Our lives don't stop, but sometimes the world around us does. I'm not sure where to begin. I'll start where we were hit hard first, with the fire. Almost everyone who knows my family is aware of the fire we had at our place. My husband, son, and I are the occupants.

It was December 7th, late afternoon. I was asleep in bed after working all night. My son woke me saying that there was smoke in the house. My son is our hero!! If it was not for him, we would probably all be harmed or gone. We realized the smoke was coming from downstairs. Please know that most of our belongings were located downstairs. Our home was deemed uninhabitable. I was injured trying, very ignorantly, to stop some of the fire. I had smoke inhalation, minor burns to my hand, my hairline along the face edge was singed, and I lost most of one eyebrow. Luckily, that all healed in a couple of weeks.

We were put in a hotel on Dec. 10th by our insurance. Unfortunately, our housing funds have now maxed out. This is why I am pleading for help... We would've been prepared, but they only gave us a 4-day notice. No one notified us early enough to put away funding for another place. We were originally told we could stay in the hotel until mid-Feb. Now, tomorrow, Jan 21st, is our last day, and we have nowhere to go. We will be homeless. We can't afford a tent either, but would freeze if we went that route. I called numerous organizations with no luck. That's not the end of our story.

My husband had a seizure in the car on our way to the house for cleaning up. I immediately rerouted to the hospital ER. They kept him overnight and I missed work (which we cannot afford) to stay with him per the doctor's request. The doctor pulled me aside and explained that he has early onset Alzheimer's & dementia. He's only 63, wth. This adds to our complications.

As you can tell, my pride is gone. I no longer care who reads this because we are desperate for help.

We have to pay to eat out almost every day. Luckily, the hotel serves daily breakfast. We've bought some groceries for the room to save expenses, but our fridge is very small. It's very costly to eat out with 2 grown men and myself. Most of my paycheck covers food alone. There isn't much left for medicine or gas.

My son's insurance ran out. When he became ill 2 weeks ago, that cost $260 out of pocket for urgent care. That was the last of what little extra money we had left.

Our 2nd vehicle has been out of commission for over a year and we are late on getting our license tags for both vehicles because we can't afford new tires for one & a new battery for the other. Plus, repair a flat on the 2nd. All of it needs to be completed before we can pass the inspections for tags.

My oldest lives with us at 27. He is disabled with three different diagnoses. He is able to hold down a job but unable to provide for himself yet. Since our second vehicle is out of commission, we give him rides to and from work 5 days a week. Sometimes we are unable to do this because I work too, and my husband can no longer drive. We have to resort to ridesharing on occasion which adds up quite a bit. The city's call-a-ride (for disabled adults) program boundaries do not reach the hotel.

More has happened, but I'm stopping here. No one likes a very long sob story. The bottom line is we need help paying for the hotel until the end of January. This would give us enough time to find a temporary rental somewhere and most of all, we will have shelter, a place to live and cook meals. Hopefully, it will also help with a deposit for a new place until our place is finished.

I do not want to ask for more funding than what we actually need. I am not a greedy person. Although it is very embarrassing for me to put this information out there in public, I had no choice. Even if you can help with $1 or 2, we will accept whatever God is willing to allow us.

Feel free to share our story with others. Thank you and God bless everyone.