Feeding Hope

Chapter 1Where Purpose Begins

A Seed Planted Early

I don't remember the exact street, or the time of day, or even what we were doing in Washington, D.C. All I remember is the feeling.

I was eight years old, holding my father's hand as we walked past a row of government buildings. Everything around me felt big—the kind of big that makes a child feel both curious and very, very small. The monuments towered above us, the sidewalks stretched wider than any I had ever seen, and the adults rushing nearby seemed too important to slow down, too focused to notice the world happening around them.

But I noticed. I noticed everything—the woman balancing too many bags, the man selling newspapers on the corner, the family arguing gently as they tried to read a map. And I noticed the man sitting on a grate, his back pressed against a cold stone building, his belongings contained in a single plastic bag at his feet.

He wasn't calling out. He wasn't holding a sign. He wasn't performing desperation the way people often expect poverty to look.

He was simply there—quiet, still, exhausted in a way I could feel, even if I didn't yet have the words to explain it.

I tugged on my father's sleeve.

“Daddy, why doesn't he have a home?”

My father tells this story now with a softness, the way parents do when they remember a moment that revealed something true about their child before the child understood it themselves. He shared it at my wedding, he mentions it when he hears me speak, and he still brings ...