I would have to call this past week a major miracle week for Always Faithful Radio…
The first day of the week I spent time with my new friend, Deb Ford, and she made a list of people I needed to go talk to about potential sponsorship of the show. That afternoon I started making calls and the rest of the week was a flurry of activity.
One of the first calls I made was to Wade Shelton, an attorney in town who is heavily involved in Crosspoint and some other non-profits in town. I talked to him about the idea of doing some collaborative sponsorship of Always Faithful Radio where I might be able to raise brand awareness, help increase fund development, and generally give the non-profit exposure through the radio show. We chatted and decided to follow up later in the week.
On Tuesday I went to the Christian Business Chamber of Commerce luncheon and a fellow named Kevin Downey was there inviting people to a lunch on Friday to raise awareness of a recovery support home named Pryor House, which is a collaborative effort between Alpha Home and Crosspoint, Inc. He’s talking about how the ministry was specifically for women (ding, ding, ding – women focused), to help them transition back into life after going through drug or alcohol abuse treatment and recovery, (ding, ding, ding – huge opportunity for these women to experience the faithfulness of God!). He mentioned how they started last year on June 1 (ding, ding, ding…same date my radio show started)…later on he also mentioned how a year ago, he and Julie Wisdom-Wild just KNEW they were supposed to create this resource to meet a huge need in the area, and stepped out in faith to do so, determining they would worry about raising the money later, (ding, ding, ding – exact same thing I did with the radio show). I approach Kevin at the end of the CBCC lunch and as I am standing there talking to him, Wade emails me to tell me I need to attend the Alpha House lunch on Friday, not only that, turns out Kevin wasn’t even at the right place…he was supposed to be at a lunch at CBC not CBCC, (ding, ding, ding – divine appointment!).
I leave that meeting and get a call from someone I’d sent advertising information to 3 weeks ago and hadn’t heard back…so I had assumed they just weren’t interested. She said they were going to start small, but commit to advertising through the end of the year…I couldn’t believe my ears…that commitment would be just the amount of money I needed to accomplish my trip to ICRS next week. Not only that, she shared with me that when she put the Always Faithful advertising information on her boss’s desk he was surprised, and said “Hey, I heard this show the last 2 weeks!” Now, how GOD is that?
Then I get another call from a chiropractor I’d asked, since I don’t have any insurance, about trading out some advertising for a significant therapy plan I need to complete to deal with the curvature in my spine and pain in my lower right back. Turns out they’d been leaving messages on somebody else’s phone for 3 weeks and just now realized they had my number down wrong…they were ready to move forward with the trade and helping me get my back issues resolved!
The rest of the week consisted of more divine appointments (including the lunch at Alpha House on Friday) and heavy prep for the show on Saturday. But God wanted to punctuate the week with a special exclamation point of His amazing faithfulness. When I arrived at El Jarro’s after the show, there was a woman named Babbie there from the show. She’d heard the last 30 minutes and felt the Lord telling her to come down to El Jarro’s and join us for lunch. She turned the car around twice on the way (obviously the enemy didn’t want her to get there, and now I know why!), but persevered in obeying what she felt the Lord was telling her. As she sat across from me and shared her myriad of health issues, from extreme pain all over her body, to near deafness in one ear, poor eyesight, general stiffness and mobility issues, bunions, hammertoes, knee pain, shoulder and neck pain, and she was on crutches and an oxygen tank. She started telling me how she struggled with the fact that her pastor never taught about healing, because she really needed it.
At that moment, my in-studio guest, Lizzie Smiley, told me her friend Hilary Akromis was on her way, and that she operated in the gift of healing. Welllll….this should be interesting, I thought! When she arrived, the only seat left was right next to Babbie. I watched how God set this up…and the amazing compassion with which he arranged this divine appointment. Not only had Hilary been raised in the same denomination so had similar struggles, but as an accomplished athlete, she spent 4 years with excruciating knee pain, 2 years of it on crutches, and severe back pain for 15 years. God healed her miraculously some years ago and has begun to use the dedication, discipline and passion she had on the basketball court to change the world for Jesus.
I had to leave the restaurant at 2:00, but later in the afternoon I got word that Hillary prayed for Babbie and all the pain in her body left, and she walked around the restaurant without her crutches! They even sent me some pictures to 
share…how amazing is that? 
I’m so in awe of how God is working, that I can hardly wait to see what He does next…What an honor that God used the Always Faithful radio show to orchestrate this divine appointment….a healing at El Jarro’s!
Women increasingly find themselves pulled in many directions, striving to balance the needs of others with the need to nurture themselves. This pull is often exhausting and, sometimes, can lead to resentment or burn-out. So how do we manage our work and family and faith and ministry lives if we aren’t able to take care of ourselves as we also take care of others?
During the second half of the show, I’ll introduce you to my friend, Melody Warford. We sing in the choir together at CBC, and she has an amazing ministry, Stone Soup Media, where she helps missionaries, ministries and churches tell their story with engaging film and storytelling. Her personal story of overcoming the pain of a failed marriage, Hodgkins Disease and a major brain tumor testifies to God’s amazing faithfulness!
Always Faithful 