"Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me." He has proven this scripture to me over and over again.
"You don't have a self-worth problem. You have a little one still hiding in the bushes, whispering 'The Lord is my Shepherd and I do want You too,' waiting to be told she was always wanted. We're going to tell her the truth — and you'll never see yourself the same way again."
I grew up in the home everyone called "the unsupervised one." My dad lived away, my mom was always working, and I was the youngest of six — born six years after the rest, so I was the one left in my siblings' way. Life with them was emotionally and physically abusive. I was a child no one had time for.
But at five years old, a kind family up the road took me to church. A Sunday school teacher read us Psalm 23 and showed us pictures of Jesus holding a lamb and a child in His lap. I remember wishing I were that little lamb in His arms. Not long after, a brother and his friend began to abuse me and tormented the dog I loved. When I heard them coming, I would run and hide in the big bushes and say it over and over: "The Lord is my Shepherd, and I do want You too." Sometimes they couldn't find me. And I always found a little peace.
At fourteen, my sister sat me down and told me the family secret: that when I turned eighteen, my father would tell me I was not his biological daughter. Everything I already believed about myself snapped into focus. I thought, no wonder he lived away. I was the mistake. I was the one nobody wanted. I held the rage and the shame in, the way I'd learned to hold everything in.
I found safety in being cute, smart, and athletic — Captain of the Drill Team, in love with our Drum Major. We married right after I graduated in 1977 and we are still married today. The first ten years were rough. Then my two daughters were born, and everything in me changed. I was going to protect them and live right. A dear friend invited me to a Bible study, and there, Jesus rocked my world. I had always believed in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — but I had never felt how much the Father actually loved me.
Then the strangest thing started happening. People began handing me cards, little pictures, Precious Moments figures — all of them Psalm 23. Over and over. And it finally hit me: Jesus had been speaking to me since I was five years old. He had been there the whole time I was suffering.
At twenty-eight I started volunteering at a crisis-pregnancy center, counseling women — most of them survivors of abuse — with the love of Jesus. They sent me to train under Elijah House Ministries, and I went through an intense healing and deliverance of my own. I served there for thirty-eight years, growing from a volunteer with no degree into the Executive Director, and watched that ministry grow from a single pregnancy test into a full medical clinic. I retired in 2025.
I know the Lord closed that chapter to open this one: walking alongside people who are still bound by trauma, abuse, neglect, abandonment, illegitimacy, self-hatred, and self-rejection. I've had breakthrough in every one of those — by discovering that the real spiritual battle was in my own heart, and by embracing who Jesus says I am instead of what my circumstances made me believe.
He marked me to help others come to know Him. So here I am.
Compassionate. Hopeful. Encouraging. Every conversation I lead is built on these three convictions about people, healing, and what it means to come home to the Father's heart.
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Almost four decades of ministry, formal healing-and-deliverance training, and a lifetime of lived healing. None of this is theory. Most of it cost me something to learn.
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