time, it was yourself and John and Amy and Tony. And then there were a couple of other couples there at the same time. And what blew me away was that you were wanting to develop security for a house you didn't have yet.
So that said something about this dream that you had to create a safe place for these single moms these teen moms with their children.
So I talked to you about security of a house, an imaginary house, and I left, and then I got a call, I think, the next day from you asking if I'd be willing to be on the board. And that was not in my plan at the time. I was doing some other things as well, but I said, we'll see how it works out, and God worked it out that I ended up being on that first board.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: That's so funny that you remember it as God working it out, which I know he did. I also sort of remember it as stalking you, which is probably not the wisest thing to do when someone is the chief of investigations for the Lakewood police department. And yet I did.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: Successful.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: I'm sort of well known for stalking people, but I just. I think I had to have called you at least three or four times just to check back in. Where are you at? What do you think? I do remember from that first security training with you, because at that point in time, it was still. We were what would be considered a developmental board or a working board. So it was the four founding couples that were working to open Hope house and pulling in experts to kind of help us with areas we knew we needed expertise in before we opened. But I remember when we met you thinking, wow, this is someone who is really a leader, like, someone who really knows how to marshal people and get them going in the same direction.
Not just that you had this expertise that we needed, for sure, but that you would be someone we could learn from and who would be a wise advisor. And you also did seem to know a lot of people, which was something that we were also looking for.
[00:04:25] Speaker C: And I hadn't arrested all of them.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: They actually were people that you had met.
[00:04:30] Speaker C: They were legitimate.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: This was so in our favor. And you were also someone who had this incredible faith and strength of relationship with God. And we knew for sure that that was also what we needed on our board. I think at that point, we had already solidified, like, the two most important things for a board member for Hope House were a passion for kingdom building, a passion for Jesus, and a passion for our teen moms. And that didn't necessarily mean that you were a former teen mom or even had, like, adjacent experience, but something in you. And sometimes that was a gentleman who joined the board, and he had three daughters, and in his heart, he was feeling like, what if this was one of my kids, one of my daughters, and there was no one there for her? If I wasn't there for her, and she didn't have anyone but a hope house to go to. So it has to be that you have this stirring in your heart of love and passion for teenage moms.
And Clarine had been and seen probably the worst of the worst in her profession when it came to generational poverty and some of the things that happen in.
[00:05:38] Speaker C: Well, I think actually, now that you say that, what drew me was your passion for the young woman that was murdered in the domestic violence circumstance. That was something. I was very familiar with domestic violence, so that was one of the draws for me.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I'm sure we probably. I don't remember specifically talking about that at that security training, but we must have. You did. And that probably was one of the reasons why we were as concerned as we were, because we did have some experience through our teen mops group, or mom co, as it is called. Now. I'm getting used to their new name after 50 years as mops.
So tell me a little bit about what led you to finally say yes to me bugging you and calling you to join this board of, you know, eight couples who were just trying to get something started, and we didn't actually have a house yet. What? I mean, that could have been a sinking ship before it ever even started. So what caused you to even say yes?
[00:06:34] Speaker C: Well, when I came for that first meeting with you, I was waiting to hear whether I had been accepted into a fairly extensive training program that had to do with leadership and law enforcement. And so it was very much an ego attachment for me to get into this particular program.
I think I even mentioned to you that I was waiting to hear about that and that my time commitments, if I were to be accepted into that, would be limited, and I wouldn't be able to step into a position with you. And God knew what he was doing. God removes those things that prevents us from stepping into the roles that he already has planned. And God knew what this was eons before we even existed. So the lovely piece of it is to know that, number one, he humbled me by me hearing, nope, I wasn't accepted. And number two, that he had already opened the door for how I was supposed to move into the next steps, and that was with you folks on your board.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: That's so amazing. I love how God takes the things. Like, I think I talked in the first couple of episodes about I was waiting before we started Hope House to hear whether I would get onto this prestigious committee with the Jefferson county schools to do this work, that I was one of few parents that had been invited into, and I did not get asked to be on that. And it's like, oh, you have some time.
But it's.
What I look back and remember is that we were ready to bring true leadership onto our board. And at that point, we knew that Amy and I would be moving into staff positions when Hope House actually opened, which meant we could not actually be board members. You're not voting. Typically, staff members are not voting members of the board of directors, but. But we would be serving with the board and for the board, and it was a shift in the way that you think.
And we'll talk a little bit today about sort of board development and how boards develop. And so we had started as this working board of, you know, four couples that wanted to do this work, and we were shifting into that mindset of bringing leadership onto the board that would begin to direct the actions of the board, the board directing the actions of the nonprofit. And even though we, you know, we're not in existence yet, we knew that we. We were moving there, and we had full confidence God would get us there. So we were looking for this leadership to kind of take us to the next level, which meant that someone would actually be helping call the shots, not just me. I didn't get to just call all the shots. There would be this board. And one of the things I often say when I talk about a board of directors is that I always kind of look at it as the board is the engine that drives the train. The board is responsible for the strategic plan of the organization. They're responsible for the like, financially, legally, morally responsible for all the policies that need to be developed for the organization. And the executive director, in a healthy working relationship with a board, works for the board. The board has the authority to hire and fire the executive director. And that was a shift for me to start thinking about. Yeah, but Hope House is mine in quotation marks like, I'm starting Hope House. There you go with the pride thing, and having to knowingly put yourself under the authority of someone to lead the organization that you are founding. You definitely have to have a very real sense, for me, anyway, as a person of faith, a very real sense that God has called these people to be yourself boss, essentially, to guide and lead an organization that, yes, God put the heart for that in you, but he's calling others to be a part of it. And there had to be a certain level of humility, which I'd kind of learned along the way.
But, man, I still had so much to learn. And you talk sometimes about what was it like leading me? Like, what did you see Clarine tell them the inside story?
[00:10:35] Speaker C: Well, at the beginning, it was really leading all of you. You know, John and Amy and Tony were as invested, certainly as you were. So it was having you all come together, and there were moments and occasions where it was clear that even the four of you were not necessarily on the same page on a given conversation. So a lot of it was kind of facilitating coming to a conclusion that all could be agreed upon, and that they could. You all could say, this is a God led direction for this particular issue that we're dealing with. The other piece of it was to help you break down what the issues were having. Probably not had a ton of experience in board circumstances or organizations like that. In my mind. You describe a board very well. The executive director is actually operational manager for an organization, and you do sit between a staff and this board that guides and directs via policy and other major issues.
So coming in, it really was just kind of helping you all kind of get to a place of recognizing, number one, what God might be bringing for all of you. There was some individual, like, what's happening now, even for the four of you, and I'm sorry, I don't remember the others, but your two couples really became the prominent ones. To even be able to sit and see that bringing you together in, like, thought removing, because all of you had a certain amount of passionate investment that is always attached to ego a little bit. You know, when God gives us a passion about something, then we have to say to ourselves, there's a reason he's picked me or us. And there's always a little bit of tendency to think there's some ego involved in that. So for the four of you to spend time and really come together understanding about what is it God wanted and to be comfortable in that. So that was the kind of the beginning of it. And then as it became clear that you were the one, really, that all four of you have kind of come to a place where you became the one that stood out as that person that would become the quote unquote executive director, you were willing to step into it. Your passion level was just off the charts about what needed to happen for this dream that you had. So as time went on, as the board grew a little bit, I do believe that God made sure that through those first few years, it was very clear that it was the spiritual aspect that was important, number one. Then we began to step into a place of practical experience, what that means. And as a board. I think we started finding places that we were able to send you to for one day, two day kinds of seminar exposure to being an executive director for an organization with a board of directors. And how does that look?
[00:13:42] Speaker A: Right?
[00:13:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Yeah. That was so well said. Like, I think it was. Everything was an act of faith. I mean, it still is. Everything is still an act of faith every day. But certainly in those beginning years when we didn't have a house yet. So you're out there raising money and trying to pull people together around a vision that doesn't exist yet. And there was this sense of change in the validity of the vision when you came on as the board chair, because it was no longer just the working board of the four couples. It was, okay, we now have a legitimate board of directors, or at least a legitimate chair of the board. And we kind of began then bringing in additional men and women to serve. And I remember at first we were meeting, the developmental board used to just meet in a Sunday school classroom at our vatic covenant church. But it somehow was a new level of officialness to meet in your living room of your home.
[00:14:37] Speaker C: At the time, it was the only reason I ever vacuumed, because I knew there was going to be a meeting at my house.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: We would, like, sit around in these folding chairs or in a circle in your living room. Thankfully, it was large enough for all of us. And back then, we were making decisions about. I looked back at some of the minutes from those very first meetings, and we were making decisions about some of the like, after we had moved into the house, of course. But we were making some decisions around the programs, like an individual teen moms program. So at that point, Amy and I were working directly with teenage moms, and we needed guidance on should we be serving this mama, is this situation okay?
What is the wise advice of this guiding board for us? So we were. While we had developed from this working board into a more of a true board, we were still very much in the weeds because that was the level we were at. That was the organizational level.
[00:15:31] Speaker C: Right. And I think that one of the things that comes to mind for me is that in any organization, if you talk about policy, what you're doing is talking about setting boundaries that fit with the values and the mission of the organization. And so that's really what was going on. And I have to smile to myself when I think about how God used that board to begin talking about things that really opened up the door for him to present the miracles that happened, whether it was how the house came to be the move of the house to its current location, the calling together of faithful followers of Christ who volunteered just all of those things. But if the board had not been conscious and listening, well, we might have missed a couple of those miracles.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: Oh, we totally would have. If we had been just under my direction, that for sure would have happened. I mean, I specifically remember when we finally had the opportunity to move into the house had been. David Nestor had presented us this opportunity to move into the original house, and it was. They were going to charge us dollar 350 a month in rent. And I freaked out. I'm like, nope, too much. I think we had raised, like, I don't know, maybe we had, like, 50,000 or something in the bank.
We had raised some money, but it still felt completely scary. And it was. That moment of God presented this opportunity clearly. But I, as a person was like, oh, no, now it's for real. And it took the board and you in particular, saying, of course we're going to do this. We're going to take this and move forward with this opportunity. And that if I had been left to my very own devices, it wouldn't have happened. That would have been a moment when I made a decision out of fear, and I needed the leadership and direction of the board and you to remind me that God's got this and called it into being. And so we did take that step forward.
[00:17:24] Speaker C: And I would like to just simply add on to that, that watching your stepping into a place of having deeper, deeper trust and faith in God, because you may have felt that way at the time that David Nestor presented the opportunity for the house when it was still up north. The bottom line is that it was your trust and faith in God that led to finding this property. Because you were persistent, you persevered when there were certain parameters that had to be met in order to find a spot to move the house to. So I think it was lovely to watch you grow in your trust and faith in God, too.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Thank you. Yeah, well, and so for our listeners who maybe don't know much about nonprofit structure, it is one of the oddest business structures, I often say, in the world. So if you are a nonprofit, you are.
Most nonprofits who have a charitable status with the IR's are under a 501. So 501 is just the section of code in IR's rules that make you an organization that is allowed to raise funds, and therefore, people can have a tax deduction based on their donations to your 501. So one of the requirements for a 501 c three is that you have a board of directors, and that board has to consist of at least three, three individuals. You have to have a board chair and you have to have a secretary. Most often you also have a treasurer. But the IR's requires a board chair and a board secretary to take notes and keep minutes. And those documents are corporate documents that have to be kept and stored. And so I was mentioning that I kind of had looked back and was looking at some of the original decisions that we were making. As you grow as a board and become a more developed organization, you start making decisions, like you said, more around policy. So we were wrestling in the very early days with, okay, what is the right? We're going to serve teenage moms from 16 to 20. And over the years, that has morphed a little bit. Now we serve moms between. They have to have already had their child, and they come into our programs between the ages of 15 and 21, as long as they had their baby while they were a teenager. And then we serve them until they turn 25.
But the board really owns the mission statement and the guiding principles of the organization. And every board chair, as I look back, over 21 years of Hope House, every single board chair, brought something unique and special to the period of time that they were the board chair. And so, as a tiny little plug, I just finished writing the book, a place to belong, our story of Hope House, and all the many miracles that God did, and also story of me becoming the leader that I am today, which, believe me, I still have a lot of room to grow. But I have learned a lot over 21 years, and you are definitely one of the people that I learned from. And when I look back, I look at your leadership on our board as a. The person willing to say yes, which is a lot about what the book is about. Like, what happens if I say yes to something that God's calling me to that maybe wasn't in my plan, or I didn't see that coming, but I can see that it's from God. So I see you as that person that said yes to a call when we needed that in order to even move forward.
But also the person who brought this deep reliance on Christ for every move, every next move, whether it was a teen momma's program or making a decision about how we were going to serve, or accepting the gift of the house when it became available to us and they were willing to give us the house if we picked it up and moved it. Yes, there's this incredible sense of. But I don't know. Do you recall those conversations about how are we going to even afford to do that? Like, where are we going to get the money to be able to move the house? Do you recall any of that?
[00:21:25] Speaker C: What was interesting to me was that in the first meeting I had with you, when you had wanted to talk security, your dream was so obvious. And yet when it started to become real is when in our humanity we can step back and say, well, yeah, but I don't have the check off the box list about how we get there. So it was, yes, I remember some of the panic around that, but I also remember how God gave a real piece about it in a fairly quick order, certainly the bringing David Nestor into the conversation to begin with and then going from there. But I also am amazed when I think about all of the volunteers and all the churches that stepped up. It didn't take long for the vision to catch on. There was something slightly different. There were other nonprofits that dealt with teen moms in the throes of pregnancy, but it didn't take them beyond that into this place of learning how to be a parent, how to become self sufficient. And it took time for our program to do that as well. I remember a conversation. There was a bit of panic because there had been efforts to raise money, whether that was through fellowships or some kind of foundation money, whatever it happened to be. And the response seemed to be repeatedly, you're not serving enough numbers of young moms.
Your dream was to have the residence. Right. And I can remember having a conversation in my living room about the fact that probably going to have to shift things a little bit. What else can you provide that would increase the numbers? And that's, I think, where some of the conversation started out about, you know, the GED program, the mentoring, you know, the parenting programs all came out of that foundational conversation. And then God blessed it.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that is so. Such a good point. So often the points of growth for Hope House were not necessarily my vision, they were someone else's vision, but having a willingness to listen to what others are absolutely bringing to the table. And at the time, our parenting educator, Shannon Jenkins, who was just this incredible woman who had this just amazing ability to sit down with our moms and help them see all of the strengths that they had as a parent and make parenting plans around those strengths and develop their parenting around just how strong they were. She was so amazing, and I had such respect for her. And she just had this vision that we should be doing more, that we were receiving all these crisis calls and there could be more. We could be doing. And she was so adamant about it that she wanted to, like, create a plan and come present it to the board of directors in your living room. And I was nervous about that because, yes, I was excited for where she was going. But also, what if you guys said yes? Like, then what? You know, and you did say yes. And so then she changed into our, at the time, outreach coordinator to start bringing in more teen moms and still doing some parenting education. But you were a board of directors, and we still are so blessed to have a board of directors that hold a strategic plan loosely. We have plans. We are moving toward and driving toward goals in those plans. But always you led from a place of, but what is God doing? Like, the plans belong to God. And that was one of those moments when it was like, well, maybe this isn't in the strategic plan, but what is God saying for us to do here? And always, you were a leader who would stop us and have us pray in the middle of a meeting, especially around something like that, where it's like a big decision that we need to make, and we'll change the course of the organization. But also when we just maybe weren't all on the same page and from those very early meetings, when you would stop us and say, okay, we're not necessarily all in agreement or alignment around a decision, let's just pray on it. And sometimes you would ask us to pray on it and go away and come back the next month to the next meeting and not make a decision. And I always wanted to make a decision right now that was. I'm still really bad about wanting to make decisions right now.
And what a big deal that was that you led that way, because it's continued for 21 years to this day. We rarely, not that we all don't have our own opinions or our own ways of looking at things. And that's important. It's important to have a diversity of views on your board. It's important for you to even have healthy debate like, you need to have, not conflict on the level where people are arguing with one another, but you need all these different viewpoints on your board of directors so that you can come to a really good conclusion. But to this day, we will stop and pray. And if we can't come to alignment in one heart, even if we kind of have a different thought on how it might go, we'll just stop and wait until the next meeting and bring it back to discussion then. And we've had a few things that have taken a number of months to make a decision around while we pray. But almost always, if we don't have a unanimous vote, we have a very close to unanimous vote because we've waited until God has moved and we've heard him where he wants to take us. And that really started in the beginning from your leadership.
[00:26:49] Speaker C: Well, if I could add to that, to me, when we allow number one, the assumption is made, and I think it still is in Hope house, that when you have people on the board of directors, there is a unity in the belief that Jesus Christ is the savior and that he is the centerpiece around the purpose for this to begin with all of the grace and love that is shown through what Jesus did for us. So if you have that as a central understanding, if you don't allow the Holy Spirit to take the time to speak into the hearts of everyone who has that center of Christ and the Holy Spirit, then you are going to step into a place of just pure humanity. So to stop and to pray about something. I do remember times where five minutes later people lifted their heads out of those prayers and said, oh, yeah, now I'm understanding, or I'm getting it a little bit. And there would be a unity and understanding and final decision around that unity. But yes, there are times that you have to walk away. And that's how God provides wisdom.
He provides wisdom through patient seeking of him. And as long as the board of directors is centrally unified around Christ allows that wisdom to come out of those pieces, not panic.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:06] Speaker C: You know, even today, when you have been around for 2021 years and you have a staff now that is substantially large, all of those folks did not experience those moments in time, they may not have a true and complete understanding of that. So even when you come in to a staff and you sit down and say the board is wanting to do x, y and z, and they think, oh my gosh, that means I'm going to have to do exponentially more work than I'm doing now. So how do you even bring a whole group of people back to a place of understanding how God provides wisdom and good decisions that are centrally based?
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Around Christmas, you touch on such a really good and important point, I think that I mentioned. A board of directors is a nonprofit, has a very interesting model. So often as an executive director and as a founder in nonprofit, you're sort of going out and recruiting your own boss because you are asking and inviting others to become a part of the work that you're doing and inviting them into leadership over you. And I had mentioned each chair kind of brought something different and kind of the next thing that we needed to the board, and I believe our next chair after you was Roger Stapleton. And I remember Roger was someone who, by that point, we had opened the doors. We had had this incredible faith journey of following God to open the doors of this home. And we were now caring for mamas. And we did have staff. Not a huge staff, but we had staff then at that point, and I had never managed people. I joked before that I have the experience of having done home daycare and worked at JC Penney's, certainly never managed any people. And so Roger brought this incredible experience as a leader who had managed many people, which you had as well. But I remember him helping us develop, like, management matrixes and what is an organizational chart, and what are management tools and organizational tools. And so every board chair kind of brought this next level of experience. But I want to tell a story of when we had first moved into the house and this security training that we had called you to do long before we were ever open. We had to have a true security training. Now, we had a home. We had moved into it. We, you know, had a front door, and we wanted you to come back and do a real security training around what happens if, you know, something goes wrong and we have somebody, you know, maybe that shouldn't be here knocking on the door or whatever. And so you did this whole training with all of us, and in the living room of Hope House, and Amy and I were sitting there and where everybody's listening very intently as to what are the instructions that we're supposed to follow if somebody's like, you know, banging on the door that's not supposed to get in and the steps we're supposed to follow. And so you're like, okay, now we're going to actually practice it. And this is something clarine was brilliant at. She always had us actually practice whatever it was she was training us on or leading us in. And so she went outside, and she's like, I'm going to, you know, bang on the door, and you guys do the steps that I taught you to do. And so she goes outside and the door closes, and she. I don't. I mean, people, she banged on the door so hard, it, like, rattled the door frame. And Amy, my co founder, could not follow a single step we would just been taught to do. She's like, everybody run. And we all ran to the kitchen and hid in the kitchen, which was not what we were supposed to do. So I just bring that up because clarine was so brilliant at training and making sure we practiced the practical steps, as well as bringing the faith and the spiritual guidance and leadership that we needed. Tell me a little bit about your own journey after you left the board and what your interactions with Hope House for kind of a number of years following your time on the board.
[00:32:01] Speaker C: Well, I believe that God puts our lives in seasons and for his purposes.
And toward the end of my time on the board, I had had a health issue that had substantially changed my life in some particular ways, and I had fallen, without realizing it, I had fallen into a depression.
It led to me resigning from the board and then resigning from 35 years of. After 35 years in law enforcement and ultimately three years of a very, very deep depression, the kind of not getting out of bed for days kind of depression. But God brought me out of that. And one of the things that I realize now is that everything that he has allowed that felt negative in my life had a purpose in it. I can look back. That's the beauty of being older. You can look back and you can see some purposes for things that have happened in life. So I did not have much contact at all with Hope House up until maybe there were a couple of occasions, I know where you had called and asked me to come over and pray over the house.
[00:33:07] Speaker A: Those were big. Those were always. Even in the times when I think you saw yourself as not engaged or not participating. And maybe that, because it wasn't on a super regular basis, was how it felt. But you were always part of the fabric of Hope House. That's nice to know. So, so true. So when we would have, you know, something big, like, there was a lot of discord happening in the house, and the moms were really struggling. And I remember there being a time when there were, for whatever reason, and I know what reason, because we have an enemy. We had moms who were just having terrible nightmares and kiddos who were having terrible nightmares. And I remember calling you, and what did we ask you to?
[00:33:49] Speaker C: Well, you asked me to come over and pray over the house and anoint the house, and I came with a friend. I brought another person that is, in my mind, a very strong prayer warrior. And we did that. And I think there probably were maybe two or three other times that something had happened, and you'd ask me to come over for me to switch back. Then, after I came out of my depression, which is a whole story in and of itself, God led me into being trained as a chaplain, and so I had a series of things that I had been able to do in that role. And then, I don't know when. It was two years ago, maybe roughly, that you had called me and asked me to come over and pray over the house. I remember that we were talking just in general, and I said, you know, God has put Hope House on my heart. Let me know if there's something I can be doing beyond this. I don't want to be on the board, but if there's something else. And it wasn't that long after that you called and offered me the opportunity of becoming the chaplain for the staff of Hope House, which has been a blessing. It's been a tremendous blessing to me personally.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: It makes me so thrilled that it's a tremendous blessing to you personally. But, wow, just watching our staff and their response to you as the chaplain has been incredible. Like, that deep spiritual leadership that you brought to us has only grown stronger through the trials that you've had to face and overcome with God. And you understand from a personal perspective some of what some of our staff are dealing with. And at the time that you came and said, I mean, we'd kind of, you know, we kept in touch, we'd have lunch at George's cafe together and just kind of catch up. And so I kind of knew, you know, what you were doing. You're still very actively involved. And I think on staff at.
[00:35:43] Speaker C: I'm on staff at my church, yes.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: Which has been a church that's been heavily involved in Hope House from the very beginning. Right.
I remember we had kind of just come out of COVID and our staff was struggling. We were. We had some folks who left after the COVID pandemic, left their positions at Hope House for some, for really family reasons. They'd gotten pregnant and decided they wanted to stay home with a baby. But some, because it was such a season of difficulty, and we were really dealing with at Hope House a level of burnout in our staff that we had never seen before. And there was a deep sense of, how do we care for our staff, who are caring for these moms who have just dealt with.
I often say the phrase at the time was, you're safer at home. And I always said, you're only safer at home if you live in a safe home. If you live in a home where it's not safe, you're just isolated in a bunch of chaos and sometimes abuse, oftentimes violence very much for two whole years. And what do we think the outcomes of that will be? And so our staff was dealing with the outcomes of that. They were dealing with all of these, like, even still today, dealing with such an increase in domestic violence and trauma, trauma, trauma in general, mental health issues in our moms. And so the staff was tired. And when you came and said, well, what else can I do? And I knew you had been working as a chaplain, I pulled Ashley Aside, our director of operations. I'm like, what do you think? Like, should we, should we consider this? And one of the things I think as a leader of an organization, you know, your mission to serve your population that you've been called to serve, that's the mission, to empower our teen moms to become self sufficient and to hopefully have them bump into Jesus along the way. What can be easy to lose a little bit of sight of is that you can't do that mission without the staff. The staff are the warriors that have been called to do the work, to daily show up for the moms. And even though I'm now not in a position where I do that individually with moms on a daily basis, I do remember what it was like and how hard it was to carry those stories home at night and put them down and sometimes wake up in the middle of the night thinking about something that one of the moms was going through, or even just the story she had told you about something that had happened in her childhood and how you would deal with that. Tell me a little bit about what you offer our staff and how we care for our staff by having you.
[00:38:19] Speaker C: Be a part of them and hopefully an ear to listen, being able to hear what they're saying from some experiential background. Whether it was what I did in law enforcement, which was very heavily involved in personal and physical trauma to all ages, I think that hopefully another piece is just to be able to sit and pray with them when they may be in a position of being. So I think there's confusion when you're trying so hard to step in and help others, and yet you carry in your own life, your own sets of life experience that can be traumatic or be negative in some way, and you're working through life. So you leave here at five in the afternoon and you go home to whatever's going on in your own family, your own life.
So just, I hopefully just to be able to sit down and. And listen with them and help maybe reason through some things, remind them of Jesus and that he loves them, and to help them understand why God has them in the position that they're in. You know, I think about even the two people sitting in the room with us right now. They all have a purpose inside of this plan that God had a long time ago, and they're all valuable. And I think hopefully, when someone has finished having a conversation with me, they have a sense that they have absolute value, even though they may not feel like it at that moment in time, or that there's just something so overwhelming that they're not quite sure what to do with it, to sit and talk with them about traumas that they've had, that they're trying to support somebody that's so important to them in their own life outside of hope, health. So it's just life, and it's the way that the enemy works. He looks for gaps, and he'll attack when we are the weakest.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: Right.
[00:40:15] Speaker C: So I like, I hope that I can be someone who's standing in the gap. I like to be a watchman on the wall. And when I think about Ephesians 610 and beyond that speaks about the armor of God. You know, the fiery darts is someplace that we're supposed to lift up the shield of faith. But if we don't know where the fiery darts are coming from, we don't know where to put the shield.
And so if there is someone that can be there and just simply say, hey, here's one coming at you over here. What can you do to move your shield and keep it from being as painful that's so good as life can be?
[00:40:50] Speaker A: So good, I think.
[00:40:52] Speaker C: Oh, by the way, I love to say that my office is the lobby.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: Her office is the lobby. She's usually sitting there with her bible or with a book and just waiting for. And I think that's actually such an important point that the lobby is your office, because we had tried and still do offer to pay for a certain number of counseling sessions for staff. And so that was one of the things that we put in place. We had it in place, but we really reemphasized it and put a little money toward it after COVID for our staff, which was good. And we have multiple tactics for caring for our staff, but we didn't see true movement in our staff's really health, I wouldn't say necessarily mental health, but their emotional health, until clarine started sitting in the lobby. And I think that's because, you know, when you go to counseling, you kind of go for something specific. You're trying to work through a specific. Sometimes it's very general, but in this case, trying to work through maybe some very specific things that might have been triggered or came out of COVID and created some of this tiredness. It's not the same as just having someone available.
And I think what clarine brings to our staff is what we bring to our mamas. So everybody on our staff knows, no matter who you are, no matter what your role is, we all know if a mom knocks on your door or a mom comes up to your desk, or a kiddo runs up and wants to talk to you or jump on your lap, you stop what you're doing. Nothing is as important as those moms and kids and being available to them when they come to us. And I think that's what Clarine brings to the lobby when, you know, a staff member is walking to go to the dining room and to get a snack, and there's clarine, and she just pops her head up and says, how are you doing? Anything you want to chat about or anything I can pray for you for? And oftentimes it'll lead to, okay, we're maybe they go off then to one of the meeting rooms for some quick time of connection and prayer. It's just that availability and your willingness to just be so that they can approach you whenever, not necessarily a scheduled time. I know you're also doing some scheduled things, like we do a lunchtime kind of devotional or Bible study. You also participate in our all staff meetings. And still to this day, she continues to provide trainings for our staff, something that you're excellent at. How do you view that, just being available?
[00:43:22] Speaker C: Well, I think that's, first of all, I'd like to say I'm waiting for the day that one of the staff members comes and just jumps in my lap in the lobby. That would be lovely.
It'd be like them with a child, you know? Yes.
You know, just to be available is what God has called me to do. There are times that I have to really pray. You know, pride is always present for all of us. And I'd like to think that I'm really the answer for somebody on the staff, but I know that that's ultimately God, Jesus. And so for me to be available is just simply being blessed to have the time to be able to be here. And I'll sit there, and there are some days where no one comes up and has a need, and I'll look up and say, geez, should I be here? Am I serving a purpose?
And then someone will come along the next time I'm in and need a prayer of some kind or a conversation of some kind. And the other piece of it is once again going back to that. God has given me opportunities to learn things in so many different areas. So even if I have a member of the management team come in and say, I'm really not knowing how to deal with something that might be a staff related issue, to be able to sit down and listen to them and kind of talk about some possibilities that they would have. So I just am blessed to be able to use the experiences that God has given me in my life, and some of them not so nice.
[00:44:53] Speaker A: True. Well, and I love that. I love that. I think that's one of the things that makes you extraordinary as our chaplain, is your life experience and the fact that you've had multiple careers now at this point, and also personal experiences with depression and what that feels like and how that can just impact you. And we have staff members who need to talk to somebody who's had similar experiences and know that they're not alone in what they're dealing with and to.
[00:45:24] Speaker C: Draw, you know, there's a truth that is always present. If Christ is your savior. And in the world that we live in today, sometimes that truth feels a little squishy, you know? So to be able to sit down with people and just once again have them assure me, and vice versa, that the consistency of God and the truth of Jesus Christ has not changed and that the world does not change, that even though God has an enemy who would like to, when it comes to the toughest points in life, that is.
[00:45:57] Speaker A: Consistent, the truth of Christ that's so, so good. I think we joke sometimes that although it's. That's unfortunately kind of true, it's not exactly the best advertisement in the world. When you say, come work for Hope House and you, too will be attacked by the enemy, it's like that. It's not the best advertisement. And yet the truth is that the people who come and work at Hope House, whether they're volunteers or staff, are called into that position for a reason. And God is working through our staff to do tremendous transformation, not just in helping a mom finish her education or get her driver's license or even go to counseling, but ultimately to know him and to reveal himself to them through our staff members and our volunteers. And we do have an enemy that doesn't want that to happen. And so oftentimes, the darkness that will come or the attack that will happen is not necessarily at work. It's something in your home or something in your personal life, or, you know, bringing up old traumas that you may have suffered because it's an incredible gift to have life experience and lived experience that you can share with our teen moms. And it creates a level of trust for them, knowing that you have lived experience similar to theirs. But it also means you have lived experience with trauma and things in your past that were difficult.
And guess where the enemy's gonna pick at you or even jump on you.
And I remember, pastor, tell us, one of our other board members, who is wise advisor, pastor, tell us, telling us that as God gives you a little bit of his kingdom to stuart, and you're faithful with that, and you faithfully care for that piece of the kingdom, the enemy will send sort of attack against that. But as you're faithful with that and stewarding that little piece, he'll make your piece of his kingdom bigger, like you're stewarding a little more and a little more of his kingdom. But as you do that, the enemy sends bigger and bigger attack.
[00:48:06] Speaker C: Well, the enemy will always expand to conflict, hoping that we won't have the strength to always remember that no matter how big the conflict, the victory is ours. I find myself thinking, too, just going back a little bit in terms of how God works.
When I came out of my depression in 2010 and through a conversation with my pastor at the time, made a decision that I would like to get some training as a chaplain. There was a program, it was kind of expensive. It was a year long kind of program, and I wasn't sure how I was going to pay for that. And I had gone to lunch with Terry Idiker, and she was on. She had been on the board, and I knew her from Hope House, and I shared this hope with her. And she called a couple of days later and said that she and Doug wanted to pay for my first quarter of training as a chaplain. So without that connection through Hope House, I would not have been able to start the training as a chaplain to ultimately finish that and do what I'm doing today.
[00:49:08] Speaker A: So full circle. Yeah, I love that.
[00:49:10] Speaker C: That's what I love about God.
[00:49:12] Speaker A: He just weaves everything and everyone together for his good, no matter what the enemy's purposes are.
And I guess moving toward kind of a close of our conversation, I just want to thank you for your leadership throughout the years, from those early days of helping mold me and guide me and praying over me to today who you are and how you guide and lead and pray over our staff, which, with the opening of the new early learning center, will grow to somewhere close to 57 or 58 staff members from just that initial, me and Amy and a few additional people.
It's really incredible to see how Hope House has grown. But what's more incredible to me is to see how he has kept people engaged with Hope House. And once people have been invited in, and if you are listening to the sound of our voices, we want to invite you in, like, come check it out. Just come see House, whether you're interested in just a tour or maybe just want to see what we're doing and if there's a way you can connect or plug in. But from listening to clarine, you can clearly hear, like, whatever your life experiences are, God can use them to be a part of something bigger than yourself, be a part of, whether it's Hope House or another organization or ministry where he can use your experiences and your gifts and talents. But we definitely invite you to come and check out Hope house and, and see if maybe your gifts and your talents and your life experiences can be a blessing to our teenage moms. But I just want to thank you for bringing your life experiences and your commitment for 21 years. Praying over the land when we were making the decision about the land, praying over the girls bedroom doorways when they were scared.
Praying over me when I didn't know what direction to go or how to lead.
Even now, in the last few years, praying over, you know, it was no fun leading through COVID and I did not do a great job in some areas, for sure. So just having you to go to still 21 years later to draw strength from has been such a gift to me. And I love, love, love watching you do that for our staff. So I just want to say thank you.
[00:51:29] Speaker C: Thank you. I'll make a shameless plug. If you are drawn to be an early learning teacher, there are positions open at Hope House for this new next journey in this ministry. So come on down. Apply, take a look.
[00:51:45] Speaker A: Come on down. I love it. Lisa Kirk Plowman will love that you gave that shameless plug. Thank you so much, Clarine. We love you.
[00:51:51] Speaker C: Thank you. Thanks.
[00:51:58] Speaker B: I didn't know the, the things I didn't know about you, o precious soul. The things I didn't know the things I didn't know about you, about.
