Stacey's Story ~
Let me first introduce myself with what I would consider my most valuable identifier - I am a child of the Most High!
I came to know “the Lord” (as is often said in Christianity) at the age of 7. It was a simple childlike faith - I “prayed the prayer” and “accepted Jesus into my heart”. Since that day, my relationship with my Creator has grown from a moment of childlike faith, through the religion of Christianity, to the firm footing of a Covenant walk out of “Egypt”, through the wilderness and to the heart of the Father and the certain inheritance of the Promised Land - an eternal life of restored intimacy with Our loving Creator!
I am also a wife and mother, a horse trainer, a singer/songwriter, a certified nutritionist, an avid student of the Scriptures, and an aspiring author. As a passionate teacher in all these roles and pursuits, I have come to see my own life story as a magnificent metaphor of how YHWH is leading us from something, through something and to something. Kindly allow me to briefly elaborate with a little look inside the framework of who I am, and my experiences thus far.
My heritage is unique and telling…I come from a line of survivors on both sides of my family. My father is Armenian, and his family escaped the Armenian genocide by coming to America in the early 1900’s. My mother’s Jewish grandmother was married to a German soldier pre-WWII and narrowly escaped the ensuing Holocaust with her three children. As if by destiny, I became a survivor of sorts. Not readily apparent to me or most of those around me, my innate personality as a highly sensitive person led me to coping mechanisms that kept me in a suppressed state of fear most of my life.
My parents were divorced when I was 4, and my mother, older sister, and I parted from my father, moving from Brooklyn, NY where I was born, across the country to Tarzana, CA. In a single parent home there, and later in Boulder, CO where I grew up from 8yrs old on, I became a “latchkey kid.” My sister and I spent every summer and every other Christmas with our father and step-mother and our 4 half-siblings in various homes throughout Florida, West Virginia, and North Carolina. During my teenage years my mother married my stepdad - now a recovered alcoholic.
With much turmoil at home and the somewhat normal but difficult pressures of high school and adolescence, I developed an eating disorder, which I kept hidden from all but one of my closest friends well into my 20’s and even 30’s. I married at the very young age of 18, thinking I had life figured out and would somehow skip over the potholes that my parents had fallen into because I was a “Christian” and was doing all the “right” Christian things.
Neither my husband nor I were healthy and whole people. Each of our insecurities played into the others’, creating a perfect storm of what I later realized became an emotionally damaging relationship. That marriage ended in divorce 20 years later and left emotional scars, many of which I have only recently seen surface as symptoms of complex PTSD resulting from what experts call betrayal trauma.
During the 2nd year of that marriage, I survived a near death horse accident and the consequent complications of almost losing my leg. After years of recovery and three daughters later, I built a thriving horse training and showing business. In 2003 I lost my favorite horse, Daisy, in a tragic accident. Two years later I left my career and dream farm, as well as our family and friends, to move across the country in hopes of saving my rocky marriage and alleviating some the stress I had been experiencing.
My middle daughter was born with a bi-lateral cleft lip and palate. While a born survivor herself and now a thriving and lovely young woman, together as mother and daughter we endured many surgeries and sleepless nights. Amid running my own business, homeschooling the girls, serving at church, and taking care of the everyday needs of home and family, I squeezed in the pursuit of a music career, recording 2 original CDs in hopes of “being discovered” by the Christian Music Industry. With limited success I felt the sting of rejection, as many times I narrowly missed the cut, always the runner-up it seemed.
Post-divorce, after a year of literally surviving penny to penny and attempting to rebuild a career and sustainable life, I was reunited with my once first love and now my faithful husband, Joel. Our miraculous reconnection (while literally one of the greatest evidences to me of My Father’s love for me) was met almost equally with difficulties uniting 2 separate homes with 3 children each. All of us were surviving our own string of experienced hurts, attempting to heal and thrive together while bringing in a whole new set of hurdles and even traumatic experiences for us all.
Why do I share all of this? For one reason only. It is from these experiences that YHWH has made me the woman He desires for me to be. Through all of them He has been equipping me to compassionately minister to others while healing my wounds along the way.
-From my father’s marriage to my step-mother I came to salvation.
-From my horse accident came a life-long pursuit of a kinder way to train horses and interact with others that reflects the nature of Our Savior as the Good Shepherd.
-From my ensuing healing and health crises as well as my eating disorder came my pursuit of nutrition and spirit, soul, and body wellness.
-From my parent’s divorce and my own years later, came understanding of YHWH as my Father and my Husband.
-From my loss of Daisy came my Job-like surrender of “though You slay me, yet will I trust in You.”
-From my experiences of rejection (both relationally and vocationally) came peace in the approval and acceptance of the One opinion that matters the most.
-From my pursuit of music came my true passion to sing and write songs that bring honor to YHWH above myself.
-From the hurts of our children came the understanding of my own past hurts and a passion to learn a better way to love and receive love.
It was during my difficult first marriage that my eyes were first opened to the Hebraic roots of our faith. That understanding, along with my stark awakening to the inner workings of the “business of church” amplified a dissonance between Scripture and religious doctrine. That “noise” motivated me to diligently study His Word and seek intimate fellowship in the shadow of the Almighty and genuine living fellowship with like-minded seekers. From that place came the discovery of the true Names of the Father and the Son, the delights of His Torah, and the working out of His Salvation as evidenced in His Ways and His Paths.
It is from our miraculous yet somewhat tumultuous beginning, that together Joel and I now pursue our walk with YHWH through faith in His Son Yahusha ha’Mashiach and the leading of the Ruach ha’Qodesh (Set-Apart Spirit). We continue our Covenant Journey, learning through the instruction found in Scripture how to walk in His Ways and forsake the ways of this world (what Scripture refers to as coming out of “Babylon”).
It has been in the hand of sorrow and suffering that I have been transformed from fear to faith, experiencing the security of the grace and glory of the Shepherd of my soul.
However troubling all our life circumstances have been, we can always find that YHWH has been working on our behalf and for the end result of salvation to the many in and through it all (Genesis 50:20). Though there is much I wouldn’t want to go through again, I am grateful beyond words for the work that YHWH has brought about in me and through me as a result! He is good and truly is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him, even when we don’t do everything “right”! (Hebrews 11:6)
My dear friend Carrie and I met through a mutual Covenant connection (United in YAH) and immediately recognized each other as “soul sistahs!” This blog was initiated by the Ruach (Spirit) and is a project of two mended hearts united in love for each other and love for Our Creator in order to shower His love on His children around the world. Our sole purpose is to continue to grow as children of the Most High, encouraging those who likewise desire to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth!
Let me first introduce myself with what I would consider my most valuable identifier - I am a child of the Most High!
I came to know “the Lord” (as is often said in Christianity) at the age of 7. It was a simple childlike faith - I “prayed the prayer” and “accepted Jesus into my heart”. Since that day, my relationship with my Creator has grown from a moment of childlike faith, through the religion of Christianity, to the firm footing of a Covenant walk out of “Egypt”, through the wilderness and to the heart of the Father and the certain inheritance of the Promised Land - an eternal life of restored intimacy with Our loving Creator!
I am also a wife and mother, a horse trainer, a singer/songwriter, a certified nutritionist, an avid student of the Scriptures, and an aspiring author. As a passionate teacher in all these roles and pursuits, I have come to see my own life story as a magnificent metaphor of how YHWH is leading us from something, through something and to something. Kindly allow me to briefly elaborate with a little look inside the framework of who I am, and my experiences thus far.
My heritage is unique and telling…I come from a line of survivors on both sides of my family. My father is Armenian, and his family escaped the Armenian genocide by coming to America in the early 1900’s. My mother’s Jewish grandmother was married to a German soldier pre-WWII and narrowly escaped the ensuing Holocaust with her three children. As if by destiny, I became a survivor of sorts. Not readily apparent to me or most of those around me, my innate personality as a highly sensitive person led me to coping mechanisms that kept me in a suppressed state of fear most of my life.
My parents were divorced when I was 4, and my mother, older sister, and I parted from my father, moving from Brooklyn, NY where I was born, across the country to Tarzana, CA. In a single parent home there, and later in Boulder, CO where I grew up from 8yrs old on, I became a “latchkey kid.” My sister and I spent every summer and every other Christmas with our father and step-mother and our 4 half-siblings in various homes throughout Florida, West Virginia, and North Carolina. During my teenage years my mother married my stepdad - now a recovered alcoholic.
With much turmoil at home and the somewhat normal but difficult pressures of high school and adolescence, I developed an eating disorder, which I kept hidden from all but one of my closest friends well into my 20’s and even 30’s. I married at the very young age of 18, thinking I had life figured out and would somehow skip over the potholes that my parents had fallen into because I was a “Christian” and was doing all the “right” Christian things.
Neither my husband nor I were healthy and whole people. Each of our insecurities played into the others’, creating a perfect storm of what I later realized became an emotionally damaging relationship. That marriage ended in divorce 20 years later and left emotional scars, many of which I have only recently seen surface as symptoms of complex PTSD resulting from what experts call betrayal trauma.
During the 2nd year of that marriage, I survived a near death horse accident and the consequent complications of almost losing my leg. After years of recovery and three daughters later, I built a thriving horse training and showing business. In 2003 I lost my favorite horse, Daisy, in a tragic accident. Two years later I left my career and dream farm, as well as our family and friends, to move across the country in hopes of saving my rocky marriage and alleviating some the stress I had been experiencing.
My middle daughter was born with a bi-lateral cleft lip and palate. While a born survivor herself and now a thriving and lovely young woman, together as mother and daughter we endured many surgeries and sleepless nights. Amid running my own business, homeschooling the girls, serving at church, and taking care of the everyday needs of home and family, I squeezed in the pursuit of a music career, recording 2 original CDs in hopes of “being discovered” by the Christian Music Industry. With limited success I felt the sting of rejection, as many times I narrowly missed the cut, always the runner-up it seemed.
Post-divorce, after a year of literally surviving penny to penny and attempting to rebuild a career and sustainable life, I was reunited with my once first love and now my faithful husband, Joel. Our miraculous reconnection (while literally one of the greatest evidences to me of My Father’s love for me) was met almost equally with difficulties uniting 2 separate homes with 3 children each. All of us were surviving our own string of experienced hurts, attempting to heal and thrive together while bringing in a whole new set of hurdles and even traumatic experiences for us all.
Why do I share all of this? For one reason only. It is from these experiences that YHWH has made me the woman He desires for me to be. Through all of them He has been equipping me to compassionately minister to others while healing my wounds along the way.
-From my father’s marriage to my step-mother I came to salvation.
-From my horse accident came a life-long pursuit of a kinder way to train horses and interact with others that reflects the nature of Our Savior as the Good Shepherd.
-From my ensuing healing and health crises as well as my eating disorder came my pursuit of nutrition and spirit, soul, and body wellness.
-From my parent’s divorce and my own years later, came understanding of YHWH as my Father and my Husband.
-From my loss of Daisy came my Job-like surrender of “though You slay me, yet will I trust in You.”
-From my experiences of rejection (both relationally and vocationally) came peace in the approval and acceptance of the One opinion that matters the most.
-From my pursuit of music came my true passion to sing and write songs that bring honor to YHWH above myself.
-From the hurts of our children came the understanding of my own past hurts and a passion to learn a better way to love and receive love.
It was during my difficult first marriage that my eyes were first opened to the Hebraic roots of our faith. That understanding, along with my stark awakening to the inner workings of the “business of church” amplified a dissonance between Scripture and religious doctrine. That “noise” motivated me to diligently study His Word and seek intimate fellowship in the shadow of the Almighty and genuine living fellowship with like-minded seekers. From that place came the discovery of the true Names of the Father and the Son, the delights of His Torah, and the working out of His Salvation as evidenced in His Ways and His Paths.
It is from our miraculous yet somewhat tumultuous beginning, that together Joel and I now pursue our walk with YHWH through faith in His Son Yahusha ha’Mashiach and the leading of the Ruach ha’Qodesh (Set-Apart Spirit). We continue our Covenant Journey, learning through the instruction found in Scripture how to walk in His Ways and forsake the ways of this world (what Scripture refers to as coming out of “Babylon”).
It has been in the hand of sorrow and suffering that I have been transformed from fear to faith, experiencing the security of the grace and glory of the Shepherd of my soul.
However troubling all our life circumstances have been, we can always find that YHWH has been working on our behalf and for the end result of salvation to the many in and through it all (Genesis 50:20). Though there is much I wouldn’t want to go through again, I am grateful beyond words for the work that YHWH has brought about in me and through me as a result! He is good and truly is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him, even when we don’t do everything “right”! (Hebrews 11:6)
My dear friend Carrie and I met through a mutual Covenant connection (United in YAH) and immediately recognized each other as “soul sistahs!” This blog was initiated by the Ruach (Spirit) and is a project of two mended hearts united in love for each other and love for Our Creator in order to shower His love on His children around the world. Our sole purpose is to continue to grow as children of the Most High, encouraging those who likewise desire to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth!
