Sleep In Heavenly Peace: Giving Children a Place To Rest

Written by Gabe Hart

Photographed by Kristi Woody

When I was 7 years old, I won a life-size Freddy Krueger cardboard cutout from the bottle cap movies at the Malco Theater. For the next several months, that cutout haunted me, especially at night.

For anyone unfamiliar with the "A Nightmare on Elm Street" series, Freddy was a burnt-faced monster with a left hand full of knives for fingers who would infiltrate people’s dreams while they slept. For a 7-year-old, the scarred face combined with the possibility of a nocturnal invasion was too much to handle.

Until I finally admitted to my mom how scared I was of that towering character, the only remedy for my persistent fear was the bottom bunk of my bunk bed draped with quilts on all four sides — think Ebenezer Scrooge’s curtained four-poster bed but with patterned quilts.

My bed was the only place I could go where I would feel completely protected from whatever imaginary fears I would concoct — a safe space that was for only me. It never crossed my mind that any kid wouldn’t have a place like this to rest and breathe, if only for several hours each night.

There are still some children in Jackson who don’t have a bed to themselves, but one couple is aiming to change that by building one bed at a time.

Kevin and Michelle Cozine aren’t from Jackson. In fact, they’ve only lived here a few years, but the difference they’ve made in those hidden spaces rarely seen or even thought about by most people is monumental.

Kevin and Michelle spearhead the Jackson chapter of Sleep in Heavenly Peace, a nationwide nonprofit organization founded in Idaho in 2012 that builds and delivers beds to children who don’t have a place of their own to sleep.

While Kevin and Michelle are the President and Vice President of SHP Jackson, neither receives any compensation. SHP is completely voluntary.

“No one has a salary,” Kevin said.

“Including us,” Michelle followed.

After being part of a bed build in Texas, Kevin and Michelle wanted to continue giving back but found out that the nearest SHP chapter was in Nashville.

So they started one in Jackson. “SHP flew us out to Utah, and we did three very intensive days of training from the ground up of what goes on behind the scenes — the process of building a bed, but also the process of building a coalition,” the couple said.

When a child in the community needs a bed, the family applies through the Jackson chapter’s website. A need could also be established through multiple channels, such as local churches, RIFA, friends, or relatives.

Once the need is vetted, the process begins.

Most bed-building events involve large groups of people — churches, businesses that want to give back to the community, or even the city and county mayors, as recently as a few months ago.

“The bed building is like a production line,” Kevin said. “We take it from the raw wood, lumber, sand it, cut it, the whole process. They show up to a pile of wood, but we have all the tools to build.”

“We set up stations and explain to the groups how everything flows,” Michelle added.

With enough volunteers, 50 to 60 beds can be built in about four hours.

After the beds are built, the delivery process begins.

Each child receives a complete setup that includes a bed frame, a mattress, a pillow, sheets, and bedding. Because SHP is a nonprofit, they rely exclusively on community donations of these items.

If there’s a line to be drawn in this process, it’s when the deliveries start.

“If you’re going to go on a delivery, you almost have to have blinders on,” Michelle said. “We thank them for letting us come in and help. We don’t want them to feel insecure and think that what we’recoming to do is anything other than what it is — provide a child with a safe space to sleep.”

“We’re there to solve one problem,” Kevin said. “There’s no ulterior motive.”

While deliveries can be challenging on multiple levels, the stories told during those deliveries are the culmination of a process covered in care.

There was a grandson living with his grandmother and sleeping on a couch.

The family that lost beds in a house fire, then applied for new ones and got them.

A mother who had escaped a domestic violence situation with her four children and only had one couch in their new home.

The mother who could finally enjoy a night alone in her own bed because her children now had their own beds.

“Nobody’s sleeping with me tonight!”

There’s normally one common question Kevin and Michelle hear on these deliveries, and it’s always asked with a sense of awe and a little bit of doubt to temper expectations that have most likely rarely been met until now.

“This is really my bed?”

“Yes, it is.”

An obvious but never understated necessity of Sleep in Heavenly Peace is the involvement of the Jackson community. Kevin and Michelle have seen that firsthand in the relatively short time they’ve been in Jackson.

“We were running out of storage for supplies for beds, and we mentioned that during a presentation to the Downtown Rotary Club. By the end of the next day, the school system had offered up space in the old Pope Elementary school for us to use,” they said.

Local organizations such as Leadership Jackson, Lowe’s, theJackson Fire Department, and many others have donated their time, money, and labor to help meet the hidden needs of children in our community.

I’ve long outgrown my fear of Freddy Krueger and have always had a place to sleep at night, but I’ve had students in my classes who may not have. I’ve seen homes where kids slept with siblings or parents because they had no other choice.

Our community is filled with situations covered in the shadow of shame — hidden from most of us because we can’t see them or don’t have the time to shine a light. Thankfully, there are people doing the work who can.

Michelle sums up SHP's work in a way that captures its mission succinctly.

“Every hand that touches that bed is a hand of love.”