I’m an entrepreneur for the Gospel! I don’t know if I’ve succeeded in any of my Gospel ‘ventures’ but I’ll keep following God’s calling for me and walk through whatever door God brings me to until I take my last breath. I have little to no experience or skills to qualify me to start ANY of my ministries but I refuse to let perfectionism paralyse me. Instead, I choose to fail forward (constantly) in order to keep moving and growing. My ministry projects have shaped me and stretched me on so many levels. I currently have two ministry interns I’m mentoring (my daughters, Chloe 10 and Naomi 9) and they have helped me with so many outreach projects that they often think they’re shareholders and can tell me what to do. My husband is my greatest investor, he just doesn’t know it and the Holy Spirit is my CEO.
I had my first ever bone fracture at 34 years old, doing a trick at my local skate park. I’d only been skating for 3 months. If there’s an adventure count I’m in! If there’s a group hang out, I’m there and if you want to have a theological brainstorming session, you know I’ll be there! One food I could eat every single day and ALL day is bread. Any bread. Fresh bread. Days-old bread. Whole wheat bread. White bread. Sourdough bread. Spelt bread. Literally, just give me bread. Typos are part of my DNA and even when I check for typos- in still miss them.
I’m passionate about anything that has to do with Jesus. For the past few years I’ve been really intentional about ministering to people with differing perspectives to mine. I want my squad to reflect every worldview and to cultivate a culture where my friends and I CAN talk about politics and religion over a meal and still hug each other at the end of it and do it all again the next week. I’ve drastically shifted from intentionally surrounding myself with only like-minded Christians, to now purposefully desiring to shine for Jesus with people who have often only been shown darkness about God and Christianity. The joy and fulfilment of my life is to vindicate God’s character in my home-life and my social-life. Whichever way I can do that, you can be guaranteed that I’ll do it!
I believe meeting Jesus is an event and knowing Jesus is a process. I met Jesus at 14 through church friends and since then I have spent my whole life getting to know Jesus as my Saviour and allowing Him to be my friend. I still don’t know Him in the fullness of all He represents, but I’m thankful to still be daily seeking to know Him better. Every day is a new day to see how reliable He is, especially in comparison to unreliable humans!
I’m really thankful that I can honestly say I haven’t experienced an epic amount of difficulties or trauma in my life. The painful scars I wear today, have all come from relationships. Humanity has caused me the greatest trauma and the deepest wounds. Relationships have packed my heart with emotional baggage. At 13 years old my best friend in high school replaced me for someone who bullied me so severely that I was suicidal. At 15 my parents unexpectedly divorced leaving me with a suicidal father and marking out a path for me to create a dysfunctional attachment to the only constant left in my life, my boyfriend who later became my husband. At 21 I experienced the greatest betrayal I’d ever known, which shook my whole life and left me alone, lost and insecure. At 23 some local church members rallied to get me removed from a church leadership position previously held by a member for 20 something years. And finally, at 33 I had another experience with professed Christians, who pushed daggers into my back and deep into my heart. As I’ve experienced pain as a result of human interactions, I’ve become more and more guarded. As I reflect on each experience, I’m reminded of how I’ve lost more and more of who God made me to be; caring, thoughtful, trusting and long-suffering. As I’ve reflected, the Divine revelation that I’ve gained from every painful chapter of my life, is that God was always in my life even though all I cared about was making sure that other people were in my life. Today, God is the only relationship I need and anyone else is a bonus but if they’re not there, my life can go on and I’m unmovable in knowing my self-worth and my value in God’s eyes. In seeing humanity for the fallible people that we all are, I’ve been able to see my precious Father for all He was, for all He is and for all He claims to always be for me. The sin of my heart was that I needed relationships to validate my worth. But when people you loved (too much) neglect you, replace you, betray you or dispose of you- God is the only one who will never forsake you. Whatever we put in the place of God; whether is relationships, work, finances, career, academics, health, substances, gaming, social media, technology, sex, lust, emotional drama, codependency or religion- I can guarantee you, they’ll ALL come crashing down, in one way or another, and you’ll be left on the ground, tying to pull yourself out of a pit of psychological darkness. God knew my heart, what I desired and how I was trying to satisfy my desire. With each painful experience, God patiently waited to pick up the broken pieces created by my dysfunction, hoping that I had seen the mistakes of my heart. But I didn’t. Any unhealthy dependence will destroy us, emotionally and psychologically. My life experiences will forever; tearful remind me that putting fallen humans in the place that can only be filled by a Holy, perfect God, will only ever bring more scars. Sin will forever change our hearts. But God can forever change them back. Our hardened, guarded hearts can heal and be transformed back to the people we were before betrayal, rejection and abandonment was written in the pages of our story. However, we’ll always carry the past with us, it will remind us to never fall over the same stumbling block again and it will remind us that our sins will always leave a scar.