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People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.

When you figure out which one it is, you will know what to do for each person.

A reason person meets a specific need—offering guidance, support, or help through a difficult time—then moves on once the purpose is fulfilled.

A season person brings joy, growth, or shared experiences for a temporary chapter.

Lifetime relationships teach enduring lessons and remain constant.

~ Brian A. “Drew” Chalker (adapted)

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I was eight months pregnant with our third child, due in about six weeks, when a kindly man with white hair and a suit jacket knocked on our door at snowy Fort Drum, where there are two seasons: winter and the 4th of July. We’d just moved into new quarters, and I was chasing two toddlers while feeling utterly miserable.

He introduced himself as Pastor Maughan and asked if he could step inside for a moment. Hesitant and exhausted, I let him in anyway. He and his wife were planting a new church nearby and wondered if we had a church home. I explained we’d only been there a couple of months and hadn’t found one yet. He invited us for Sunday and left a flyer, which I set on top of the fridge and promptly forgot to mention to my husband.

Sundays came and went. We stayed home, just trying to survive each day.

Three weeks later, the familiar knock returned. Pastor Maughan was “in the neighborhood” and wanted to check on me. He asked gentle questions about our family and where we’d come from, then left after giving the kids a small treat. No pushy invitation this time, just kindness. I told my husband about it that night.

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Ten days later, the knock came again. This time, his lovely wife, Miss Amy, stood beside him. They asked to visit for a minute. In my mind, questions swirled: Why are they being so nice? Are they legit or just… creepy?

My toddlers immediately flocked to Miss Amy, drawn by her soft eyes and gentle voice. Over coffee, Pastor shared about their small group of families. For the first time in months, I had uninterrupted adult conversation. They stayed only twenty minutes, didn’t press us to attend, but asked if they could check in again sometime. I said yes.

Our baby boy arrived early; labor started at 2 p.m. on December 21, and by 11:11 that night, we were snuggling an 8-pound, 5-ounce bundle. With no family within 1,000 miles, we rushed home from the hospital by noon the next day. That evening blurred into exhaustion, excitement, and nursing.

Somehow—they never said how—Pastor Maughan and Miss Amy knew. On the 23rd, they arrived with a hot meal, a beautiful handmade blanket, and layette items. They didn’t linger, just asked if they could pop by the next day. Tears filled my eyes; I said yes.

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Every day for the next week, including Christmas Eve and Christmas, a church member brought a meal. On Christmas, the kids got little toys, and we received a fruit basket. They didn’t preach; they simply showed Christ’s love through actions.

In January, we started attending steadily. Their church met in a big old Victorian house: the dining room turned sanctuary, Miss Amy at the organ against the wall, children upstairs for kids’ church while we worshiped and studied.

One Sunday, our middle child Hannah, who was three years old and convinced clothes were optional, vanished during service. Panic set in until someone spotted her outside in the vegetable garden, happily munching on green tomatoes in nothing but her underwear. She was blissfully unbothered; the rest of us were in stitches (and relief).

Moments like that reminded us that this little church family embraced the messiness of real life, toddlers and all.

That summer, Dave and I were baptized at a nearby church willing to host our little group. Pastor Maughan joked there wouldn’t be enough room for everyone in their bathroom. Our son was dedicated there too.

Over the next couple of years at Fort Drum, that church family demonstrated God’s faithfulness again and again: changing a flat tire when my husband was in the field, inviting us for meals and fellowship, teens offering free babysitting on special nights.

Then orders came. We moved nearly 3,000 miles to Fort Lewis.

We stayed in touch for a while, but military life, time zones, and changing seasons pulled us apart naturally. Yet thirty-seven years ago this month, we first walked through those Victorian doors, and we’ve never looked back.

Pastor Maughan and Miss Amy were our “reason” people: they entered our lives briefly, met a deep need with quiet, persistent kindness, and left gifts that still echo. Gifts like confidence in God’s details, the habit of showing up, a faith that traveled with us through every PCS. They taught us that God is faithful in the smallest moments; we just have to open the door.

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This woman didn’t know us but sacrificed for a mother with two children who needed a place to stay until we could get back on our feet.

Most people in America have never been in a position where they didn’t know where they were going to lay their heads that night.

Homelessness has unfortunately woven its way into my life multiple times, starting from my childhood and, as I previously wrote, once as an adult.

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To this day, I don’t know what it feels like to call a place my home, and it’s a hard concept to wrap my head around—staying in one location for the rest of my life—despite how much I hate the instability of constantly moving.

Instead, I am just thankful that I have a roof over my head, no matter where that roof is. Maybe my bar is incredibly low, but this minimal appreciation stems from decades ago.

How we encountered this “Amazing American” originated from an unfortunate living situation with a family member.

We had recently moved to upstate New York to live with a family member in her house so my mother could further her career in nursing. It was a situation that was supposed to be charitable on my family member’s part, but it quickly became hostile.

I was young, so my memories are a bit scrambled. But after talking with my sister about this—who is four years older than me—she filled in the details of our abrupt exit from their home.

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I do remember not liking this family member because they were scary to me. She was aggressive and mean. One evening, I walked out of my bedroom and she saw me, which triggered her to scream at me.

My sister recalls that I froze in fright and started peeing myself, which made her even angrier. This event prompted my sister to tell my mom what happened, and then everything changed.

I remember getting off the school bus and my mother was there waiting for me. We were leaving because she wasn’t going to have her little boy in such an abusive environment.

Once again, my memory is spotty, but I remember staying at a Motel 6 and going to school. I don’t think anyone in my school knew what was going on with us.

One day, my mother told us that we were going to be staying with this woman that she met, who offered to help us on such short notice.

This wasn’t a wealthy woman with a massive house and living a life of abundance. This was a woman who had a spare room in her trailer in the nearby trailer park.

I had never met this woman before, but I never felt unsafe staying in her trailer. Once again, my memories are spotty about my time living there, but I generally remember how I felt around that time.

My mother always conveyed to me that this situation was temporary and we would soon have our own place.

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God bless my mother because I don’t know how she did it at that time, but somehow we successfully utilized that one bedroom for a couple of months (my timeline could be slightly off, but it was a little while).

Over the years, I’ve thought about this situation from a multitude of angles. I think I’m a relatively generous person, but I don’t know if I could have three strangers stay in my home for an indefinite period, even if they were paying me a modest amount.

I don’t know the arrangement my mother and she had, but I do know I felt safe there. I wasn’t nearly as anxious staying there as I was living with my family member who seemingly hated that I was in her home.

It’s sad to say this, but sometimes it’s strangers who will care more about you than blood will.

Despite facing these hardships as a child, they have made me more thankful for the small things in life and aspects of American life that we take for granted at times.

I am thankful that people like that woman exist in our country.

If you'd like to contribute your own "Amazing Americans" story, which will be posted here and on Substack, send me a private message or email me adam@wrongspeak.net

Refer a friend

In this writing series, I want to begin by talking about a group of people I barely knew that sacrificed so I didn’t have to sleep in my car after moving to Tennessee.

Prior to moving to Tennessee, I was living at home in New Jersey and wanted a change in my life for better economic opportunity.

At the time, I had a good friendship with a guy who lived in Nashville, and we talked daily about cars and life. I was 21 years old, and we had discussed the possibility of me moving out to Nashville to learn autobody work.

In my early 20s, I was passionate about cars and thought I’d want to switch into the automotive profession. In several conversations, he said he knew someone who could possibly get me work as an apprentice.

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Where would I stay? Well, he said he had a house, and I could crash with him until I got myself settled.

Before making any hasty decisions, I decided to drive to Nashville and meet this friend and his auto shop friend to see if this was relatively legitimate.

When I met him, he had me meet at his parents’ house because he was supposedly there helping them. Later that day, he had me briefly meet his friend to solidify the image of this entire endeavor coming true.

In hindsight, his friend looked kind of confused as to who I was, but for many years, I struggled with trusting my instincts and would lean on blind optimism. Deep down inside, I wanted this to work because I was desperate.

I was working a dead-end job, I had just had a child, and I knew that I needed to take a major risk to find some sort of success in life to ultimately take care of my son.

When I came back home to New Jersey, I knew I was leaving for Nashville—a place I’d only visited for a couple of days. I had no family there, no life connections there other than this guy I met online, and starting over was going to be a massive overhaul in my life.

I thought if it worked out, I could have my son and his mother come with me, and maybe we could finally make our relationship work to become a family. But in the short term, I was going to be away from him, which hurt more than I thought it would because I was incredibly attached to him.

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The one smart thing I did was find a job at an alarm company before moving out there. I applied from New Jersey and told them everything about me moving there. My boss understood the entire situation and had the job waiting for me.

The day had finally come for me to drive to Nashville with all of my belongings stuffed into a Mitsubishi Eclipse, but I’d get no answer from my friend on the phone. Call after call, no answer.

It wasn’t until I was a couple hours away from Nashville that he finally answered. “Sorry man, you can’t stay here.” My heart sank, and I didn’t know what to do. Admittedly, I was already kind of broke but hoped that a new job would get me out of the dumps quickly.

Here I am on a Friday night after driving over 13 hours to Nashville, and I have no place to go. I may write about this in the future, but I coincidentally had another car friend in Huntsville, Alabama, who let me stay with him for the weekend so I didn’t have to spend my last dollars on a hotel.

Monday rolls around, and it’s my first day on the job. It was like this looming secret in my head, and I didn’t know if I should say anything or not. These people don’t know me, and I don’t know if it would negatively impact my job—one I desperately needed.

A couple hours into my shift, my boss pulls me into his office for a friendly chat. “So, everything go okay with staying with your friend?” It was a crossroads for me: being honest or lying to hide my embarrassment.

For some reason, I told him the truth; I told him everything. I tried to play it off like it wasn’t a big deal because I could just sleep in my car in the meantime.

He looked legitimately concerned and told me he would get back to me later that day.

Before the end of my shift, he talked to me again in his office and told me that none of management wanted to see me sleep in my car.

This man got together with all the supervisors—with discretion in mind—told them my situation, and asked if they’d be willing to pool some money together to place me in a hotel for as long as I needed.

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Even writing about it still brings tears to my eyes. These people knew me for less than a day and were willing to commit to helping me have a warm place to sleep for weeks.

They paid for my hotel rooms and, I believe, gave me a little cash to get some food to eat. If my memory serves me, I believe they paid for upwards of 5 weeks for me to stay in a weekly hotel before I had enough money to get my own apartment.

No one outside of management ever knew what was going on with me. Once in a while, a supervisor would ask during a shift if I was alright—almost like code speak for them wanting to sincerely make sure I was safe.

There was never a discussion of me paying them back or anything like that. However, for me, I paid them back by being the best damn employee they ever had. Any time they needed someone to work overtime, I took it. I went above and beyond to show my appreciation for the people who sacrificed when they didn’t even know me.

For a long time, I was ashamed of the situation I put myself in. 20 years since this happened, I still don’t know if I told my mother all of these details because I felt foolish; this was the primary reason I didn’t ask her for help at the time.

I would later find out that my “friend” didn’t have his own home and that he falsified a lot about his life. His car friend didn’t know who I was or what the plans were.

His girlfriend would later reach out to me months later apologizing to me because she knew what was going on and wished she’d said something to me before I left my life behind.

These Amazing Americans, who were of various ages, races, and sexual orientations, all cared about me—a complete stranger. They didn’t want anything from me other than for me to be safe in the world.

So, when I say that Americans are amazing, it’s not an empty slogan to me.

It stems from various encounters with people who helped me when I was in need and inspire me to be a better man, father, and citizen of this great nation.

America is great because of the heart of its people; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Refer a friend