by Elizabeth Farina

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Midlothian residents Gwen Seiler and Rebecca Jones came together through their pastor at Bon Air Baptist Church. The pair shared a vision of a refuge for young women facing eating disorders and unplanned pregnancies over two years ago. The Northfield Foundation began with prayer and the purchase of a former dairy farm and home in Cumberland County that had been neglected. Since then, it has found five local designers, several businesses and numerous volunteers dedicated to transforming the house into a loving temporary home for the girls.

“We could have done the critical stuff just to get this house open and taken leftover furniture, but what would the message be from that,” Seiler said. “It would have looked happenstance. It wouldn’t have looked like something planned and put together with love.”

While the house is being transformed into more than bricks and mortar, the foundation has been assisting girls find supportive, Christian-based resources.

Although time-consuming, the renovation of the home has become more than the piles of ugly pink paint peeled away from walls and ceilings on afternoons and weekends. It has become more than an overwhelming, misplaced sparkling chandelier in the foyer finding a new location. In stripping away the neglect and misplaced identity in the house, the volunteers are creating a home, a refuge, for these young women facing life-altering challenges.

For Christine Shepard, coordinator of the Northfield Foundation Designer Inspiration House, the process has been rewarding. The mother of three had started a drapery business when she approached Seiler about making window treatments for the house. “She looked at me and said, ‘Christine, there are 19 rooms in that house. And I said, ‘Well, I’ll get started.’”

Shepard noted, “It’s not an opulent over-the-top designer house, but a home that is designed so that these girls feel warm, welcomed and secure.”

Through Shepard’s business, volunteer contacts have been made nationwide. National organizations such as Window Coverings Association of America and the Costum Home Furnishings Academy have learned about Northfield Foundation through the online forum. “These women have jumped on board and said, ‘let’s make upholstered headboards for the house so you don’t have to buy beds.’ They came, and there were 50 of them, and we had to find more things for them to do,” she said.

Three weekends of working on upholstery projects have turned into creating solid relationships “because the basis of it is the faith that everyone shares,” Shepherd said.
“They have made over 70 pieces of upholstered furniture for this house,” Shepherd said.

Seiler pointed out in one of the second-floor dormitory bedrooms two chairs that represent the foundation’s mission for young women to realize their worth and value in God’s eyes. She compared the two pieces of furniture to having been handed down to every kid that had passed through many years of college life. “The fabric was ripped, torn. One of the designers picked these things up and saw a future for these chairs,” Seiler said.

It was during one of the upholstery weekends, where 50 women gathered from across the United States at the home, that the chairs were given a new life. “That’s the very thing these girls feel like, that they’ve been left out on the side of the road like a piece of trash and that’s not the case at all. We want them to find their purpose as well through recovery and healing,” Seiler said. “That’s part of what we want to show to these girls is that they’re worth beauty and worth people laboring for them and putting time in and making something special because they don’t view themselves as having value already.”
The foundation’s progress has come a long way since its start. Its unfolding vision has become aesthetic as well as functional such as space for a classroom, separate bedrooms for visiting family or staff, a private room available for individual counseling, and a transformed great room with opportunity for the community to rent for seminars and special gatherings as well as hold worship services. However, there still are necessary items to complete such as tiling bathrooms, installing toilets, showers and tubs as well as carpet, and suitable kitchen equipment for the house’s day-to-day functions. There is a need to complete the classroom, install a second mantle for a new-found fireplace in the dining room, and complete the dormitories with armoires for the girls’ clothing.

Seiler is grateful for the volunteers and donations and the businesses that have generously supported the foundation. With the continued assistance, the foundation looks for the home to be a positive transformative place for the girls to stay.