Before There Was a Platform
Why I started Aid the Way, and what “the one” taught me about the transformative power of generosity.
I grew up in two houses at the same time. One was marked by domestic violence and the other was the church.
For years, I couldn’t understand how both could exist inside one little girl. The Bible study and the bruise. The altar call and the silent tension on the drive home.
How could fear and faith share the same address?
Then I grew up and repeated the cycle, finding myself in an abusive relationship of my own. Unfortunately, that’s what the statistics predict for daughters raised in violence — and the statistics weren’t wrong. They just weren’t the whole story.
Because while trauma shaped part of my life, generosity changed its trajectory.
Growing up, my five sisters and I lived in a constant state of survival, carefully reading the room and calibrating every word and movement to avoid the eruption of my father’s rage. Homework, chores, having friends over — everything was filtered through fear.
Somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, I often felt invisible. But what the statistics didn’t predict were the people who found me. The ones whose generosity quietly changed everything.
The Power of One Safe Adult
My godmother had a fiery spirit and a very full life — responsibilities and no shortage of demands on her time. But somehow, she decided I was worth noticing.
She took me to lunch, to the movies, and she let me sit in her van and just talk, cry, and vent.
She didn’t try to fix my life. She simply showed up, consistently, for one girl who was easy to overlook. Researchers call that a protective factor. Scripture calls it love.
Either way, she became one of the reasons my story did not end where it statistically should have.
One Shelter
Years later, when I finally escaped my own abusive relationship, I entered a safe house that I assumed, at the time, was funded by the government.
It wasn’t. It was funded by the Church. By ordinary believers. People I would never meet were paying for the roof over my head.
In that sacred quiet — when the chaos inside me finally settled enough for me to hear — I encountered God in a way I never had before. That is where I got saved.
One Woman Who Was Dying
As I prepared to move into transitional housing, I had no idea what was waiting behind the wrought iron gate. I only knew it would be home for my daughter and me.
A thin blonde woman met me at the door. She had decorated our apartment with every detail carefully chosen, arranged, and prayed over.
I had never met her, and yet somehow the space felt deeply personal — as though she had stepped inside my heart and designed a refuge specifically for us.
We walked in and she quickly sat me down and told me she was dying of leukemia. This had been her distraction, her joy, her offering.
She smiled and said something I have never forgotten: “God is preparing a home for me, so I wanted to prepare this home for you.”
Even now, years later, those words bring me to tears. She spent some of her most precious remaining days doing something generous for a stranger, and it marked me forever.
One Spiritual Family
Still in crisis as a single mother, living paycheck to paycheck — my life was one unexpected expense away from unraveling.
That’s when I was introduced to a family who would change my life. They saw my mess and stayed.
They prayed for me, showed up, and asked how they could support what God was doing in my life — not as a project, but as someone worth investing in.
I noticed this spiritual father loved his own daughters the way God intended fathers to love. Watching their relationship begin to heal something deep inside me, and for the first time, I began to understand what a father’s love was supposed to feel like.
Through this family, I learned generosity in its fullest form: not just money, but time, presence, prayer, belief, support, and love.
When I felt God calling me into missions, it made almost no logical sense. A single mother with an autoimmune disorder, living paycheck to paycheck — and yet I said yes. “Here I am. Send me.”
For three and a half years, their generosity helped sustain that yes.
The Pattern I Finally Saw
When my daughter and I returned home, I spent seven years working in crisis-focused ministries, and slowly, something began to take shape.
My spiritual father could see it before I could, and he called it out. He believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” — Romans 8:28
That something became Aid The Way.
When I look back at what led me here, I can see God knitting together a single thread throughout every chapter: generosity.
Generosity that saw me, that sheltered me. Generosity that spent its final days preparing a home for a stranger. Generosity that showed up quietly, faithfully, and changed the entire trajectory of my life.
And I realized: this is what the Body of Christ needs. Not another program or another campaign. Just a way for real needs of believers to become visible, so generosity can find them — and transformation can follow. That’s what Aid The Way was built to do.
What Aid the Way Actually Is
Aid the Way is a free crowdfunding platform that helps churches and ministries make real needs visible, so believers can meet them. The heart behind it is helping churches and ministries create stronger systems of care so people don’t fall through the cracks.
The model is rooted in the Acts 2 Church — believers caring for believers and creating a community where needs are met through generosity, relationship, and practical support.
A trained Community Advocate at each partnering ministry posts needs with dignity, safety, and confidentiality. Believers can browse and respond by zip code, category, and urgency. And 100% of every gift goes directly to the actual need. Because of the generosity of our Waymakers, the platform itself remains free.
Why This Is Personal
Because somebody saw me when I was silently suffering, and believers I have never met made safety possible for me.
Because a dying woman spent some of her final days preparing a home for my daughter and me. Because one family showed me what love looks like when it leaves the church building.
I know there are women living my old story right now. There is someone crying quietly tonight, praying for help they don’t know how to ask for — one bill, one bed frame, one meal, one kind person away from hope.
And somewhere nearby — possibly just blocks away — is a believer with the answer. They simply don’t know each other yet.
Aid the Way exists to build that bridge.
Acts 2 Was Never a Program
The early Church didn’t outsource compassion — they lived it and shared what they had. They carried one another’s burdens and practiced koinonia: a generosity so tangible that the watching world could not ignore it.
At Aid The Way, we are not trying to invent something new. We are simply giving an ancient expression of the Body of Christ a modern tool, because the need has not changed — and neither has the answer.
If You’ve Been Waiting for Permission
If you are a church or ministry leader carrying benevolence requests alone, you were never meant to.
If you are a believer sitting on a barely-used bed frame, a skill, an hour, or a checkbook, there is finally a place to put it.
If you are reading this with a need you’ve never said out loud, hear us: You are not a case file, a burden, or forgotten. You are a person made in the image of God, and there are believers near you who would consider it an honor to come alongside you.
Apply to bring Aid the Way to your church or ministry. Respond to a real need. Forward this to the pastor who needs to know there is another way, because we are the Church.
And together, we can show a watching world what happens when believers actually find each other.
Want to be part of the story?
Become a monthly donor and help Aid The Way continue connecting people in need with the Church and the practical support that can change a life. Your recurring gift helps make it possible to build the tools, partnerships, and pathways that move generosity into action.
Join us as a monthly giver and help make sure no one falls through the cracks.
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