NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — Holding all her worldly possessions in a half-full garbage bag, Dorothy Ray got off the bus from Nebraska with her 14-year-old daughter. She had lost everything — her home, her car, her pride.
Her oldest son, who was living in Nashville at the time, invited his mother and siblings to come live with him and his wife and three children — eight people in a three-bedroom apartment.
“For 10 months I slept on the couch at my son's and tried to figure out what I was going to do,” she said. “I was in the deepest depression. I had hit rock bottom and to cope I was drinking.”
Ray, now 51, had been a single parent since she was 15. The ninth-grade drop out got her first apartment in the projects at age 16. For all those years, everybody had been looking to her for support and help. “I did everything for everybody for so long, I lost sight of Dorothy,” she admits.
Ray slowly started developing a relationship with God while she was at her son's home alone and reading the Bible. “I had always believed in Jesus,” she said. “One of my earliest memories is my grandmother taking me to church. But I didn't really have a relationship with him.”
Because of this time spent in the Bible and the relationship Ray started developing, she stopped drinking. She began praying that God would give her direction and an opportunity to go back to school. Doors started opening.
“I think I had to go down to come up,” said Ray. “I stopped asking God why – Why was I taken away from my parents at age 9? Why did my mother die when I was young? Why had I lost everything? I realized it didn't matter. He was there for me all along.”
She had been sending applications in for housing during the time she was living with her son. She got accepted in one and soon met a social worker who pointed her to the Christian Women's Job Corps in Nashville as a resource for getting her general education diploma, or GED.
Almost two years ago, Ray set as her top goal the receipt of her GED. She took the test on April 23, and passed most of the requirements, but came up just short.
“It's a privilege for me to take it. I look at all the younger women around me taking it who haven't been out of school as long as I have and they're flunking and getting discouraged and quitting. But not me. I'm going to continue. If I want my GED, I've got to go out and get it!”
And though she didn't get it on the first attempt, she is working toward her next attempt. She readily admits math has been her toughest subject. “I'm going to keep studying and keep taking it until I pass it,” she says with determination.
She continues to work on the computer given to her by CWJC, a ministry of Woman's Missionary Union designed to help equip needy women and men for life and employment. “I was one of about five or six who got computers from Christian Women's Job Corps last year,” she said. “My daughter-in-law got it hooked up for me and showed me the basics. She got me online and I was able to learn to use e-mail.”
As a result, Ray was able to communicate with her son Anthony while he was serving in the armed forces in Iraq. “That was a real blessing,” she added.
When women become a part of the CWJC program, they are paired with a mentor. “Our mentors are vital to the success of our women,” said Rebekah Sumrall, executive director of Nashville's CWJC. “They meet at least one hour a week with the women they are mentoring and provide encouragement, guidance, hope, and friendship. They help our women stay on track in working toward and meeting their goals.”
“It's a joy to be Dorothy's mentor,” said Barbara Oldham, receptionist and switchboard operator at the Tennessee Baptist Convention. “We've been together a little less than two years and it's been inspirational to see the woman Dorothy is and is becoming. There's no holding her back. Whatever she wants to do, she plans on getting there, even when she's confronted with hard situations.
“Dorothy is a survivor,” Oldham added. “She has taught me a lot. In fact, I feel like I'm the one who's received a blessing in our relationship. She totally relies on her faith. She's in God's Word daily, and her dependency on the Lord is very inspiring to me.”
After she achieves her GED goal, she plans to work toward “getting my computer certification by getting into the computer lab program at CWJC. Afterwards, I want to help someone else – women like me, young or old, who think their life is over. I want to show them it's not.
“I failed so much in so many different ways in my life,” she added. “If you don't fail, you won't learn. You've got to get out of the box. I believe God is taking me even further. I would like to go to college and get my degree in counseling so I really could help others.”
Ray recently shared her story with attendees of the Tennessee WMU Get Together in Gatlinburg. “I'm not a speaker. I don't even know all the right words. “But I have God with me and greater is he that is in me, than he that is in the world!”
– Ferguson is a correspondent for the Baptist and Reflector.