"You know the story about the Grinch whose heart shrinks three sizes too small? I feel like mine has grown three sizes so large."

Before you walk into Welcome Home - the nonprofit that feels like a retreat center in the east Chattanooga woods - you need to understand what, exactly, you're walking into.

Ten years ago, Sherry Campbell, a hospice social worker, kept recognizing a dire need: sick people needing care with nowhere to go.

Yes, hospitals would professionally treat, but then discharge.

If you're homeless with terminal cancer, where are you being discharged to?

"If you are living outdoors and dying," said Sherry, "there was no place for people to go."

She ignored it ... and ignored it ... until ... she couldn't any longer.

"I don't know if you're ever been in the belly of the whale like Jonah. I was thrust into the belly of the whale," she said. "You remember that childhood game 'Uncle?' My life had become so incredibly painful and dark. I cried 'Uncle'."

She prayed: Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do.

Then came the answer:

In 2015, she and a group of "like-minded friends" opened our city's first hospice home for terminally-ill homeless men and women. People sick with cancer. People dying. People without homes or families.

They now have a place to go.

"Everyone deserves to be free of suffering and have some type of life that is happy and know that someone cares about them," said Sherry.

They called it Welcome Home.

Since 2015, Welcome Home has cared for more than 150 people.

Today, its new digs are gorgeous, with yoga center vibes as a train whistle blows surrounded by a campus of rocking chairs, fern gardens and tall trees. Welcome Home offers a four-bedroom home and a pair of three-bedroom homes, with private bedrooms, spacious kitchens and living rooms for its guests, each enduring different stages of suffering: cancer, terminal illness, homelessness, and, sometimes, all three.

"The world can be so hard right now," said Sherry, Welcome Home's executive director. "For people that come here, they can just take a deep breath and feel like they are safe."

Before you walk in, though, hand on knob, it's good to know what's behind the door.

"If you read Scripture," Sherry said, "there are miracles and all these beautiful things happening. Here in 2024, we’ve forgotten those things.

"But we can delve into the mystic. We can delve into stuff we’re not seeing because we're too busy, too angry or too liberal or too conservative.

"There is something bigger going on."

The door opens, you walk inside, when you see it:

Yes, most certainly.

There is Something Bigger going on.

The first thing you notice? It feels just like a warm home, like a sorority house for adults; there's food everywhere, the comforting sound of food being served, laughter from the kitchen, the big TV's on mute, extra tables carried in for guests and - strangely, hilariously - everyone's wearing these weird glasses.

Then, it hits. This isn't just dinner.

It's a party.

"It's my birthday," said Veronica Jackson.

Everyone here calls her "Ronnie." She was turning 57.

"It’s been the best birthday I’ve had in I don't know when," she said.

Why?

"I am here surrounded by people who love me."

As she ate through a plate of green peas, fried chicken, potato salad and puffy roll, she told her story: she moved into Welcome Home last July, the day after a mastectomy. Cancer. In her chest wall. She's still receiving chemo. Before Welcome Home, she was, well, somewhere else.

"I've seen a lot of abuse in my life," she said, conveying an awful lot with very little.

Welcome Home offered a refuge, as if she'd found a place where everybody knows her name.

"It is an awesome feeling when people have the best interests at heart," she said.

This evening, her 57th on this planet? Ronnie's glowing.

"It's the glasses," she smiled.

Audrey Smith was seated across from Ronnie. Earlier this spring, she buried her mom, then, a week later, received a cancer diagnosis. She was living with her sister, who encouraged her to move to Welcome Home, where the care would be loving and robust.

"You feel like someone," she said. "You feel more secure. Like a family."

Often, Audrey was grieving a double loss - her mom, her health. "When I started crying, I wouldn’t stop," she said.

Welcome Home's assistant director Michelle Goble began to sit with her, talking, listening, making an appointment with a grief counselor.

"It doesn't matter what you are facing," Audrey said. "This is a good place to ask for help."

At the end of the table, Kim Burns, 66, with eyes like diamonds, began her story.

"They put me out. I didn't go anywhere. I didn't have anywhere to go," she said.

Last summer, the former juvenile probation officer became homeless when "my ex-husband didn't pay his part of the rent. I couldn’t afford to pay."

Their rent? $500. Total.  

"I was homeless. I didn't have nothing," she said.

Then, her second cancer diagnosis.

"I have lung cancer in both lungs. It's moving up to my brain and up my neck," she said.

Moving into Welcome Home, she found a bedroom just for her, decorated with "knick-knacks and everything", including cable TV.

"I love Westerns and cooking shows," she said. "Marshall and Matt Dillon."

She smiled; like the Dillons, Kim carries a sense of many hard miles matched with equal parts toughness and tenderness.

"It’s hard to not have anybody," Kim said. "To be alone. It’s hard."

Welcome Home is operated by a dozen full-time staff, including one new social worker who follows guests who graduate from Welcome Home, healthy and healed. ("We found they still needed community," said Sherry.)

"I like hanging out with them," said Rose Huinker, a volunteer and Reiki teacher.

"You have a bad day and they are just as comforting and sweet towards me even though I'm here for them," she said. "We help each other. It's community."

Each night, Welcome Home sets the dinner table. Volunteer groups - churches, families, nonprofits - bring and serve meals.

(This Sunday afternoon, from 1 to 6 pm, there's a Welcome Home benefit concert at Cherry Street Tavern, featuring Lew Card, Jonas Conner and Nic Blevins.)

For Ronnie's birthday, folks from Be Love Church showed up with armfuls of fried chicken, potato salad and cake. They set the table. Washed the dishes. Cleaned the kitchen.

Most of all?

They served, but not from afar. They got close, sat at the table, listened, laughed, hugged.

"When you sit down with someone, you get as much as you give," said Scott Hughes, a Be Love member. "It’s vulnerable. When you share a meal, you’re vulnerable. You’re not in a superior position."

"We do our best in the West to model what the church did for so long," said pastor Noah Chant.

"Sharing meals around the table."

Be Love uses Act 2:42 - "they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer" - as a model; each week, different communities of church-goers meet together for meal and discussion and fellowship. Yes, there's Sunday morning worship, but it's not seen as the main event.

"We see Sunday as a secondary expansion of being in community," Noah said.

The Ringgold, Ga., church volunteers throughout the community, including monthly at Welcome Home.

"Around 40 percent of the time, Jesus is doing ministry around a table," said Noah. "There is a spiritual aspect to eating together."

Welcome Home also offers the annual Demystifying Death series, which Sherry calls "our love letter to the community."

"We believe if we offer our community opportunities to talk about death and dying and grief, they will be more comfortable when it happens to them."

Sherry and Welcome Home courageously open a door that our culture has barred shut for so long, often to our own detriment and confusion.

It's the doorway to death and dying.

"It’s in our blood and bones," said Sherry. "We know how to care for folks. But we’ve moved away from that. We’ve just forgotten.

"Now, we’re scared of it.

"It’s very holy and sacred ground to be with someone at the beginning of life and the end of life. It’s like they are closer to home than we are."

From the kitchen, Pastor Noah carried out a birthday cake with candles.

The room began to sing.

Ronnie made a wish.

"Thank you everybody, so much," she said. "A million thank you's."

Near the end of the night, Scott from Be Love approached Ronnie.

"Can we pray for you?" he asked.

Everyone circled and held hands. Ronnie, tears in her eyes, hugged tight with Sherry.

"Thank you for Ronnie," Scott began. "We pray for her healing and life abundant and we celebrate her today."

Everyone cheered.

"You know the story about the Grinch whose heart shrinks three sizes too small?" Ronnie said. "I feel like mine has grown three sizes so large."

"I never knew being sick would have landed me here to where everybody takes care of me.

"Welcome Home is a good name for this place."

At times, Something Bigger can look awfully small, like a single candle on a birthday cake or a paper plate of fried chicken or scarred hands being held around the table.

Something Bigger can be easily overlooked, like a vulnerable infant in a nowhere manger on a cold night who somehow seems to be reborn every time someone forgotten in this city is remembered, embraced and welcomed back home.

"We want to know that people love us and care for us, even the orneriest of us all," said Sherry.

Two thousand years ago, the wise men brought three gifts to Something Bigger.

Today, Welcome Home offers three gifts, as well.

"Rest, shelter and love," said Sherry. "No one deserves to die without these three essential needs."

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This story is 100% human generated; no AI chatbot was used in the creation of this content.