BATTLING BEDLESSNESS

BATTLING BEDLESSNESS
Turning a Hidden Crisis into a Movement of Dignity
Exclusive Interview with Luke Mickelson
Featured in 'Innerviews'
Hosted by Allié McGuire

​We talk often about homelessness, but rarely about what happens inside homes where something essential is missing. In this conversation, we meet Luke Mickelson, founder of Sleep In Heavenly Peace, whose work shines a light on the quiet crisis of bedlessness affecting children across our communities. This is a story about dignity, rest, and how something as simple as a bed can change the trajectory of a life.

ALLIÉ: Before Sleep in Heavenly Peace existed, who were you? What did your life look like then, and what did you believe your purpose was before this work found you?

LUKE: I’m a farm kid from Idaho. That sums me up pretty well. I grew up in a small town of about 4,000 people where you know everybody and they know you. There’s beauty in that. You learn community, friendship, and looking out for each other.

On paper, my life was great. I was married, had great kids, a good job, made good money. I coached, served in my church, served in the community. I was leading youth ages 12 to 17, doing activities and mentoring, a lot like Boy Scouts.

​But around 33 or 34, I started feeling this emptiness. It was confusing because I was a pretty happy guy. I felt guilty that I felt that way. I was also going through a faith crisis. I didn’t know what I believed anymore. My job was fine, and I’m not the kind of guy that’s satisfied with fine.

Back then, I measured success by how much money I made. I was the kid who played sports, the quarterback, the guy people counted on. At work, I was a top salesman. I craved success and I thought I knew what it looked like. But something still felt missing.

ALLIÉ: I think a lot of us relate to that. Society tells us what success is supposed to look like, and then you get there and realize it’s still not enough. That happened for you?

LUKE: It did. That hole that was developing in my heart just wasn’t me. I tried to talk myself out of it. You tell yourself, smile, you have nothing to complain about. It didn’t help.

Then one day I was in a meeting at church with other leaders. We were talking about families we were helping. Someone brought up a family in my town that lived in an apartment complex I didn’t even know existed. That alone shook me because in a town that small, you think you know everything.

Then they said the kids didn’t have beds.

I remember thinking, I didn’t hear that right. Maybe they meant mattresses. No. These kids were sleeping on the floor. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I thought of my own kids who were nine and six at the time. The idea of children sleeping on the floor day in and day out, especially in my own community, I was like, no. That’s a problem we can solve.

And as a youth leader, I was always trying to find activities that did not involve screens. So the thought hit me. Let’s get an Xbox controller out of their hands and put a drill in it. Let’s build a bed.

​ALLIÉ: So this is the origin story. The very first bed.

LUKE: Yes. I went home, measured my daughter’s bunk bed, and tried to figure out how to build something similar. I told the boys, come over this week. We’re building a bed for kids who are sleeping on the floor.

I had never built a piece of furniture in my life, but I wasn’t a stranger to tools. We figured it out together. It was fun watching those kids problem-solve. And I think they cared because they knew what it was for.

ALLIÉ: How did that one bed become an organization with chapters across the country?

LUKE: We built the bed and it got delivered, but I missed the delivery because I was cleaning out my garage. The next day at church I heard the story, how the kids reacted, how the parents reacted. And I noticed something in myself. That hole in my heart was gone.

I didn’t call it purpose yet, but it was fulfillment. Something I had been missing for a long time.

Then I went back to life, back to work, and I could feel myself slipping again. It almost felt worse because I had tasted that fulfillment, and then it disappeared.

One night my kids and I were watching The Big Bang Theory and a commercial came on for a video game. My kids asked for it, which is normal, but for me it was a perfect storm. I remember thinking, I can sit here and tell them stories about helping others, or I can get up and show them.

So I stood up, walked to the garage, and said, Big Bang is going to have to wait. I’m going to build another bed, and you’re coming with me. We built a bunk bed together. I’ve got pictures of my daughter in a pink tutu drilling screws, and my son in his Boise State jersey hammering wood.

​But then I realized something. I only knew about the one family. I didn’t even know child bedlessness was a real issue. So now I had a bed and nowhere to take it.

Someone suggested I post on a local Buy, Sell, Trade Facebook group. I wrote something simple. We built a free bed. We’re not carpenters. If there’s a child sleeping on the floor, it’s yours.

And then everything changed.

People started sharing story after story. Kids sleeping on concrete. Kids on crates. Kids three or four to a bed. I had no idea.

And at the same time, people started offering help. Mattresses. Sheet sets. Pillows. Friends I had not seen in 20 years were showing up in the comments. The community wanted to help. They just needed a way to help.

​ALLIÉ: A bed seems like such a simple thing until you don’t have one. In your words, what does a bed mean for a child beyond sleep?

LUKE: I’ll answer that with Hailey.

A friend of mine who was a social worker called and said, Luke, I have the perfect family. Hailey was six years old and had never slept on a bed. She slept in the backseat of her mom’s car. They were homeless.

When we walked into their house, there was nothing. No couch, no table. There was a milk crate with a hot plate and a can of soup. That was it.

Hailey grabbed my hand and took me to her room. It was rough, but the hardest part was the corner of the room. There was a pile of clothes. That’s what she slept on. She’d come home from school, change into pajamas, sleep on her school clothes, then put them back on and go to school.

It broke me. At first I was angry. Not in my town. Then it turned into joy because we were there with what she needed.

As we brought the pieces in and started building, you could see Hailey’s eyes change when she realized what it was. She erupted. Hugging strangers. Hugging the bed. Kissing the bed.

And her mom stood there crying. Not just a few tears. Six years of tears. The worry, the frustration, the guilt of not being able to provide something as basic as a bed. She had shelter, food, and clothes, but beds were out of reach.

In that moment, I knew this was way more than a bed. A bed is dignity. It’s safety. It’s a place that belongs to you. Kids without beds often do not have sleepovers. They do not invite friends over. They do not have that comfort we all go to when life is hard.

We have a saying with a story someone told me. They said they had an SHP growing up, their safe hiding place, and it was their bed. Think about that. When adults have a rough day, where do we go? We go to bed. These kids don’t have that.

And there are real consequences. Kids struggle in school, struggle emotionally, struggle developmentally. It affects everything.

ALLIÉ: You’ve been doing this for how many years now?

LUKE: We started in 2012. We’re in our 14th year.

​ALLIÉ: This kind of work changes the families, but it also changes the people doing it. What has it taught you about dignity, humanity, and the quiet ways families carry hardship?

​LUKE: You can tell people stories, show photos, but until you’re in the room, you don’t fully get it.

On deliveries, kids are often scared at first. Strangers in their room, loud tools, it’s unfamiliar. But the minute they realize we’re building a bed, everything changes. They come out from behind their parents and they want to help. They grab slats, they want to hold the drill, they want to be part of it.

Sometimes at three in the afternoon, those kids fall asleep. That tells you something. They are exhausted.

And it changes volunteers too. Big strong guys will go on a delivery and cry. Some of them say they almost cannot go again because it hits so hard.

In 2018 we got a big break. There was a Facebook Watch series called Returning the Favor hosted by Mike Rowe. We were featured, season two episode nine. He gave us a warehouse, but the real impact was the exposure. It was viewed by about 10 million people. That’s when things really started to grow.

We took Mike on a delivery into a basement with concrete floors, exposed framing, blankets laid out where kids slept. I watched his face change. Shock. Anger. Disbelief. Then the reality, this is real and it’s closer than you think.

ALLIÉ: This conversation is hitting home for me. When I was three, my mom took me and my sister and left a dangerous situation. There was a period of time we lived in a tent in a park in Philadelphia. Even then, my mom still had pride. The cleanest, most pristine tent, because dignity matters. So when you speak about bedlessness, I think about how many people are living without what they should not have to live without.

LUKE: That’s exactly it. And the reality is, child bedlessness is not even something most people think exists. Mike Rowe said it best. “Bedlessness is not a real word, but a real problem.”

There are no national statistics because no one is tracking it. The only statistics we have are what we’ve gathered based on the work we do. On average, it’s more than 3 percent of the population in any given city.

So if you live in a town of 100,000 people, that could mean 3,000 kids sleeping on the floor somewhere. It does not care about economics, culture, or anything else. It can show up in any neighborhood, at any time, because of circumstance.

Today we’re in 47 states, four countries, and we’ve trained over 430 chapter presidents. In 2025, we built almost 90,000 beds. We are committed to going after this problem harder than anyone else.

Early on, after Hailey’s delivery, I told my buddy Jordan, no kid is going to sleep on the floor in my town if I have anything to do with it. That’s on the back of our shirts now. No kids sleep on the floor in our town. And we want our town to be everybody’s town.

ALLIÉ: There’s something you said earlier that I keep thinking about. That emptiness you felt when success was measured by money, by titles, by what should be enough. And then service changed everything.

LUKE: I do keynote speaking and my main point is tiny moments. We all have tiny moments that pop into our mind, something we could do, something that requires action, and we dismiss them because we’re busy, or we think someone else will handle it, or we don’t know how.

Don’t dismiss those moments. They may not turn into a huge nonprofit, but if you don’t do something, something won’t happen.

We also discovered something else. There are millions of good-hearted people who want to serve. They just do not know how. Sleep in Heavenly Peace gives them a platform. We build beds for kids, yes, but it also gives people the fulfillment that comes from hard work and service, and I think that’s something our culture is missing.

​ALLIÉ: Thank you for choosing the garage over the couch that night. Truly. Thank you for the work you’ve done and the work you keep doing, and for helping all of us become a bit more aware now.

LUKE: Thank you. And if I can ask one thing of your audience, it’s this. Please help us raise awareness. This problem is real and it’s right next door.

Go to shpbeds.org. The site is set up so it connects you to your local chapter based on where you are, so you can see local events and ways to get involved. This will not be solved by a farm kid from Idaho. It will be solved by people in their own communities.

We also designed our model so donations stay local. We keep 10 percent to keep the lights on and cover insurance, but at minimum 90 percent stays in the community you donate to. The beds stay there too.

We treat every dollar as sacred. I wanted to build the kind of charity I would trust.

ALLIÉ: I love that. And I’ll be honest, when our seven-year-old gets home today, he’s going to want to go straight to Minecraft. But I might tell him there’s a different kind of crafting we can do in the real world.

LUKE: Yes. Amen. ∎

Learn more about Sleep In Heavenly Peace:
shpbeds.org
Follow on Instagram:
@shpbeds