Lighthouse
Reported by Erik Smith

Well, things are OK today in Eula's world. It's been a good summer in the garden. The chickens are healthy and growing. Her house is almost back to normal again. Aside from some of the aches and pains that seem to come along with the birthdays, all in all, it's been a pretty good year.

The fact is, however, things weren't quite so good just a few years back. Well, she says it doesn't seem like six years ago, but that's when Eula's world wasn't so settled and wasn't so comfortable.

Living on a limited and fixed income, she was suddenly given custody of her grandson. We all know teenagers are expensive. It wasn't very long before Eula needed some help.

"I don't get that much social security, you know," she says. "And that 14-year-old, 6'2" with two hollow legs, and all, I tell you, trying to feed that, I look at him and my heart would go out to him. I thought you've got to help me with this. I don't know where to go. I don't know what to do. I come back to Lighthouse."

Eula turned to Lighthouse, the self-help agency that has for almost 30 years now been a beacon of hope with those with emergency and longer term needs.

Eula is a proud woman, so it was hard for her to ask for help. So now she wants to be there for Lighthouse as a volunteer. You might call it a payback. A better word is thank you.

Her world came apart again in 1997 when her precious home in Holly was all but destroyed in a raging fire. It was devastating to her, but once again, Lighthouse was there to help.

"I'm kind of an independent person," she says. "I like to do way can do for myself, you know. I wasn't able to do anything for myself. I lost my driver's license, social security card, everything."

Lighthouse is not about a hand out.

"We want to help you through the crisis, but we're really about bringing somebody from crisis and poverty to independence and self-efficiency," Joyce Russell, director of marketing, says. "We want them to move on and be functioning adults in society."

More often than not, you can find Eula in the Lighthouse clothing closet located in that little old white church building along Navy Road. She is a part-time supervisor there now, helping others to help themselves, giving back a little of what she was once given -- that special gift of help offered unconditionally with dignity, respect and love from a place now so very close to her heart.

"You don't have to feel less of a person because there are some parts in your life where you are not able to stand up and be as tall as you would like to be, but you have to know when to let go and say, 'I need help,'" she says. "That's what it's all about. It's having faith in yourself that you can do it. Never doubt yourself."

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