How Habitat for Humanity Impacted My Life
My name is Ashley Spicer, and I am a proud Habitat for Humanity home owner. I cannot even begin to describe the many different ways my life has changed since Prescott Area Habitat for Humanity (PAHH) picked my family for a new home back in 2007.
Before Habitat, my daughter, less than a year old, and I were on every low income housing apartment waiting list in the Tri-city area, and the soonest any of them could get us in was two years. Two years! Thankfully, we were blessed to be invited to live with a co-worker until, unexpectedly, she and her husband moved out of state a few months later.
We were again homeless, but still blessed. An old friend of mine called out of the blue just to say “Hello,” and I found enough courage to ask if we could live with her family. At this time I knew Gwen and I were selected for a Habitat for Humanity home so, with my fingers crossed, I explained how important it was that we stay in one place until our house was complete. To my relief her family took us in with arms wide open. We lived there for a little over a year until our house was complete.
In the meantime, I helped build five homes with Habitat for Humanity. What an experience! I jokingly called working on the job site, “my free gym membership.” I learned an enormous amount of home construction knowledge that I will keep with me and use whenever something needs to be fixed on our home. The fifth home I helped build was my own. I wish I could adequately describe the feelings that ran through me as I worked with other volunteers who wanted to help me achieve something in my life. None of these volunteers knew me or my family, and here they were working themselves to the bone to provide a house for my family.
I will never forget these individuals, and there is no possible way to thank them enough for the kindness they have shown my family. To anyone who has yet to learn what Habitat for Humanity is about, all I can give you is my perspective. PAHH, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, the Thrivent Mingus Mountain Chapter, and the congregations of Emmanuel, AELC, Shepherd of the Hills, and Trinity Lutheran churches built a house for my family. Inside the framework that was nailed together by the love of strangers are beautiful rooms painted with inspiration that I could never have felt without their guidance.
This new inspiration has given me the opportunity to go back to college and begin anew on the path to my future. Now, that future very carefully protects the promise of bigger and better things in life. Most importantly, the people that make up Habitat for Humanity are committed to what is found beneath it all, the security that is buried deeply in the rock solid foundation. Habitat has helped me build a house in which I have made my family a healthy, safe, wonderful home. At the end of every day as I walk through the threshold of my front door, I smile and say “Thank You”.
December 2009