I am very passionate about healing shattered hearts because this is my story.  I always say that the Lord used my desire to serve Him to set me free because I was very blind to the impact of my upbringing on my emotional and relational health.  To honor my parents, yet also be transparent, it is important to note that my adverse childhood experience score is a 10.  The impact of watching a sibling experience physical abuse impacts the onlooker as well as the victim.  This sets the stage to behave and keep your mouth shut, stay under the radar and avoid potential physical abuse.  This develops an understanding that love is conditional, which is not love at all, and hinders the ability to trust and receive love from others as well as God.  I can earnestly say that my father succeeded in providing us with a much better life than he had himself, but you cannot give away what you do not have.  The sins of the father pass on unless interrupted by the blood of the Lamb when we receive a new Father.

I was called to prison ministry in 2003 and immediately had a heart for helping prisoners walk out their faith after release.  I had the opportunity to help build several reentry mentoring programs and was heartbroken to see many friends return to destructive coping mechanisms and many times prison.  As I would work with women, I discovered that my emotional world was not much different than theirs, I just coped in different ways that were socially acceptable.  I worked with one specific friend, also named Kelly, for over 11 years in total as she cycled in and out of the prison system.  No matter how many people she had in her life for support and access to resources, Kelly always returned to drugs and prostitution.  In total Kelly was arrested over 90 times in her life.  She had been on the streets since she was 13 years old and said at one time if it had not been for dirty old men, she would have never had a roof over her head.  Kelly suffered terrible sexual abuse and trauma as a child as do many of the women I have served.  In the end Kelly was murdered by a trick.  In her belongings I found a letter that she had written to the Lord repenting for trusting Him for her salvation but not with the details of her life.  Another sweet friend of mine who attended Kelly’s memorial hung herself three months later.  She too had unaddressed childhood abuse and trauma.

You can only lead people to a level of intimacy with the Lord that you have yourself and at that time I was not healthy enough to help these women walk in freedom.  In His mercy and grace the Lord set me aside for a 10-year journey to His heart to mend my shattered heart.  In 2013 two significant encounters occurred.  In August 2013 I was praying about our family finances (or perhaps complaining) asking the Lord to reveal Himself as our provider once again and I clearly heard Him say that I needed to know His love for me more, which I could not deny.  Shortly after this encounter with the Lord I attended the first of several freedom ministry events at my church.  I remember asking the Lord what was wrong with me, because although I deeply loved the Lord and was faithful to pursue Him daily through prayer and study, I still struggled emotionally.  I would always say that “my issues had issues.”  This was not only a personal struggle, but it impacted my marriage and my parenting.  Unfortunately broken attracts broken and my husband and I were unable to fully give and receive the deep love that we had for one another.  At a ministry event in October 2013 the Lord showed me an image that resembled a house of mirrors.  I knew that this was a visual of my heart and that my heart had been shattered as a little girl and had fused back together.  Although I had given my heart to the Lord, I could not find my way to Him.  This began the journey of Him shattering the lies I believed and tearing down walls to reconcile the broken pieces of my heart and make me whole.

In our humanity we find that broken things can be beautiful.  We all do the best we can with what we have and work to build a life of love with those around us. The mere existence of color in our world demonstrates the beauty of brokenness.  Although it is possible to find beauty in our brokenness, as believers we are called to be salt and light.  Only a healed heart can transmit the light of Jesus, otherwise we just reflect the broken world around us.  We love because He first loved us, and Satan’s primary strategy is to slander the character of the Father to limit our ability to fully receive His love. He then lies to us about our worth and value which impacts how we experience and treat other people, all to hinder the two greatest commandants, to love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  When you love from a shattered heart, only pieces of our hearts can be shared, and many times the shards of brokenness hurt those we love the most.  Scripture says that when the eye is single the whole body will be filled with light.  In His faithfulness He led me on a journey to shatter the lies that blocked me from His love so I may know Him and see Him clearly.  The work of BLoved leads others through teachings and personal work to shatter the lies and lead them into an intimate relationship with the Lord as His Beloved.