Welcome to the Storytellers Live podcast where everyday people share real and personal stories. Some are profound and challenging, while others are more common and relatable shared with honesty and

humor. But all of these stories reveal what God can do in our lives when we trust him with the

details. Thanks for joining us.

Hi, everyone. This is your host, Kelly, from the Storytellers Live team.

On each episode, you'll hear a different woman share her story of God's transforming love.

These stories are recorded in a live setting at weekly local gatherings,

where we're aiming to build community through sharing, connecting, and encouraging one another.

Most importantly, these stories reveal the faithfulness of God and how he can take what's

ordinary and broken and exchange it for extraordinary and redeemed.

Today, Kristen tells her story of how tragedy in her teen years led her down a long path of self-destructive

behavior. A few years ago, after living a life enveloped in shame, fear, and low self-worth,

she found a relationship with God for the first time. Even though she grew up in Alabama,

she did not have a typical Bible bell church attending upbringing. And so she has made this

huge transition from being totally turned off by God and the whole Christian scene to finding love

and freedom in Christ. And she now lives boldly and bravely and loves encouraging others to live

with vulnerability and purpose. Here's Kristen.

Anybody that just wants to pray during this for me, that would be awesome.

If you feel so led at any time, I could probably use it.

So I was born and raised in Birmingham, but I didn't have, I guess, what I would think of as a typical, like,

Bible Belt upbringing. I wasn't raised in a Christian home. We never went to church, and we didn't

really talk about God in my home, so it just wasn't something that was in our life. My parents

divorced when I was three years old,

...