"I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them."
"You don't need the right words, and you don't have to have it all together. You just need someone to walk with you through the fire — and to remind you that you were never in it alone. I know, because someone finally did that for me."
I first met God at fifteen, at a youth retreat called Chrysalis. It was the first time I knew — beyond the shadow of a doubt — that He was real, and that a Heavenly Father could be tangible. Ever since, God has spoken to me in butterflies. In small ways and, once, in millions of them.
In 2005 my dad was on a ventilator and I flew to Texas to say goodbye. The next morning, standing in the driveway of my childhood home, I looked up and the sky was full of butterflies. I knew, somehow, that whatever came next, God was good. We followed them all the way to the hospital — where the doctor met us at the door to say my dad had started breathing on his own. He made a full recovery. That is just one of the ways God has cared for me my whole life.
I married at twenty-one. We couldn't conceive, and both of my children came through IVF and much prayer. My daughter was created on September 11, 2001 — I was in recovery from the egg retrieval when the second plane hit, and I asked God to go be with those people, sure this cycle wouldn't work. In only the way that He can, He comforted a grieving nation and gave me a miracle at the same time. My son followed in 2005. Two gifts I did not deserve and infinitely loved.
And then I started to believe a lie: that being anything less than the perfect mother meant I was ungrateful for the miracles I'd been given. I spiraled into a depression so deep my own pastor sent me to a psychologist. Soon after, a cross-country move left me with no church, no family, and no friends — and a marriage where Scripture was used to keep me small. I came to believe God only loved me when I was okay.
My rock bottom came at a hotel pool in Charleston. I pulled a drowning boy from the water and did CPR while I waited for help; my own children watched, and all three of us have carried it ever since. When I finally reached my husband to tell him what had happened, he was too busy to hear it. After twenty years, I knew in that moment I was on my own — and I had no idea who I was. I was empty, alone, and I felt broken.
What came next was a decade I never planned: a divorce, deep therapy, and a slow, holy unraveling. I found parts of myself I didn't know existed. I healed hurts I never knew I carried. I met a God so much kinder than the one I thought I knew. I remarried in 2021, walked through a betrayal I was sure would break me — and watched God use even that to refine my soul and save my husband. For the first time, I was rooted in who I am, in Him, and I knew I was never alone.
Last October, while fasting and praying after a retreat, I read Luke 22:32 as if for the first time: "When you return, strengthen your sisters." It hit my soul like lightning. I started training to be a faith-centered life coach not knowing what would happen just 3 months later. Within a week of losing my six-figure job to a reorganization, my practice was formed and everything was aligned, as only He can do.
So here I am. Not because I've arrived — the fires still come. But because I finally know what it is to be refined by them, and loved through them. And I would count it a gift to walk with you through yours.
Compassion first, then curiosity. Everything I offer grows out of three simple things I've come to believe about God, about you, and about what real healing looks like.
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I'm not a licensed therapist, and I'll never pretend to be. What I bring is lived healing, gentle training in whole-person work, and a heart that has been through the fire and found God faithful in it.
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