A place for hope

Charlotte Osborne was smoking marijuana at 15. By the time she was 28 and the mother of two young children, she was a drug addict. She moved into using crack cocaine before she got the wake-up call that drastically changed her life.

“I lost my kids,” she says tearfully, recalling her children were 7 and 4 when the Florida Department of Children and Families took them from her.

However, chance encounters with a caring stranger finally gave her the motivation she needed to make a healthy lifestyle change.

“It’s actually kind of a God story,” she says. “There was this guy, and I can’t even tell you his name now, but I ran into him, off and on, at the lowest points of my life. He would always try to get me to go to this place, but I would say, ‘No, I’m not going to the shelter.’”

After the third time of seeing him over the course of several months, Charlotte decided to visit the Women’s Care Center in Leesburg, one of several Christian Care Center ministries on the campus of First Baptist Church.

“From the moment I walked in, I knew it was going to be OK,” Charlotte says. “The director, Carol Barber, had a huge impact on my life and is like a mentor. She taught me that I was worth something …I got clean from my addiction and got connected to the church.”

Charlotte went to work and completed the program required by the WCC and was employed at the center for about nine years.

While there, she met Rebecca Randall, founder and executive director of Ruth House, a transitional home for women in crisis in Umatilla. While working to become certified as an addictions counselor, Charlotte did volunteer work at Ruth House. When a part-time position opened up, Charlotte was given the job, which later became full time. Now in her second year, Charlotte mentors and inspires other women who need to know they are worthy of love. Sometimes all it takes it being a friend to a woman who struggles to change.

“To love them, even when they mess up, because they do—we all do,” Charlotte says. “These girls have been beat on and abused, maybe not physically, but the world just steps on them. They’ve been mistreated and rejected, abandoned, and they don’t feel like they have any worth.”

Charlotte also works in fund raising for Ruth House because it is entirely funded from private donations. A Spurs and Sparkles fundraiser will be held Oct. 22 at Lake Receptions in Mount Dora, and information about Ruth House and the event can be found at www.ruthhouse.net.

Charlotte beamed when asked about the crowning moment of her recovery and lifestyle change: “I got my kids back!”