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Where My Story Meets the Series

Talking about myself, especially my pain, has never come easily. For years, I hid it behind humor because joking felt safer than admitting I was hurting. This series comes from where my faith, my story, and my work as a counselor meet. It also comes from the places God has had to heal slowly and tenderly.

My journey has not been simple. As a child, I carried church hurt, fear, and spiritual confusion I could not name. When I did not feel the changes I thought I was supposed to feel, I believed God did not see me as worth saving. As my mental health grew darker, anger became easier than grief. By my teenage years, I claimed atheism because I was too angry with God to keep reaching for Him. At eighteen, my coach helped lead me back to Christ, but I still felt broken. In my early twenties, after surviving a suicide attempt, I realized I did not want my life to end. I wanted the pain to stop. In my mid-twenties, I bottomed out again. I opened up to my husband, found a counselor, and began healing because I was no longer carrying everything alone. Counseling taught me that my feelings were not always facts, and that while my pain was not my fault, my behavior was still my responsibility.

There were many blessings within what felt so broken too. I met and married my husband, my nephew brought joy into our family that we didn’t know was missing until we looked into his little blue eyes, I found meaningful friendships, earned my counseling license, and made memories that reminded me pain was never the whole story.

A friend once asked me, “How can you be angry at something you don’t believe in?” That question helped me see my anger was protecting deeper pain. After another season of depression and physical decline, I sought treatment, returned to the gym, and lost over 100 pounds. Still, something felt missing. Eventually, I recognized it as spiritual emptiness. Then Joshua 1:9 found me in an unexpected place: a brown paper bag. That verse stayed with me. I reached out to the friends God had placed in my life and started going to church again. It was not easy, but it felt safe. I began to understand the difference between believing in Jesus and surrendering to Him. I learned that the control I trusted was often anxiety in disguise, and healing required bringing my whole self into the light with God, wise support, honesty, and courage.

I still wrestle with suffering, forgiveness, shame, and grace. But I am not my pain, my diagnosis, my worst reaction, or my hardest season. I am sensitive, but I am not weak. I am a child of God. Every book and workbook in this series carries pieces of that journey, not as proof that I have arrived, but as evidence that God is still writing redemption into places I once thought were only broken. I write because healing begins when hiding ends, I have seen the beauty in the broken places, and because Jesus is near to the brokenhearted and faithful to lead us toward freedom, wholeness, and love.