Soul Stories: Meet Sam
“You Get Used to It”
When I sat with Sam, the sky outside Lancaster was a blinding blue. Sunlight poured through Anchor’s wide window, settling across the room in soft gold, catching the stained glass so the walls themselves seemed to glow. It almost felt rehearsed, as if the sky had been waiting for his story. But as he began to speak, that brightness gave way to rain.
The rain never asks. It comes without apology: pooling at your feet, pressing into your clothes, sliding into your shoes until every step grows heavier. A nylon sleeping bag pressed to your ribs, a backpack digging into your shoulders, clothes that never fully dry. After long enough, the storm stops feeling like weather. It becomes the backdrop of every breath, the gray you start to mistake for yourself.
Sam told me about a morning leaving the shelter, when he stood on the lip of a sidewalk, one foot hovering above a puddle wide enough to swallow his reflection. A man beside him noticed his hesitation and said quietly, “You get used to it.”
At first, Sam thought it was just about the weather. Later, he realized it was about something deeper. Storms don’t always sweep through; sometimes they settle in. And when you live too long inside them—drenched, weary, unseen—you start to believe they define you. That was depression for Sam. It moved in early, convincing him the heaviness was permanent, that the gray sky was who he was rather than what he was walking through.
As a boy, words snagged in his throat, tumbling out in a stutter or retreating before they had the chance to form. What should have been seasons of childhood laughter felt muted, as though joy had been stolen before it reached him. Silence hardened into anger, and anger stole the spaces where laughter should have lived. Each choice born of that anger only pulled the clouds tighter overhead.
Depression is cruel like that—it tells you the ache will never end, that repair is impossible.
And yet, as Psalm 34:18 reminds us, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Even when Sam couldn’t feel it, God was already holding him.
By the time he came to Anchor, Sam was dragging the debris of survival, habits that clung like chains, choices carved by desperation, hope waterlogged and sinking like driftwood in floodwater. What met him here wasn't a lightning-strike change.
It was steadiness.
A plate of food.
A hot shower.
Someone saying his name as if it mattered—because it did.
The way forward wasn’t clear or simple. It was more like wading through floodwaters, each step cumbersome, snagged by systems pulling at his ankles. Yet one opening led to another. With Anchor’s case management beside him, a birth certificate was tracked down. Insurance was secured. Medical care unlocked the door to rehab. Rehab cracked open the possibility of steady work.
Each step was exhausting, layered with forms, applications, resumes, appointments, and rides that had to be arranged. Alone, it would have been like bailing water from a sinking boat with bare hands; the tide always rising faster than Sam could empty it.
But he wasn’t left to drown.
Anchor prayed with him when his strength collapsed, filled out paperwork at his side, sat with him in waiting rooms, and stood as breakwaters when the current threatened to sweep him under. Piece by piece, his life began to rebuild, not in theory, but in reality.
His voice, once tangled, now carried with steady confidence. The man who once battled addiction has completed rehab. And the neighbor who carried nothing now clocks in for third shift, his eyes set on the hope of permanent housing, so close to his next chapter. And still, he is able to lean on the Day Center, for a safe place to sleep after long nights on the job and for the continued case management support that steadies each new step forward.
“I feel more peace than I ever have in my life,” he told me.
“Anchor restored my faith.”
His voice wavered, but the truth beneath it was steady, rooted where storms cannot reach. The sunlight gentled the lines carved deep by years of strain, and his eyes carried a brightness that seemed less borrowed from the window and more born of God’s presence.
What I saw wasn’t survival.
It was renewal. Hard-won and undeniable.
“I know God is walking with me, even now.”
Sam dreams of giving back, of showing others the hope that carried him, but the truth is, he is already giving back in ways he probably doesn't even realize. Recently, Sam was observed by Anchor staff helping other clients navigate their way to access services in the area and find their own way to Anchor's doorstep. Sam gives back not only in his gratitude, but all the ways he cares for others.
Before Sam left, we prayed together. When I opened my eyes, Sam was brushing tears from his face, sunlight catching them like water after rain. It isn’t Anchor that changes lives, but Christ working through every meal, every prayer, every hand that serves.
“You get used to it” is the enemy’s whisper that storms are permanent and despair is our name. But, through Christ, those same words carry a different meaning: you get used to His faithfulness, His nearness, His promises kept again and again. You get used to grace that never runs dry. You get used to a love so steady it silences the storm.
So when you give from the resources God has entrusted to you, know this: you are not just providing a meal or a shower or a bed.
You are stepping into His promise to be with His people through the waters, helping Him turn storms into mornings, reaching very real, deeply worthy souls who deserve to know that when the devil whispers, “you belong to the storm,” all of heaven declares, “you are mine.”
And that’s something everyone can get used to.