The Hundred Story Home Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE HUNDRED STORY HOME

  “From the beginning of time, I believe it was ordained that Kathy would have a life-changing encounter with Denver Moore. He believed that as well. These unexpected encounters . . . thrill believers and encourage doubters to search. Prepare yourself to be thrilled or to begin searching for your Denver.”

  —Ron Hall, bestselling coauthor, Same Kind of Different As Me (movie adaptation, October 2017)

  “Compelling and convicting, The Hundred Story Home is a powerful testament to the way one person can affect transformation at the deepest levels. Kathy’s beautiful storytelling propelled me outside of my comfort zones. . . . It’s impossible to read The Hundred Story Home and walk away unchanged.”

  —Courtney Westlake, author, A Different Beautiful

  “Kathy has written one of the most inspirational books I’ve ever read. She weaves her incredible storytelling with authenticity and humility to the page unlike any other. Kathy is one of those rare people who see a need in their communities and do something about it. This book might just cause you to step out and do something that you’ve never done before for the benefit of someone else.”

  —Chad Cannon, chief marketing officer, Michael Hyatt & Co.

  “I LOVE The Hundred Story Home. Kathy Izard is a beautiful writer who has woven her personal life story into an account of her heroic effort to help the homeless. In her book of midlife discovery, she writes not only about creating a community for one hundred homeless adults but also inspires others to do so much more than what they ever thought possible.”

  —Mary Dell Harrington, writer and cofounder, Grown & Flown

  “This is a powerful story, skillfully told, and one that will hold you. As you read about a remarkable woman who gave up a promising career to do what for her was totally unexpected—to build a home for the homeless—you may find it is also a bridge to faith for you. As it has been for her.”

  —Leighton Ford, president, Leighton Ford Ministries

  “In The Hundred Story Home, Kathy Izard so beautifully and eloquently manages what we all wish we could—capturing her life story in a transparent and authentic way. Through the narrative of her life, we see Kathy’s triumphs, struggles, and ultimate commitment to something bigger than herself: the call to help those less fortunate. Kathy is a storyteller, philanthropist, and courageous writer throughout these pages and in her life.”

  —Anne Neilson, artist and author, Angels in Our Midst and Strokes of Compassion

  “The Hundred Story Home is more than just a feel-good story of hope and purpose. It is an inspiring call to action, heralding the something-bigger-than-ourselves that resides within each of us. . . . It is this story and those like it that allow us to move beyond our perceived notions of the ‘other’ and embrace our abilities with humility, intention, and great purpose to solve the seemingly intractable issues we as human beings and as a culture say we care most about.”

  —Robin Emmons, CNN Hero and executive director, Sow Much Good

  “The Hundred Story Home is a captivating, beautifully written account of one woman’s search for purpose and how a combination of doubt, faith, and doing the right thing a thousand times over led to the building of something important and extraordinary.”

  —Mark Ethridge, author, Grievances and Fallout

  “Compelling, inspiring, funny, and poignant. . . . This is a book about finding your purpose in a meaningful life; it’s about faith and family and friendship. But mostly, it’s a love story: a father’s love, a mother’s love, a daughter’s love, and a beautiful, beautiful couple’s love.”

  —Kristin Hills Bradberry, nonprofit adviser, Charlotte, North Carolina

  “The Hundred Story Home is that book. The book that you can’t mention offhand and that you can’t just hope someone reads. It’s the book that deserves to be pressed into someone’s hands with a promise to have tea and talk about it. The Hundred Story Home is the book that you’ll be pressing into someone’s hands because it presses into your heart.”

  —Rachel Estes, director of Missions and Outreach, Canterbury United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Alabama

  “Kathy Izard tells two compelling stories in one: about her journey toward fulfilling her life’s purpose and about Charlotte’s journey to finally treating its chronically homeless with compassion and dignity. Each has twists and turns, each has a happy ending, and Izard tells each with a style that will captivate readers far beyond her most natural audience.”

  —Taylor Batten, editorial page editor, Charlotte Observer

  © 2018 Kathy Izard

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by W Publishing Group, an imprint of Thomas Nelson.

  Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

  Poem stanzas from “The Journey” by David Whyte are printed with permission from Many Rivers Press, www.davidwhyte.com, © Many Rivers Press, Langley WA, USA.

  Any Internet addresses, phone numbers, or company or product information printed in this book are offered as a resource and are not intended in any way to be or to imply an endorsement by Thomas Nelson, nor does Thomas Nelson vouch for the existence, content, or services of these sites, phone numbers, companies, or products beyond the life of this book.

  Epub Edition May 2018 9780785220015

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Izard, Kathy, 1963- author.

  Title: The hundred story home : a memoir of finding faith in ourselves and something bigger / Kathy Izard.

  Description: Nashville : W Publishing Group, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017059535 | ISBN 9780785219880 (softcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Church work with the homeless—North Carolina—Charlotte. | Izard, Kathy, 1963– | Christian biography.

  Classification: LCC n–us–nc | DDC 259.086/9420975676—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017059535

  Printed in the United States of America

  18 19 20 21 22 23 LSC 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Information about External Hyperlinks in this eBook

  Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.

  To my Goose,

  the First Believer

  Sometimes everything

  has to be

  inscribed across

  the heavens

  so you can find

  the one line

  already written

  inside you.

  —DAVID WHYTE, “THE JOURNEY”

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  1. Six Candles, One Wish

  2. Do Good. Love Well.

  3. No Casseroles for Crazy

  4. Headed for Home

  5. A Heart with a Hole

  6. Soup and Salvation

  7. Failure Is Not an Option

  8. Working My Way Home

  9. Going for a Ride

  10. Home Tour

  11. Million-Do
llar Larry

  12. Wing and a Prayer

  13. Trash and Treasure

  14. Praying to a God You Don’t Believe In

  15. Home Alone

  16. Christmas Miracles

  17. Papers and Prayers

  18. The First Yes

  19. Crazy or Called

  20. Gifts from Above

  21. Bless and Multiply This Small Amount

  22. Just Listen

  23. The Last, Best Yes

  24. I Feel Like People Now

  25. God Was In It

  26. Trust the Whisper

  The Last Word

  Reader’s Guide

  Frequently Asked Book Club Questions

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  About the Author

  Photos

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The events in this book took place over the course of many years, the majority during 2007–12. I have reconstructed details to the best of my memory, using journals and e-mails. Some names have been changed to protect confidentiality. In several scenes the time element is compressed for the sake of narrative flow, but the stories told in these pages are true.

  PROLOGUE

  In 2007, a man I barely knew asked me a simple question that would change my life forever. The man was Denver Moore, coauthor of Same Kind of Different As Me, and he wanted to know:

  Where are the beds?

  For years after that encounter I would wrestle with why Denver had chosen to challenge me. At the time I was a wife, mother of four, graphic designer, and soup kitchen volunteer. How could I possibly do anything about Charlotte’s homeless problem? Why would Denver imagine that I could?

  But I finally realized the real question was, Why had I listened?

  It has been said that the two greatest days in our lives are the day we are born and the day we understand why.

  This book tells the story of my journey to why.

  All those years ago I would not have argued with you if you said there was no God.

  Today I would argue you are not listening.

  one

  SIX CANDLES, ONE WISH

  We all must leave home to find the real and larger home.

  —Richard Rohr1

  It was the day I will always remember in the year I will always wish I could forget.

  Standing on my toes and looking over the edge of her large green drafting table, I watched my mom carefully creating ten works of art. She was curled over in concentration so she could work closer to her pencil. We were in the spacious art studio added on to my parents’ bedroom in our new split-level home. My family of five had just moved into this four-bedroom house on the last street of a new development on the west side of El Paso, Texas.

  The art studio was a twenty-by-twenty-foot room with vaulted ceilings and natural light streaming in the windows. There were two kilns, easels, canvases, acrylic and oil paints, along with cabinets brimming with other supplies. A cassette player and boxes of classical music tapes filled the room with symphonies while we worked. My two sisters and I were probably the only three little girls encouraged to play Hallmark rather than house. For every relative’s birthday, anniversary, or holiday, Mom got out the craft supplies and made us create custom cards. Glitter and glue weren’t enough; we had to have a theme, an illustration, and a message, just like a real greeting card. I always thought of this space in our house as my father’s love letter to my mom. This was the place where he wanted her to thrive even though she had been transplanted to desert soil.

  El Paso was my father’s hometown, and a decade earlier my mother had moved there from North Carolina out of pure love for him. All of the houses in our neighborhood were essentially ranch style with added western architectural elements: tile roof, adobe color palettes, and wooden beams protruding over arched windows. Kind of like the Fiesta accent package for Mr. Potato Head. Every front yard had a similar landscape of cactus and rocks—except ours. Mom had softened the rocks with the best of her home state, adding rose bushes and Bradford pear trees to our quarter-acre plot. I don’t think the local nursery had ever heard of a Bradford pear tree when my mom insisted on special-ordering four.

  As I watched her over her drafting table, Mom was deliberate in her work. Delicate fingers with rounded, clear-polished nails pressed firmly to steady the pencil as she meticulously sketched the wording on the outside of ten four-by-six-inch folded-over cards she had cut from white construction paper. This pencil outline was only a rough draft to ensure the letters were centered and evenly spaced.

  Next, she took her deep black india-ink pen, slowly retracing the lines for the letters to emerge. As she finished one, she moved to the next until all ten cards proclaimed in perfect measured script:

  You are cordially invited to celebrate the sixth birthday of Katherine Grace Green

  For weeks my mom had poured her substantial creative energies into devising a memorable day for me. Mom never remembered having even a store-bought birthday cake for her childhood birthdays, so she vowed that her girls would always know and remember their celebrations. She began by choosing a theme; everything my mother did had themes. The invitations, games, cake, and party favors all required matching motifs painstakingly penned, painted, and baked for the big day. Mom had decided this special celebration for my sixth year would have a cartoon theme. We had been saving sections of the comics for weeks, so Mom handed me the rounded craft safety scissors to cut out a six-inch-long section of the Goofy strip. I pasted it to the inside of a card and then added typed instructions that informed my best friend, Andrea, she was not only invited to my party but she must come dressed as this particular Disney character. Obviously, there would be prizes for best costume.

  My mom had already let me pick my character. I chose Linus so I could carry a blue blanket and follow Snoopy (my friend Susie) around. My sister, Allyson, who was only a year and a half older than me, was obsessed with Disney princesses and wanted to be Cinderella so she could wear her blond hair in a bun and twirl throughout the party in a long blue gown.

  My mom overruled this costume because Cinderella was not a comic strip, so Allyson unhappily dressed as Lucy from the Peanuts gang. My oldest sister, Louise, was twelve years old and already a lifetime away from wanting to come to her little sister’s birthday party. Louise agreed to help babysit the partygoers but refused to be in costume, a huge disappointment to my mother, who loved to dress us in triplicate for church.

  Finally the day arrived, and I could see from the kitchen window as my friends appeared at our front door. Andrea as Goofy, Nancy as Minnie Mouse, Beth as Beetle Bailey. Mothers and daughters filled our front porch, marveling over the creative costumes of the guests but, mostly, over the ingenuity of my mom.

  “Lindsay, I swear, I don’t know how you think of these parties!”

  “I can’t even draw a straight line much less do calligraphy!”

  “I don’t know how you have the time.”

  My mother deflected the compliments, gazing down, shyly touching strands of her chestnut-brown hair set firmly in place at the beauty shop with Aqua Net hairspray. Inside she was glowing with pride. Mom may not have been able to receive the compliments, but it was all true. She was an integral part of the PTA, officer in the Junior League, choir member and Sunday school teacher at First Presbyterian Church, wife and mother extraordinaire.

  How did she do it all?

  The party, as always, was flawless.

  When it came time to blow out the candles, my friends pressed against each other to fit around our round kitchen table. The cake was another work of art baked by my mom. She lit the candles while my friends and sisters sang, “Hap-py birth-day, dear Ka-thy.”

  “Make a wish!” Mom said.

  I hope I get an Easy-Bake oven.

  Mom knew that’s what I wanted. Tearing into my pile of presents, I spotted the rectangular box wrapped with pages of comic sections so even the gift would be dressed on theme. My own Easy-Bake oven.
<
br />   This was the Best. Day. Ever.

  As the last guest left, I could see the exhaustion in my mom’s whole body, and I rushed to press my face against her legs, hugging her lower body as we stood in our front hall. The floor beneath us was a Lucite tile that looked like turquoise and celadon shells floating in a clear sea.

  At that moment I truly believed my mother could walk on water.

  She stroked the top of my wispy dirty-blond head, and when I looked up at her, she absently moved her fingers to straighten my bangs. Mom looked lost in other thoughts as her fingertips touched the fine hairs that didn’t need fixing. Shifting her gaze from my hair to the six-foot countertop, Mom walked slowly away from me toward the kitchen to attend to some task I couldn’t see. The counter held a green telephone the color of avocados, matching all the appliances in the kitchen, which were custom painted this exact shade of green. Beside our house phone was the week’s mail piled next to her calendar, note cards, and Bible.

  Mom held reverence for all three items—two of them to organize her short-term life and the other her long-term destiny.

  She always tracked her duties on three-by-five ruled index cards, making careful notes with a four-color Bic pen, clicking the top to dispense the appropriate color. Mom picked up one of the white cards that ordered her busy world and studied the week’s list:

  Church—cotton balls Sunday School lesson

  Jr League—committee coffee: bake seven-layer cookies

  Ballet Carpool—Louise & Allyson

  Thursday Kathy—party

  Picking up her pen, she drew a line through the last item with only a hint of satisfaction.

  “Well, that’s done!” she said, trying to convince herself of the victory.

  It was January 29, 1969.

  Within six months my mother would be gone for the first time, and it would be sixteen years before all of her would return.

  If I’d known, I would have saved my wish for something more magical than an Easy-Bake oven.