In early December, my husband and I made a decision that will affect our home life for probably the rest of our lives. We agreed, after much prayer and heart-searching, to ask Zoe (not her real name), who fled a dysfunctional home at 16 years, to move in with us, at least temporarily.

Zoe is a Christian student who attended a university about an hour and a half from our home and as a friend of our recently married daughter, met us a few times. Since the early fall of her second year at university, she had been experiencing frequent seizures and had spent 10 days in the hospital. Eventually Zoe felt it necessary to drop out of university. She needed a safe place to live with caring adults who could support her in finding the answers to her medical problems and help with long-term emotional issues. She asked to stay with us.

This might not be an unusual assignment for others, but I have always wanted my home to be a quiet, peaceful refuge. Since I grew up in a pastor/missionary family and married a pastor/missionary, I have been keenly aware that my family was always under observation in the small towns and rural pastorates where we served. Therefore, I guarded the privacy of our home.

I’ve also been keenly aware that we are not trained counsellors and are only capable of offering Zoe the results of years of living and the love God has given us. Yet, we felt God’s call to open our home.

Since Zoe moved in four months ago, my schedule has gone through a radical change—and so has my awareness of what young adults from struggling families go through. Never before have I been so aware of the crisis of family breakdown. Kids are becoming adults with problems that some of us with intact Christian homes can never fathom.

A victim of childhood sexual, physical and verbal abuse, Zoe experimented with alcohol and premarital sex and attempted suicide a number of times. Incredibly, through it all, her maternal grandmother encouraged her to go to church as Zoe moved from one Canadian coast to the other.

Thanks to Christian mentors through her teen years and Christian adults and peers at university, Zoe gradually began to integrate her faith with real life. Her story is distressing yet encouraging—her childhood crises and despair are gradually being transformed by God’s grace as she grows in moral understanding and shows real compassion for other struggling young adults. It is so heartening to watch her learn to lean on Christ.

I feel privileged to know Zoe. She has captured our hearts. She has probably helped me more than I have helped her. In His efforts to transform me, God keeps showing me new areas that I need to give to Him. Despite my reservations, He wanted me to offer my private space to someone in need of a loving home.

God has made Zoe a part of our family. She seems to bounce from one crisis to another, yet her heart, far from being jaded and suspicious of love, is open, vulnerable and truly caring. Only God could perform that miracle.