At age 17, I awoke in wreckage on the side of the road to the overwhelming reality that a car accident had stolen away both my first love and my identity. This book is the story of a forty-year journey of a broken girl searching for a new identity – first in music, then in ministry, then through a career in law and business – before finally arriving at the realization that my identity does not revolve around what I do, whom I admire, or whom the rest of the world thinks I should be. Identity is so much more than all of those things!

In writing Up from the Water, I came to understand that most of us tend to live our lives on the surface level, especially in a modern, Western culture that is dominated by social media. While we project a public façade of having it all together, most of us privately sojourn through life feeling hopelessly lost. Through weathering life’s storms, we’ve been dismasted, our sails have been shredded, our rudders have been broken, we’re taking on water, and we find ourselves adrift, tossed about at the mercy of wherever the currents and prevailing winds take us. It is only when we are willing and brave enough to cut the tether to our broken boats, jump overboard, and dive fully beneath the surface, leaving behind all of the lies that we’ve been told and the lies that we’ve told ourselves about ourselves, that we can emerge above the water and rise into the identity of who each of us is uniquely called to be.

This is the story of one woman’s journey. This is the story of my journey into and up from the water.

We all have our own unique story. What’s yours?