Friday, October 20, 2017
Retreats for the homeless
The organization that puts on retreats for the homeless
Spiritual retreats help those struggling with homelessness and addiction move forward.
Denise Vasquez awoke one night in November 2015, slumped over in a chair after drinking at least a gallon of vodka.
She knew she had to either find more alcohol to avoid a withdrawal seizure or quickly seek medical help.
For the first time in years, she wanted to stop drinking.
For the first time in years, she prayed.
"I want to live!" the 43-year-old Denver woman recalls telling God before dialing 911.
Over
the next five months a sober Vasquez, having grown up in a church-going
family, reconnected with God while living at the Salvation Army's
Denver Adult Rehabilitation Center. After seven years of hard, usually
solitary, "blackout" drinking, where she had isolated herself from her
family and friends, Vasquez had already made great strides toward
regaining control of her life.
But it was an experience
outside the center, presented to her and five other homeless women who
were recovering from addiction, that Vasquez says gave her the tools to
remain sober. The women spent a weekend in April 2016 at the Loretto
Spirituality Center in Littleton, Colorado where they participated in an
Ignatian Spirituality Project retreat.
"It's a beautiful
environment," she recalls. "The whole area is so rich in nature, and I
connect with nature. It just brings me right back to connecting with
God, so the whole experience was so spiritual for me."
Vasquez
says she had no idea where the retreat center would be but arrived
there to realize that she had lived in apartments across the street and
had grown up only five miles away.
"When I got there it
just seemed like God was taking me home, taking me back to my roots,
back to a time in my life when my addiction wasn't controlling my life,"
Vasquez says. "Being with the women and interacting, the praying and
the singing and the sharing, everything about it was so soul-filling for
me."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment