Justin finds home after a lifetime of rejection

His father died before Justin was old enough to remember him. His mother struggled with addiction, eventually spending time in jail. Raised first by his grandparents, Justin was later shuffled between family members, before ultimately reuniting with his mother. By the time he turned 21, he had moved 17 times.

“There’s a lot of brokenness in the beginning of my life,” Justin said. Yet through it all, church was a constant. His family attended regularly, his mother played piano during worship, and Justin went to their weekly youth group.

But the sting of abandonment and rejection left their mark. “One of the things that happened to me was that I internalized that since ‘God is good all the time,’ then something must be wrong with me,” he said.

By 15, Justin was smoking marijuana and drinking heavily. Substance abuse had been normalized at home, and although he never felt he lost his relationship with Jesus, he carried those same patterns into adulthood.

“It was an interesting dichotomy: I had a relationship with God while at the same time my parents were drug addicts and alcoholics. We would leave church and then they would be partying. So, I brought that into my own relationship with God.”

At 21, Justin joined the Air Force, where structure and a Christian military ministry gave him purpose and healthy community. For nearly a decade, he felt his life was on track.

Then everything fell apart.

After marrying and moving to another state, his marriage deteriorated, he was discharged from the Air Force, and just months later, his mother died.

“I was angry and hurt, and instead of running to community and the church, I started drinking and smoking weed every day,” Justin said. “Alcohol became my comfort, but it also took everything. I was hopeless.”

Justin lost jobs, friendships, his home, and eventually received a DUI. “I started setting everything, my whole life, on fire,” he said. “But then I found the Mission.”

Today, Justin hopes to reconnect with his siblings and build healthier habits. He says caring for others has always come more naturally than caring for himself.

The Mission, however, has given him something he had been searching for since childhood. “It felt like coming home, even though I didn’t know anybody here,” Justin said. “I was being treated with dignity and respect. I’m experiencing God’s value and acceptance of me and it’s planting seeds of hope in my heart.”