Sue Watlov Phillips is a woman of God who seeks to serve faithfully the Lord through her passion of social justice by serving people experiencing homelessness or housing crisis, and people with chemical, mental, and physical health issues. She drank alcohol normally for 25 years. After menopause, alcohol began to impact her life in a negative manner. After struggling with alcohol for 7 years during which she almost lost her relationship with God, family, friends and her life, Sue placed herself in an in-patient treatment center. This devotional is the outgrowth of her on-going wrestling with God over alcoholism, workaholism, athleticism, perfectionism, and other –isms, her determination to understand more fully the nature of recovery, and her struggle to re-cover in God each day.

With a B. A. in Psychology and M. A. in Counseling and Psychological Services, she is a retired Licensed Psychologist, Independent Clinical Social Worker, Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Sports Psychologist.

Sue has worked for 44 years in social justice, with an emphasis on serving people experiencing homelessness or in a housing crisis, she developed some of the first transitional housing, prevention, and rapid rehousing models in the country (Elim Transitional Housing, Inc.), in the early 1980s, which became a model for local, state and federal legislation. Throughout the last 4 decades she has also contributed to the writing of Minnesota and Federal legislation regarding mortgage foreclosure prevention, affordable housing, livable incomes, affordable health care and transit, excellence in education and job training, protection of our environment and protecting and honoring people’s civil rights. She is the Owner, President and CEO of Integrated 96 Community Solutions, Inc., a for profit consulting company. Sue currently serves as the interim Executive Director of the Metropolitan Interfaith Council on Affordable Housing- MICAH. As a Founding Board Member, she has provided this service to MICAH 4 four times during MICAH’s 26 years of advocating for affordable housing in the Twin Cities community. As a consultant, teacher, and writer, she often speaks at workshops, conferences, teaches Bible Studies. She is co-author of several publications including Rapid Re-Housing Manual (2010), Foreclosure to Homelessness (2008 and 2009), and a contributor to Without Housing (2010). She served on the Advisory Committee (2013-14) as a co-author of Adapting Clinical Practice for the Care of Homeless Patients with Opioid Use Disorders (March 2014) for the Health for the Homeless Clinician’s Network.

Sue bought the home she grew up in and lives with her cat in Fridley, Minnesota. On the weekends, she helps a friend manage a resort in northern Minnesota. She visits her mother in assisted living, where she also facilitates Bible Studies and serves as a substitute pastor.