Beauty For Ashes

My Not So Epic Beginning

It isn’t uncommon to hear of people who have an unbelievable encounter with Jesus; they can tell you the precise moment, what they were wearing, every thought and every tingle.  That moment when they knew their life would never be the same.  My story doesn’t begin with Jesus showing up in a beam of light.  It also doesn’t include me running up to every person I knew screaming about how my life had changed.  I can’t even tell you how old I was, but I do vaguely remember sitting at my Father’s old wooden desk talking.  I remember my baptism around the age of 8 in an adult over-sized white robe.  Rather than being engaged in the event itself, I was more concerned with the scolding eyes from my parents for swimming around and desperately trying not to pee in the warm water during the ceremony.

My Early Years

I grew up in the typical dysfunctional Christian home; church every Sunday, two married parents, two sisters, no picket fence but plenty for dust devils and tumbleweeds in the front yard.  There wasn’t anything extraordinary about our home but like everyone else I know, there were dysfunctional elements that have shaped me into who I am today.  I’ve always had a very sensitive spirit to darkness and “the gift of prayer.”  From a small age, I’ve felt nudged to pray for others. I’ve had the privilege to see God move time and time again.  Creating the defining moments in other people’s stories.  I have felt an uncomfortable nudging to pray with a stranger while in line at a Subway restaurant for a child I didn’t know.  I later learned the little girl recovered.  My family became trapped in a flash flood, and with all of my heart, I prayed for a miracle. It showed up in the form of a man with what only I can describe as a “monster truck,” pulling us to safety.  We survived and nowhere in my memory do I recall having the opportunity to thank him before he left.  I was led to orchestrate a friend’s missions trip to the Dominican Republic believing God had said she would meet her future husband there.   Martha married Danny three years later.

The Refining

Broken Yet Not Destroyed

Through it, he’s taught me the most sobering and hardest lesson of all, his plans for me may take a different path because of other’s actions.  Let me be clear when God has a plan it doesn’t get tossed to the wayside, but I believe that the path of walking out that plan does change.  I have seen God work miracles in my life, and I’m able to look back and see his fingerprints through all of it, but I still struggle that this wasn’t how I understood his plan to work.  He has been faithful, and his word that he works all things for good does not waiver.
​
So my epic story, it’s still real, it’s still moving forward, and it’s still mine.  If I am transparent, it isn’t something that I thought was for me anymore.  Finding answers to secular friends who’ve watched over time each battle and question my faith only to see the outcome as anything but victorious in their eyes.  The one thing I can share is that he’s faithful, he’s always there, and while the plan may be different, at least he’s the one writing it. This is it; this is the beginning of our journey.  Walk with many other Christian Women and me as we do life together, we step out in faith one day at a time, we support one another, laugh, cry and above all else, discover the epic plan that God has for each of us.

About the Author

Kelly leads a very busy life in Southern California where she has the honor of being a single mom of three wonderful children, a full-time career outside her home and two entrepreneurial adventures. She is passionate about serving and investing in others while pursuing the epic plan she knows exists for her life.