by TaRae Maye
It all started with hope.
After losing my grandmother, I came home to lose nearly everything in a hurricane. For 155 days, my daughter and I were unhoused.
Eventually, I worked enough to move us into an income-restricted apartment. I thought getting the apartment would be the hard part. Surely, I could slowly buy furniture and make it feel like home again.
Five months later, I was still sleeping on the floor.
Every month, there was just enough for rent. Humility consumed me. One day, my vulnerability finally won, and I admitted to someone how badly my back hurt from sleeping on the floor. That’s when I was introduced to Love INC and received furniture through New Life Warehouse.
They didn’t simply deliver furniture. The experience felt like cousins, aunts, and uncles had shown up to fill our home, and us, with love, prayer, dishes, tables, décor, and a new bed. Among the items was décor featuring one of my favorite Scriptures, 1 Corinthians 13:4: “Love is…”
It became a reminder on my wall and in my heart.
At the same time, I was rebuilding professionally through a Disaster Worker Grant program, helping neighbors with career resources. When the program required me to be placed with a nonprofit, I was assigned, without requesting it, to Love INC.
Executive Director Chalette Davis interviewed me without initially knowing that just months earlier, I had been one of their Guests.
I got the position.
And suddenly, I found myself seeking and serving at the same time.
At Love INC, I learned about redemptive compassion and helped serve neighbors through programs centered on affirming potential, healthy boundaries, Faith & Finances, and work and life skills. I dove into the organization like a newfound church, telling its story from the mountaintops.
Serving gave me something to be proud of again.
Then Chalette invited our team to attend a 100 Shares Tampa Bay grant presentation.
When New Life Warehouse began presenting, I cried.
The hope they described was the hope I was living.
I realized that the organization standing before us asking for support was the same organization that had entered my empty apartment and helped make it a home.
Today, that temporary worker grant has ended, but my calling to serve hasn’t.
I still volunteer with Love INC, and I now serve as a part-time coordinator at The Portico, where every Sunday we welcome and serve breakfast to 150–200 neighbors experiencing homelessness. I get to offer prayer, connection, practical resources, and most importantly, the same thing someone once offered me:
Hope.
You may never meet every person touched by the ministry you help fund. You may never know which bed gave someone their first peaceful night’s sleep, which table became the place where a family finally ate together again, or which act of kindness reminded someone that God had not forgotten them.
And you may never know that the person receiving help today could become the person serving someone else tomorrow.
I know, because I was once the person receiving. And today, I get to serve.