A plea from the heart

He survived the unthinkable.

Now he just needs the lights on.

I recently had the privilege of meeting a man I'll call a survivor — though that word barely scratches the surface of what he's endured. He was seven years old when his parents poured a boiling pot of food over his head. His skin fell off. He was seven.

His story is told with profound compassion by Father Greg Boyle in his recent book Cherished Belongings — a book about people the world threw away, and what it looks like when someone refuses to let them stay thrown away.

This man rebuilt himself from nothing. From prison. From a childhood that should never have happened to anyone. And he did it. He has a wife. He has children. He has a home in the suburbs where his kids grow up safe — the childhood he never got to have.

But life is expensive, and the math doesn't always work out. Like so many of us, he's on a payment plan with the utility company — $860 a month. He's fallen $2,600 behind. And they are about to shut his power off.

amount needed

$2,600

to keep the lights on for a family that has already been through enough darkness

I'm not asking you to understand everything about his past. I'm just asking you to imagine a man who clawed his way back from the edge — from abuse, from incarceration, from a start in life that would have broken most of us — and picture him sitting at his kitchen table, trying to figure out how to keep the heat and the lights on for his family.

He made it this far. Please help him make it a little further.

If you can give — even $10, even $25 — he and I would be more grateful than words can say. Every dollar is a small act of belief that people deserve second chances, and that a childhood of suffering does not have to write the final chapter of a life.

Thank you for reading this far. Thank you for caring.