Called Out From the Sidelines

Published: April 13, 2021

I was a cheerleader in high school. I loved being on the sidelines, engaging the crowd and enthusiastically yelling for our basketball players. However, the worst part of cheering was when there was a time-out, and we had to run out to the middle of the gymnasium. The crowd would fall silent, and all eyes would be on us. I hate being in the center of attention; Id much rather stay on the sidelines and cheer for someone else.

Im still a natural encourager and supporter. In the spring of 2015, I applied to be on a social media launch team for one of my favorite authors. Being on a launch team meant getting to read an advanced copy of the book and cheering for the author all over Facebook and other forms of social media. Over 5,000 women applied for 500 spots, and I was one of the 4,500 rejected.

Because we are women, resilient and loyal, those of us who didnt make the launch team formed our own unofficial Facebook group the night the rejection emails were sent. We called ourselves the B team, the JV squad to help this author promote her book. In the first night of the group, over 1,000 women joined.

Ive been in large Facebook groups from the onset before, and I knew it would take several weeks for the chaos of introductions and remembering peoples names to settle down. Instead of trying to wade through the confusion of a brand-new group, I decided to get real with the girls. I began asking questions of the women that required them to be vulnerable and honest with themselves.

Eventually, our threads began clouding up the newsfeed, so I moved a bunch of us to a new group where we could get down and deep with each other. It was amazing to see the raw, open stories of some of these women. The very nature of social media is to put up a veneer, yet we chose to strip it off and get real with each other.

God began moving.

Because of the willingness of these women to be authentic and bare, we began to see healing. Women shed long-time insecurities and gained new confidence. The women began fiercely praying for each others marriages and families. Deep friendships formed.

I knew God had something special planned for the women in this group I had formed. I didnt believe it was an accident, and I knew He wanted us to take all the good, hard things we had been experiencing into the big, wide world. He wanted us to share our stories. He told me to start a ministry based on this concept.

Thats how Dauntless Grace Ministriesformed--as a way to connect women to a meaningful story.

For a long time, perhaps months, I followed His plan hesitantly. I never asked for my own ministry. I never asked to lead something public. The thought of people looking to me, following me... It was halftime of a basketball game all over again, and all eyes were on me.

But God asked me to. And He planted a dream in me that I never knew I had.

Since that time, Dauntless Grace has held several conferences at churches designed to show women what it means to walk out of a broken story and into Gods story of redemption. My co-director Deedra Mager and I wrote a book entitled Walking Dauntlessly: A Search for a Meaningful Story, which is an incredibly vulnerable look at our personal stories and how God uses relationship and a dauntless grace to move us into His plan.

And most unbelievably, the two of us have had opportunities outside of our conferences to speak to other women. This past January, I stepped onto a stage for the first time and shared my story. God moved me out of the sidelines and into the middle of the gym floor, and as long as my gaze is on Him, Im no longer afraid.

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