Waiting for you

Nathan grew up in a well-to-do family in the suburbs of Chicago. His dad was active in the synagogue, and his mom was Christian, so he grew up attending church. But to Nathan, it felt entirely forced. It wasn’t what he wanted to do. Of six children, he was the self-described black sheep, constantly running into trouble. By the time he moved to Georgia to live with his biological father, things went completely off the hinges, leading to a high school arrest and serious charges.

Moving back to Chicago didn’t fix it. Things only got worse.

By the time the COVID-19 pandemic began, Nathan was homeless on the streets of Chicago, trapped in a heavy cycle of meth and marijuana. For him, it always started with weed. He eventually packed what little he owned and came out to Myerstown to meet half-siblings he barely knew. But you can’t outrun addiction. The drugs followed him, and he landed right back behind bars in Lebanon County.

Chaos was completely driving his life. After his release, he went on the run, violated probation, and served another two months. His court-appointed attorney told his father about Jubilee Ministries, thinking the life-change program would offer the stability Nathan desperately lacked. Nathan didn’t want it. He stayed exactly one day and walked out, planning to flee the state entirely.

But sitting in a house in Myerstown, looking at the familiar dead end ahead, he made a conscious choice: Jubilee wasn’t such a bad place. “Maybe I should go back and give it another go.”

That was 2021. That’s when we met.

Nathan wasn’t looking for Christ at the center of his life back then. He just wanted to break a fifteen-year pattern of homelessness and drugs. Part of him still clung to the romantic fantasy of the vagrant life—just a man, a backpack, and a dog traveling the world. After six months, the rebellion flared up again. He couldn’t handle the rules—specifically, he wanted to smoke cigarettes, which Jubilee didn’t allow. He left for the Lebanon Rescue Mission, stayed for a short time, got his own place, and held down a job for seven months.

Then the pot got the best of him again.

This time, the marijuana triggered a severe psychosis. He started experiencing schizophrenic tendencies, perceiving things that weren’t real. The mental turmoil eventually cost him his position making coffee for the church at Freedom in Christ Fellowship.

Nathan’s journey has been a zigzagging mess between faith and addiction. Whenever he fell back, the condemnation was brutal. The enemy would accuse him, making him feel like he wasn’t even a Christian. Yet Nathan always knew God hadn’t abandoned him. He knew God was in his corner; it was Nathan who was making the conscious decision to live life on his own terms.​

This journey has a lot to do with relationships. Regardless of Nathan’s addiction or the condition he was in, it didn’t change how we felt about him. I remember one particular moment. It was after a Christmas Eve worship service, and I saw Nathan walking away, so I yelled out and asked him what he was doing. He was completely transparent: “Probably going to smoke weed, and hopefully not harder drugs,” he said. So I asked him to come over for dinner. That evening, Deb and I brought him to our house. He was high, and I knew it, but that didn’t mean we shouldn’t show him the love he needed. He was so much more than a man trapped in addiction; he was a child of God.

Not long ago, Nathan was struggling between the desire to smoke marijuana and his desire to stop. He really wanted to stop, but just couldn’t. I hated seeing him using, but at the same time, I loved that he was transparent, real, and willing to talk to me about it.

Not long after that, I had a vacancy at the Willow Street Christian Community House. I presented him with an agreement and told him flat out: “You can’t smoke weed here. I love you, and if you smoke, I’ll kick you out.” Nathan didn’t sign it right away; he took a week to think about it.

When he finally said yes, he handed me his monthly fees and his medical marijuana card.

That plastic card was his ultimate safety net, his legal permission to smoke whenever he wanted to. Handing it over was a physical symbol that the old life had to go. It set him free. He didn’t stop there, either. Recognizing the patterns of addiction, he quit smoking cigarettes six months ago, and more recently, he deleted his social media accounts to stop the mindless doom-scrolling. He began tackling the chaos across the board, peeling back the layers like an onion through continuous pruning.

He sat and told me about the moment of total surrender. He said it happened out in the river when Daniel and I baptized him. As Nathan stepped into the water, a massive snake broke from the rocks and swam away down the river. For Nathan, it was a tangible sign of the old life departing. It still gives him goosebumps to talk about it.

Today, Nathan has been completely sober for more than eight months and free from nicotine for more than six. Life at the Willow Street Christian Community House doesn’t feel like an institution; it feels like independent living built on a true brotherhood. He lives in a safe, loving environment.

And every Sunday morning at 9 a.m., before anyone else arrives at Freedom in Christ Fellowship, you can smell the patchouli oil in the kitchen. Nathan is there, quietly working behind the scenes, brewing coffee for the church. The church didn’t judge him when he zigzagged; they knew him by name and welcomed him each time he returned. As an introvert, serving quietly fits him perfectly, but his vision has expanded. He wants to be used by Christ in mission work, whether elsewhere in the country or overseas.

If Nathan could sit down face-to-face with a guy sitting exactly where he used to be, staring at the ceiling of a prison cell, convinced he can never get it right, he wouldn’t offer a complicated sermon.

He would tell him that the depth of God’s grace operates on His time, not ours. “He’s always been waiting for you,” Nathan says.