By JC
In 2004, Brenda Lovelady Spahn did something most of us wouldn’t do with a stranger who needed a couch for one night. She invited seven women from Julia Tutwiler Prison to come live in her home.
Not a facility. Not a program with a logo and a grant writer. Her house.
Miss Brenda had heard what people said about halfway houses, mostly that they were halfway to nowhere. So she and her daughter, Melinda MeGahee, who’d both been praying with women behind bars, decided to try something simpler and much harder: love them up close, every day, and teach them a life free from drugs and crime.
Those seven women became the first “Loveladies.” The house got crowded. Then it got bigger. Today the Lovelady Center in Birmingham is the largest faith-based recovery facility for women and children in the nation. Women come in carrying addiction, prison records, and kids, and they walk out with sobriety, job skills, and somebody who believed in them before they believed in themselves. The thrift stores around town help pay for it, so every time you buy a lamp you didn’t need, you’re technically doing ministry.
Miss Brenda passed away in December 2024 at 75. She left behind a big family, and a much bigger one that never shared her last name but carries it anyway.
I’ve spent a good part of my life watching people decide who’s worth the trouble. Miss Brenda’s answer was everybody. That’s not a strategy. That’s the Gospel with the furniture moved around.
Jesus didn’t wait for anybody to get cleaned up before He came over. He went to their houses. Miss Brenda just reversed the direction and opened her own door.
If you want to help, visit loveladycenter.org, or shop their thrift stores. The lamp is optional.
“I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”
Matthew 25:36 (KJV)
