I started Kindred Abbey because I believe God wants to heal your heart and restore your joy.

I’ll never forget the prayer Britt prayed. He said, “I see a little girl who has lost her joy.” As I wept, he continued, asking that my joy be restored. What Britt couldn’t possibly have known was that I had no joy, nor that my mother had frequently told me through the years that it was as if her little girl had lost her joy. Looking back, I know that prayer was the beginning of my healing journey.

Maybe because for twenty years of my Christian life, I experienced so little of it, even though I did all the things a good Christian does. Striving constantly to be more godly, I drove myself relentlessly until it felt as if I was floating through my life like a ghost. Not quite dead, but certainly not alive, I knew I needed to rest; except I really didn't know how.

I have always been fascinated by the medieval monasteries and abbeys. To my worn and weary soul, nothing sounded closer to heaven on earth than to be cloistered away. I longed to be closer to God and practice the spiritual disciplines far from the cares of the world. I created a space in my older son's empty room where I could go to rest in the hopes of recovering my health.  

At first when I went into the Abbey, all I could do was sleep. No matter how good my intentions were to read my Bible and pray, I found myself falling asleep for hours. But then, I began to journal and create art again. These became a lifeline back to myself and back to God. I thought I was on the road to recovery. But again, God had different plans for me.

Playing again

He peeled back the layers of 20 years of restless and relentless striving, revealing the truth I unknowingly repressed. It took the grace of God allowing the darkest night of my soul to reveal to me that the reason for my lost joy was unrecognized and unresolved trauma. Trauma that I thought I had dealt with, but had actually swept away with religiosity, never allowing true healing.

To make matters worse, I severely injured my back while helping to care for him over the next nine months until he passed away in July of 2023.  When I returned from my dad’s funeral, my body gave out. The nerve pain was so intense I could only find a bit of relief lying on my side. For an entire year there was not a single moment, awake or sleeping, with medicine or without, that I was pain free. I am still not completely pain free. 

I journaled. I wrote letters that I never sent to express the emotions I never allowed myself to feel. In my notebooks, I felt the feelings, I cried the tears, I raged the anger, I wept the bitter losses. This was the hardest and darkest time of my life. I never cracked my Bible, I never stormed the gates with lofty prayers. Most often I cried out “help me.” Some days I didn’t think I was ever going to see the other side. 

Like Jesus, my time in the lonely places came to an end. My Abbey became Kindred Abbey when I didn’t want to be alone anymore. I invited women to join me at my table every other week to practice together what I learned in the Abbey alone. These ladies, my Kindred, share much in common with me. They are worn. They are weary. They have been through the battles waged against their souls. And together we practice community, which by God’s design, is the gateway to a joy-filled life.