BEAUTY FOR ASHES: The Redemptive Hope of Christ
- Tonya Bruton
- Jul 27
- 22 min read
Updated: Aug 1
Reflecting on My Conversation with Kelly Hawley
Golden Summer Series | Week 8
Summer invites us to slow down long enough to notice what has been happening beneath the surface of our lives.
When I began the Golden Summer series, I wanted to create space for gratitude, reflection, and a more attentive way of living. We have explored what it means to make room for God, to receive from Him with open hands, and to abide in Christ rather than carrying the full weight of life in our own strength.
Abiding eventually leads us into a deeper question:
What is Christ restoring in us as we remain with Him?
We come to God expecting peace, direction, and provision. We also come to Him for restoration. We need Him to renew the places that have grown weary, restore hope where disappointment has settled, and redeem the parts of our stories that still carry pain.
This is part of what it means to receive from God. We receive more than answers to immediate prayers. We receive His patient work within us. Christ enters the places where life has wounded us and begins the long, sacred process of making us whole.
Some wounds are obvious. Others remain hidden for years. We learn to keep moving forward, convincing ourselves that because we are functioning well, we are healed. Functioning and healing are not the same thing.
A person can build a life, care for a family, serve other people, and continue carrying grief that has never been fully acknowledged. We can become remarkably capable while certain parts of our hearts remain frozen in an earlier season. The body remembers what the mind has tried to organize, minimize, or place safely in the past.
Healing begins when we allow God to meet us there.
The gospel is God’s invitation into a life of continual restoration. From the day we first trust Christ until the day we see Him face to face, He patiently reshapes our hearts. He heals what has been wounded, restores what has been lost, and gently transforms us into the image of His Son. No place in our story is beyond His reach.
“The LORD is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.” Psalm 34:18, NLT |
David gives us a beautiful picture of God’s heart. The Lord moves toward those whose hearts have been shattered. He meets us in grief, betrayal, and suffering with a presence that is gentle and unwavering. His nearness is often experienced most deeply where our need is greatest.
There are seasons when restoration feels like a dramatic breakthrough. More often, it unfolds quietly. God brings a memory into the light. He helps us recognize a pattern that once protected us but has begun to limit us. He gives us the courage to tell the truth about what happened and the grace to remain present while healing takes root.
This kind of work cannot be hurried. A wound that developed over years may require time, patience, safe relationships, and wise support. God is present through all of it. His pace is never careless, and His work reaches beyond what others can see.
“To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair.” Isaiah 61:3, NLT |
Beauty for ashes is more than a poetic phrase. It is a picture of redemption. Ashes represent what has burned, what has been lost, and what cannot be returned to its former condition. God takes what remains and begins creating something new.
He does not erase our history. He restores our relationship to it.
The past may remain part of our story, but it no longer has to control the meaning of our lives. Through Christ, pain can become a place of compassion. Survival can develop into wisdom. A voice once silenced can become a source of courage for someone else.
God gathers the scattered pieces of a life and begins putting them into a new order. He teaches us how to live from truth rather than fear, from grace rather than shame, and from the security of His love.
Those truths were on my mind as I prepared for my recent conversation with Kelly Hawley of Warrior Bride Ministries. Kelly has spent years walking alongside survivors of profound trauma and abuse. Her work reflects a deep belief that Jesus still enters the most wounded places of a human life and brings restoration from the inside out.
Listening to her story reminded me that the God who binds up the brokenhearted is still doing that work today. He is restoring dignity, awakening hope, and helping survivors reclaim parts of themselves they believed had been lost forever.
As we continue our Golden Summer journey, I want to invite you into a deeper reflection on the restoring work of Christ. Abiding in Him creates room for healing. Receiving from Him opens us to renewal. Over time, His grace begins writing a redemptive meaning into places once marked only by pain.
A Place Where Survivors Are Validated
Kelly Hawley brought the restoring work of Jesus into a deeply practical setting this week during our conversation on Grit and Grace with Tonya Bruton. As the founder and executive director of Warrior Bride Ministries, Kelly serves survivors whose stories often involve severe and repeated childhood abuse, exploitation, trafficking, ritual abuse, mind control, and prolonged trauma.
Her ministry enters territory that many churches, families, and helping organizations have ignored, refused to look at, or struggled to comprehend.
Warrior Bride Ministries is preparing for its sixth annual Counting the Cost Conference, taking place August 21–23, 2026, in Folly Beach, South Carolina. This year’s theme is Trust the Journey: Becoming His Warrior Bride. The gathering is designed for survivors as well as church leaders, counselors, prayer ministers, and others who feel called to support them. Through biblical teaching, survivor-centered perspectives, and practical equipping, the weekend will address trauma, restoration, spiritual warfare, identity, and the realities of walking through long-term healing.
Registration, lodging information, speaker biographies, and the current conference schedule are available through Warrior Bride Ministries.
One of the most meaningful parts of our conversation came when Kelly graciously allowed me to pick her brain about dissociative identity disorder. She acknowledged that survivors of severe and complex trauma have had very few places where the full reality of their experiences could be recognized and validated. I can personally attest to that absence. A Christian counselor once led me through a season of deliverance, and he was a gentle, loving, and caring man with a counseling degree. God bless him, but he simply was not equipped to handle the complexity of my trauma.
Even now, finding informed and compassionate support within the church can be difficult. Many congregations are still developing the capacity to walk well with people through bereavement, illness, sudden loss, and the ordinary crises that touch every family. Complex trauma requires a deeper awareness of how years of abuse, coercion, fragmentation, and continual fear can shape a person’s identity and affect an entire life.
That part of the conversation reached me personally because I live with diagnoses of dissociative identity disorder, commonly called DID, and complex post-traumatic stress disorder. I have spoken more fully about my mental health experiences in several episodes of the podcast, including My Mental Health Journey: Faith, Struggles & Finding Healing, When Mania Wears a Crown: Grace, Gifts, and Learning to Live with Bipolar, and I Live with DID: Dissociative Identity Disorder Explained + Inner Healing. These conversations can be found on my YouTube channel, including the Mental Health & Trauma playlist.
You can explore those conversations on the Grit and Grace YouTube channel.
I have spent years trying to find a place where I could be accepted as I am and supported at the place I currently occupy in my journey. I have often felt that I did not quite fit within traditional mental health settings, recovery communities, or church environments. Each space may understand one part of the story while remaining unfamiliar with the rest of it.
Complex trauma reaches into the way a person experiences safety, relationships, and personal identity. For those of us who follow Jesus, knowing our identity in Him is paramount to deliverance and to walking in the victory He won for us at the cross. Yet trauma can make identity feel fragmented, uncertain, or inaccessible. Specialized trauma organizations recognize that effective treatment may need to address dissociation, emotional regulation, identity, and self-esteem alongside the memories connected to what occurred. Healing often requires informed care that respects the survivor’s pace and recognizes how the mind adapted in order to endure overwhelming experiences.
Living with DID has taught me that survival is more layered than most people realize. Some experiences are difficult to explain to a person who has never lived with dissociation. Memory can be fragmented, and different parts of the self may carry different emotions and pieces of the past. Even the work of describing what is happening internally can feel exhausting when the listener begins from disbelief or prejudice.
Kelly spoke about DID with a familiarity that made me feel seen. She said dissociative disorders are much more common within the survivor population she serves than most people would imagine. Over the course of her work, she has encountered survivors with DID in numbers reaching into the thousands. Hearing her speak so plainly about it brought a sense of validation that I do not often experience.
There was relief in hearing someone acknowledge that these survivors exist, that our experiences are complicated, and that many of us have struggled to find a spiritual or therapeutic home. Kelly named the absence that I have felt without having the words to describe it: there has been very little room for people carrying this degree of trauma.
A place of healing must be able to hold the complexity of a person’s story without forcing that person into a simple explanation. Survivors need safety, patience, and people who are willing to learn. They need room to speak without being treated as frightening, spiritually suspect, or too complicated to help. They also need the dignity of being recognized as whole human beings whose lives contain gifts, callings, relationships, humor, intelligence, and faith.
The church has an important opportunity here. Trauma-informed ministry requires humility from leaders and congregations. It asks us to listen carefully, respect the role of qualified mental health care, and remain present when a person’s healing takes longer than expected or follows a different route. Kelly explained that the Lord frequently restores and delivers people through methods she could not have predicted beforehand. Every person brings a distinct history, and the Holy Spirit meets each survivor within the particular circumstances of that life.
Kelly’s work is rooted in her belief that the Holy Spirit must direct each person’s healing process. In the ministry framework she described, the work may include repentance, renunciation, and the breaking of soul ties or spiritual agreements. Kelly understands these agreements through the language of spiritual laws and legalities that must be addressed carefully under the Holy Spirit’s direction. Throughout the process, survivors are invited to receive Jesus as Savior and allow His presence to guide the demanding inner work of restoration.
Kelly was emphatic about the depth of this process. Profound healing usually unfolds in stages because every survivor carries a different history, internal structure, and capacity for change. An instantaneous transformation could carry more weight than some survivors are prepared to hold all at once. The Holy Spirit leads the work at a pace the person can bear, gradually creating enough safety for truth, freedom, and restoration to take root.
The Deep Work of Restoration
Kelly described healing as deep, deliberate work led by the Holy Spirit. The process requires courage from the survivor and patience from everyone entrusted with that person’s care. Years of trauma can shape beliefs, relationships, coping mechanisms, and the nervous system itself. Restoration reaches into each of those areas gradually, allowing truth and safety to become established before deeper layers are uncovered.
This is sacred territory. No formula can account for every survivor’s history, internal world, or present capacity. Kelly has learned to depend upon the Holy Spirit for direction because He knows what a person can face, when they are ready to face it, and how each part of the healing process must unfold. She said the Lord often works in ways she could never have anticipated. His approach reflects an intimate knowledge of the survivor that no minister, counselor, or support person could possess on their own.
The process Kelly described includes three significant movements: repentance, renunciation, and receiving.
Repentance and the Return to Truth
Repentance carries a tender meaning within trauma ministry. Survivors bear no guilt for the abuse, exploitation, or cruelty inflicted upon them. The responsibility belongs to those who chose to harm them. Within the healing journey, repentance addresses the survivor’s own relationship with God and anything the Holy Spirit lovingly brings into the light.
Trauma can leave behind beliefs that once helped a person endure an unbearable environment. A child may come to believe that love always causes pain, that safety is temporary, or that their existence has little value. Those conclusions can become deeply embedded, even when the adult mind recognizes that they are untrue. Repentance creates space to turn away from beliefs and patterns that no longer belong in the life Jesus is restoring.
The biblical meaning of repentance involves a change of mind that leads to a new direction. It is an invitation to come into agreement with God’s truth. For a survivor, this may include learning to believe that the abuse did not determine their worth, that their voice matters, and that God’s love is neither controlling nor cruel. The mind begins to experience the renewal Paul describes in Romans 12:2, and the survivor gradually learns to see themselves through the character and compassion of Jesus.
This process calls for gentleness. The kindness of God creates enough security for us to release what has shaped us and receive a clearer understanding of who He is.
Renouncing Agreements That Keep the Past in Power
Kelly also spoke about renunciation and the breaking of spiritual agreements. Within her ministry framework, these agreements involve lies, vows, soul ties, or spiritual legalities that continue to exert influence in a survivor’s life. She approaches this work prayerfully and follows the Holy Spirit’s direction rather than relying upon a prescribed sequence that treats every story the same.
Renunciation gives a person the opportunity to withdraw agreement from what was spoken over them, forced upon them, or accepted during seasons of fear and vulnerability. Some survivors may have formed inward vows to remain invisible, trust no one, or keep every emotion under control. Others may carry words that abusers repeatedly used to define them. Those messages can become woven into a person’s understanding of identity long after the immediate danger has passed.
Truth begins to loosen their hold.
Jesus said that knowing the truth brings freedom. In the context of trauma recovery, truth often has to move beyond intellectual understanding and reach the places where the body, emotions, and internal system still expect danger. Renunciation becomes part of reclaiming ground once occupied by deception and spiritual oppression.
This work requires wisdom and discernment. It also deserves the support of people who understand trauma and respect the survivor’s boundaries. Qualified counseling, medical care, safe relationships, and prayer can each become instruments in the hands of God. Healing becomes stronger when spiritual care and informed mental health support work with humility toward the same goal: the survivor’s safety, dignity, and growing freedom.
Receiving the Restoring Presence of Jesus
Receiving is the movement that brings this process back into the larger journey of our Golden Summer series. We have already explored how difficult it can be to open our hands to God, especially after disappointment or suffering has taught us to remain guarded. For a trauma survivor, receiving may require an even deeper measure of trust.
Kelly invites survivors to receive Jesus as Savior and welcome His presence into the places where trauma has left fragmentation, confusion, or pain. This is an ongoing relationship rather than a single emotional moment. Jesus accompanies the survivor through memories, questions, grief, and the gradual rebuilding of identity.
His presence brings a kind of safety that makes deeper healing possible. The survivor begins to experience God as faithful and attentive. Over time, the heart learns that surrender can occur without violation and that love can exist without control. These realizations may arrive quietly, yet they represent profound changes in a person whose earliest experiences taught them the opposite.
Kelly emphasized that an immediate, total transformation could place more weight upon a survivor than they are prepared to carry. The Lord understands the structure that enabled that person to survive, and He treats it with compassion. He brings healing in stages, strengthening the person as He proceeds and allowing each measure of freedom to become rooted before the next layer emerges.
The burden of healing belongs to Jesus. |
There is dignity in that pace. Gradual restoration can reveal the patience of a Savior who handles wounded people with tenderness and care.
The process is demanding. Survivors may encounter grief, resistance, exhaustion, and memories they have spent years trying to contain. Yet the Holy Spirit remains present in the work, directing each step and revealing truth in a form the person can receive. Beauty for ashes takes shape through these quiet exchanges as Jesus gathers what has been fragmented and patiently restores a life from within.
This is the redemptive hope of Christ. He knows the full history, including the portions that remain hidden from conscious memory. He also sees the person who is emerging through healing: someone whose identity is becoming rooted in truth, whose voice is returning, and whose life can carry a freedom that once seemed unreachable.
The Healing Power of Validation
Shame thrives when pain remains hidden. It persuades people to withdraw, conceal their experiences, and carry alone what was already too heavy for one person to bear. For survivors of abuse, that isolation may begin long before they have language for what happened. Silence can become a means of survival when speaking carries the risk of punishment, rejection, disbelief, or further harm.
Over time, the survivor may absorb a sense of responsibility that belongs entirely to the person who caused the harm. Shame reaches beyond the memory of an event and begins shaping identity. The question quietly changes from Why did this happen to me? to What is wrong with me?
Brené Brown’s research gives useful language to this experience. She defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” Her work on shame resilience emphasizes courage, empathy, compassion, reaching out, and learning to speak about shame within trustworthy relationships.
That hiding may look like competence from the outside. A survivor can become highly responsible, attentive to everyone else’s needs, and skilled at maintaining a life that appears stable. Beneath that capability, there may still be an abiding fear that the truth would change how other people see them. The possibility of being regarded as damaged, difficult, or unbelievable can feel more threatening than continuing to carry the pain privately.
Secrecy gives shame the freedom to create its own interpretation of the past. Without a safe and trustworthy witness, the survivor is left alone with questions that may have been shaped by childhood fear, manipulation, or the deliberate lies of an abuser. Those lies can remain powerful for years because they were planted when the person had little ability to challenge them.
Validation interrupts isolation and gives truth somewhere safe to land. |
A validating response acknowledges the reality and weight of what a survivor has carried. It communicates that the person’s pain matters, their reactions make sense within the context of what they endured, and the responsibility for the abuse rests with those who committed it. Validation also leaves room for the complexity of memory, dissociation, grief, and healing. It does not demand a polished account before offering compassion.
This was part of what Kelly gave me during our conversation. She spoke about DID and severe complex trauma with steadiness and familiarity. I did not have to persuade her that these experiences were real or defend the legitimacy of the diagnosis before we could discuss its impact. She already knew that survivors with dissociative disorders exist in significant numbers and that many have struggled to find appropriate spiritual and therapeutic support.
Her response allowed me to feel seen without requiring her to claim that she understood every part of my experience. That distinction matters. Complete understanding belongs to the person who has lived the story and to God, who has witnessed every moment of it. Validation comes from another person’s willingness to listen, acknowledge that the suffering matters, and remain present without reducing the survivor to a diagnosis or demanding a simpler explanation.
For people with DID, validation can carry particular significance. Dissociation already involves disruptions in memory, identity, and a person’s experience of continuity. When others respond with ridicule, prejudice, or immediate suspicion, the survivor may feel compelled to retreat even further inward. A compassionate response offers enough safety for the person to speak from where they are and to continue exploring their experience with qualified support.
The church can offer this kind of presence. Romans 12:15 calls believers to “weep with those who weep,” and Galatians 6:2 asks us to carry one another’s burdens. Both passages describe a willingness to enter another person’s pain with humility. We may have no immediate explanation and no simple answer. We can still listen carefully, protect a survivor’s dignity, and help connect them with informed care.
Validation creates a setting in which truth can emerge without force. The survivor begins to discover that speaking does not always lead to punishment and that vulnerability does not always result in abandonment. Each safe encounter offers a different experience from the secrecy, coercion, or betrayal that shaped the trauma.
This is one way shame begins to loosen its grip. The story enters the light and receives a response grounded in compassion. Responsibility returns to its proper place. The survivor gains room to grieve what was taken, recognize the strength it required to survive, and encounter Jesus within the truth of the story.
Jesus meets people with a knowledge that reaches beneath every defense and beyond every fragmented memory. His gaze carries compassion and truth. He sees the whole person, including the gifts, intelligence, humor, faith, and calling that trauma could never erase. Through safe relationships and the patient work of healing, a survivor can gradually begin to see themselves through that same compassionate gaze.
Validation can help end the survivor’s isolation within the past. Once the truth has been received with care, shame loses some of its authority to define the person’s identity. The survivor’s story becomes a place where dignity can be restored, meaningful connection can grow, and the redemptive hope of Jesus can reach wounds that secrecy kept hidden for far too long.
Shame, Vulnerability, and the Courage to Connect
Brené Brown has spent more than two decades studying shame, vulnerability, courage, and empathy. Across that work, one idea continues to surface: human beings are profoundly shaped by our need for connection, and shame strikes directly at that need.
That insight carries particular weight when we consider survivors of childhood abuse and exploitation. A child is still developing an understanding of identity, relationships, safety, and the world around them. When abuse becomes part of those formative years, shame can become woven into the story the child tells about themselves. The actions of another person can eventually become internalized as a judgment about personal worth.
Brown’s research describes shame as intimately connected to the fear of disconnection. She identifies empathy, courage, and compassion as central to developing what she calls shame resilience. Speaking about shame and reaching toward trustworthy people allow experiences once carried privately to enter the context of human connection.
For survivors, vulnerability requires discernment. Sharing the most painful pieces of a life demands courage from the person speaking and trustworthiness from the person listening.
Brown’s organization has also acknowledged that asking people to become vulnerable may carry emotional or physical risk depending upon the environment. Vulnerability flourishes where people have reason to believe their humanity will be honored. That matters deeply in conversations about complex trauma.
A survivor may have spent years learning which parts of themselves could safely be shown to other people. Their caution carries history. Trust develops through experiences in which boundaries are respected, questions are handled gently, and disclosures receive thoughtful care. A safe relationship gives vulnerability somewhere to land.
The person offering validation may have no comparable experience. They may have little ability to comprehend the magnitude of what another human being has endured. Empathy still allows them to remain present. Brown’s work emphasizes that shared circumstances are unnecessary for meaningful human connection; empathy reaches toward the emotion and humanity within another person’s experience.
That gives me hope for the church. We can become people with enough humility to listen, enough compassion to learn, and enough spiritual maturity to remain present when the story becomes difficult.
Becoming a Safe Place
The church has an extraordinary opportunity to become a place where survivors encounter both the love of Jesus and the steady presence of His people. Safety can become part of how we understand ministry.
“Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” James 1:19, ESV |
That simple instruction carries tremendous wisdom when someone entrusts us with a traumatic story. Listening gives the survivor control over their own voice. It communicates respect. It allows us to respond to the person standing before us rather than rushing toward assumptions about what healing should look like.
Becoming safer also requires education. Churches can learn about trauma, dissociation, trafficking, and the effects of prolonged abuse. Pastors and ministry leaders can develop relationships with qualified trauma professionals and specialized survivor organizations. Congregations can create cultures in which mental health care, spiritual care, and healthy community are allowed to support one another.
We can learn enough to recognize the limits of our knowledge and know when another person needs specialized support. There is tremendous humility in saying, I care about you enough to help you find someone who knows more about this than I do.
Kelly spoke passionately about the need for people willing to enter this work. She came into it with a business background rather than formal training in psychology or counseling. What she brought was a willingness to serve, to learn, and to follow the direction of the Holy Spirit. Years of walking alongside survivors followed that initial willingness.
Her story raises an important question for the rest of us: Where are we willing to serve?
The answer will look different for every person. Serving survivors can include specialized ministry and professional trauma care, but the larger culture of safety surrounding survivors is built by ordinary people as well. Someone has to open the church door. Someone has to make the coffee at the recovery meeting. Someone has to sit beside the person whose story makes everyone else uncomfortable and communicate through their presence that this person still belongs.
The need for men willing to serve is especially significant. Kelly spoke during our conversation about the number of male survivors she has encountered and the shortage of men available to walk alongside them. Boys and men who have experienced exploitation or severe childhood trauma deserve safe male relationships in which dignity, integrity, and healthy strength are modeled consistently.
That kind of service requires character more than charisma. A person can learn about trauma, receive training, volunteer under experienced leadership, and discover where their gifts are useful. Jesus continually moved toward wounded people with dignity. He saw individuals whom others had reduced to categories, reputations, illnesses, or histories. His encounters restored something profoundly human in the people before Him.
Perhaps our first contribution to a survivor’s healing is simply becoming trustworthy enough to receive their story. From there, service can grow. We listen more carefully, learn what we do not know, and allow the Holy Spirit to show us where our particular gifts can meet a genuine need.
The burden of healing belongs to Jesus. Our privilege is to become available to Him. Sometimes availability looks remarkably ordinary: a chair pulled close, a door held open, a phone call returned, or one human being staying present long enough for another to realize that they no longer have to carry their story entirely alone.
Where Willingness Becomes Service
One of the challenges Kelly left with me was remarkably simple: be willing.
Kelly did not enter this work with a psychology degree or a carefully mapped career in trauma ministry. She earned a degree in business administration and eventually followed a calling that placed her alongside survivors whose experiences required her to learn, seek specialized training, listen carefully, and depend upon the Holy Spirit. Today, Warrior Bride Ministries describes her as bringing more than nineteen years of direct experience serving individuals and families affected by exploitation and complex trauma.
Her story reminds me that willingness matters. There is important work reserved for trained clinicians, experienced trauma professionals, and ministers who have developed specialized knowledge. There is also an enormous surrounding work of compassion that belongs to the Body of Christ.
We can learn. We can serve. We can become trustworthy people.
That service may begin in a recovery meeting where someone needs coffee and a chair beside them. It may begin in a church where a person needs to walk through the doors without wondering whether their story makes them too complicated to belong. It may begin in an ordinary conversation when someone discovers that the person listening can hear something difficult and remain present.
Kelly spoke particularly about the need for men willing to enter this work. Male survivors of childhood exploitation and sexual trauma need safe men who can model integrity, healthy strength, patience, and compassion. Churches have an opportunity to raise up men who understand that protecting and serving the vulnerable is part of Christian discipleship.
Willingness also carries humility. We serve people well when we respect our own limits, pursue education, maintain healthy boundaries, and involve qualified professionals when a survivor needs care beyond our training. Preparation becomes an expression of love when we are entering another person’s most vulnerable places.
Perhaps your role will be specialized ministry. Perhaps it will be advocacy, prayer, financial support, hospitality, or friendship. God has always worked through ordinary people who made themselves available to Him.
The burden of healing belongs to Jesus. Our responsibility is faithfulness with the part He gives us. |
Warrior Bride Ministries and Counting the Cost
Warrior Bride Ministries was established in 2020 to provide biblical rehabilitation and restoration services for survivors of childhood exploitation, including trafficking, severe trauma, ritual abuse, and mind control. The ministry offers individual support, discipleship, groups, prayer ministry, life-skills support, education, and other programs centered on long-term restoration.
Kelly also described during our conversation a free 42-module resource that survivors can work through independently. Warrior Bride’s current website highlights its Foundations for Freedom program, designed to prepare survivors for deeper healing work, along with groups and educational resources. Because programs continue to develop, I encourage you to visit Warrior Bride Ministries directly for the most current survivor services, courses, and opportunities to become involved.
Explore current programs and resources at warriorbrideministries.com.
The ministry will host its sixth annual Counting the Cost Conference, themed Trust the Journey: Becoming His Warrior Bride, August 21–23, 2026, in Folly Beach, South Carolina. The gathering is intended for survivors as well as churches, counselors, safe houses, ministry leaders, prayer ministers, and others who want to become better equipped to walk alongside this community. The weekend includes biblical teaching, survivor perspectives, practical training, worship, and conversations about the realities of long-term healing.
Conference registration and current information are available at Counting the Cost Conference 2026.
You can also watch my full conversation with Kelly on the Grit and Grace with Tonya Bruton YouTube channel. Our discussion goes much further than I can cover in one article, and hearing Kelly speak about this work in her own voice gives important context to everything I have shared here.
Resources for Survivors and Those Who Love Them
Finding the right support may take time, especially when trauma is complex. These organizations provide several different starting points.
National Human Trafficking Hotline: 1-888-373-7888 | Text 233733 | Confidential support is available 24/7, with access to services and safety resources. Get help online
RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline: 800-656-HOPE (4673) | Text HOPE to 64673 | Free, confidential support is available 24/7 in English and Spanish. RAINN.org/hotline
NAMI HelpLine: 800-950-NAMI (6264) | Text NAMI to 62640 | Available Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.–10 p.m. Eastern for mental health information, resources, and support. In a crisis, call or text 988. NAMI HelpLine
International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD): Find a Therapist directory offers a searchable listing of therapists and related professionals, including practice areas relevant to trauma and dissociation.
These resources serve different purposes, and one organization may fit a survivor’s needs better than another. Reaching for support can itself be part of reclaiming the voice and dignity that trauma tried to take.
Beauty for Ashes
When I began this Golden Summer series, I imagined a season of slowing down. I wanted to pay attention to what God might teach us through rest, gratitude, receiving, abiding, and becoming more present to the life He has given us.
I realize now that all of those themes have been leading here.
When we make room for God, eventually we encounter the places within us that need His presence most. When we learn to receive, we open ourselves to restoration. When we abide in Jesus, we remain close enough for Him to tend what has been wounded and patiently reveal who we are becoming in Him.
Isaiah’s promise of beauty for ashes speaks to a God whose redemption reaches into the deepest places of human suffering. He sees the whole story. He knows every wound, every fragmented memory, every year spent surviving, and every quiet act of courage that brought a person this far.
His redemptive hope reaches there.
For survivors, I pray this article reminds you that your story is worthy of care. Your healing deserves patience. Your voice has value, and there are people learning how to listen.
For the church, I pray we become those people.
May we grow in wisdom without losing tenderness. May we become willing to enter difficult places with humility, equipped to serve and courageous enough to stay. May our churches increasingly become communities where people carrying profound wounds encounter the patient love of Jesus through His people.
There are ashes in every human story. There is also a Redeemer. He still makes beautiful things from what remains.
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