I’ve seen Keith Lake around our church for years, heard bits and pieces of his story in passing or wondered what he was alluding to during a conversation at Bible study – failed classes, a dad in jail – but most of who he was remained a mystery; even when I attended his going away party when we were in high school, I wasn’t sure where he was going or why. Last year though, Keith took the stage on a Tuesday night during our College and Young Adult Fellowship time, and told his story, and it may be the most incredible one I’ve ever heard. Let me take you back to the beginning.
Keith was born in 1995 in Arizona; he was the first child his parents had together, though they each had children from past relationships. They moved to Chicago and added sister Kelly to the family, and then back to Arizona where sister Kandice joined them. After a few years as a family of five, Keith’s parents split up; the kids stayed with mom in Phoenix, and dad moved out to California. While this would weigh a heavy toll on any mother, the stress on Keith’s family was particularly acute. The income they had relied on was founded entirely on shoplifting, and Keith’s mother was now left without an accomplice or a getaway car, and her drug addiction worsened. By the time Keith was four years old, he and his younger sisters were in foster care and group homes. At the cost of building his own bond with them, Keith remembers opting to be the sibling separated from his sisters because he wanted them to stay together. Alone, Keith was terrified of the bullies who abused him in group homes, and he was often afraid to fall asleep at night.
His mother regained custody when Keith was 6 years old, but quickly fell back into a state of depression and drug use, and eventually lost her apartment, and so they began living in domestic violence (DV) shelters. Because of their mother’s drug use and aggressive behavior, they quickly went through their three strikes and were kicked out of many shelters. Keith and his sisters would fail drug tests simply because of exposure and second-hand smoke (cars were often hot-boxed, meaning cigarettes were smoked with the windows rolled up). Eventually, their maternal grandmother offered them a house with cheap rent so they could get out of the shelters, but Keith’s older half-brother would often stay with them. Keith recalls crying in fear whenever they were left alone with him because he would beat and choke them, and he heard voices. The abuse was a daily occurrence for the next two years until they returned to living from shelter to shelter, and then to group homes and foster care.
It wasn’t until Keith told his grandfather about the conditions – being locked in the basement (or “dungeon” as he called it) in a house without air conditioning in the Arizona heat – that CPS rescued him. But returned to the care of his mother, Keith and his sisters found themselves in DV shelters again. Soon they had been kicked out of every shelter in the state, and they were given four greyhound tickets to California – Keith was 10 at the time.
They lived across the street, in a DV shelter, from the prison Keith’s dad was doing time in; when he was out, Keith’s mom started getting into trouble again stealing and doing drugs. At 2am one night, there was a knock at Keith’s door and the family was informed they had 30 minutes to leave – the were being kicked out of the shelter, again. The next DV shelter the tried was in none other than Pasadena.
Once in Pasadena, the Lake family found their Lake family – that is, Lake Avenue Church. They were attending regularly and Keith was part of our Club 45 program for preteen students. But things got worse before they could get better; Keith’s half-brother, Nick (the same brother who had previously lived with and terrorized Keith and his sisters), arrived in LA and within three weeks kidnapped Keith, and forced Keith to steal for him. At night, Keith would sleep on the floor of the hotel room, going to bed hungry. Nick and his girlfriend would have sex, watch porn, and do drugs in front of 10 year old Keith.
This went on for three weeks until Keith was spotted by one of his dad’s friends, who followed them back to the hotel, beat up Nick, and called Keith’s dad. After this, Keith decided to live with his father (who, technically, did not have custody), because while his mother and sister were sleeping in a Denny’s, with his father – who had a more reliable income from regular theft – Keith was sleeping in a hotel room and looking forward to a hot breakfast in the morning.
While stealing with his brother, Keith was finally busted by the cops – he went to juvenile hall and his brother to jail; the only number he could remember was his grandfather’s, who lived in a senior community and couldn’t take care of him. Just before his 11th birthday, he was finally placed in a good foster home. They put him in school, got him into sports, and taught him about Jesus – “they treated me like one of their own, and I liked that,” Keith said.
But Keith was separated from his sisters, and he missed them. He moved back to Pasadena, with a new family, so he could be close to them. He did well for awhile, but he had weekly overnight visits with his mother, and he fell into old rhythms. In the middle of his freshman year of high school, he moved back in with her.
By now, Keith realized his mother’s behavior was due to Bipolar Disorder, often depressed, locking herself in her room, but then becoming irate at a moment’s notice. He would spend many nights rotating through friends’ houses, but the lack of structure and an unstable home made it hard for him to do well in school. Keith’s stealing escalated to larger, more expensive items, and he became more independent. He moved his things into one of his classrooms at school, where he would arrive early and pick out the day’s outfit just before class.
Despite all this, Keith was still attending Lake Avenue Church, and God was getting ready to do big things. Keith went back and forth between living with families from Lake and backsliding to live with his mother again – when he was with his mother, his grades were terrible and he was stealing, when he had the stable, loving family of Lake members, his grades showed noticeable improvement and he stopped stealing.
One of the families he was staying with suggested he go to the Jubilee Leadership Academy, a Christian boarding school in Washington specifically for troubled teens. Keith attributes much of his ability to eventually attend that school to Pat and Macall Horan – Pat was Keith’s small group leader, and the Horan’s invested in Keith by letting him stay with them some nights, helping him find alternative resources, and loving and mentoring him.
Remember when I said I went to his going away party? Well, without knowing anything I know now, I was there, sending him off to Washington.
There, he was part of a football team that won a state championship, a basketball team, and a track team; he volunteered at a church and a community college; he reached the highest level of the program and maintained it for a year and a half – he even made the honor roll (twice!). Keith even graduated high school on time in June 2013; a miracle considering his GPA while in school in Pasadena had been below a 1.0. Most importantly, Keith’s faith was nurtured during his time there, and he says his relationship with and understanding of Jesus grew exponentially.
While he once never believed graduating from high school would be possible, Keith was now headed off to college. In 2015, he graduated from Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts School in Los Angeles, and supported himself through school by working part time. When his mom offered him a place to live during school, Keith was finally able to say no – he had too much to lose to risk returning to that environment. Instead, he trusted that God would provide a safe place for him to live, and he found it, again, with Lake Avenue Church. “They weren’t just people that opened their houses, they were families that opened their hearts as well,” he told me.
God provided for Keith’s younger sisters through Lake Avenue too, and they were housed and put in school by our family too: “I love them so much and want to succeed in life, and I know they have what it takes,” Keith says, and now they have a whole church family of people who feel the same way.
Keith told me that the community of peers he found at Lake have also been huge for him, and his has built many positive relationships through events like summer camp and our college coffee houses. At the last two coffee houses, Keith brought a portable kitchen and cooked live for us, so I can attest that his food is delicious! These days Keith is trying to start his own catering business while working full time at a fancy Beverly Hills restaurant. He was even featured in a Kardashian’s social media post recently while catering one of their events (a surreal photo for me to happen upon).
Keith’s road to where he is now was, clearly, rocky to say the least. But if you ever have the opportunity to talk to him, you will immediately sense that God is with him and has always been with him. I love this story because it embodies one of my favorite Dietrich Bonheoffer quotes – “The church is not a religious assembly of worshipers of Christ. The church is Christ Himself taking form amongst men [and women].” It reminds me that when we make ourselves available to do Kingdom work, amazing things happen. Truly, Keith will tell you, his story would be entirely different if it weren’t for the love and support members of our congregation offered him. I’ll leave you with what Keith closed his last email to me with: “I’m glad for every struggle I was given, even if I didn’t like going through it at the time because it has made me who I am today – A GOD FEARING MAN!!!”