I cannot help but to be filled with so much gratitude and thankfulness for the beautiful ministry we get to be a part of at the Beautifully Flawed Foundation! Coming away from two incredible retreats, I have found it hard to put into words just how amazing of an experience we shared. Last year my prayer was to see growth in the Forge men’s retreat. I didn’t want to waste resources striving to make something happen with that, if it wasn’t what we were supposed to be doing as an organization. This year not only did we nearly double our attendees at Forge retreat, we saw powerful healing happen, incredible community built, and lives forever changed. I cannot wait to share with our community all the stories we have coming for you.
The Beautifully Flawed Retreat was just as powerful, and different from past retreats. It was like there was a sisterhood bond that happened from day one with the girls. So many beautiful and empowering moments of healing, and breakthrough. With each story there were miracle moments, and reminders that we get to see stories come full-circle from a care package in the days following complete brokenness, to courageously attending a retreat seeking community and continued healing. We are so excited to share our first powerful story coming out of this year’s retreats, but before you read on, I want you all to know just how thankful I am for each of you. Together we get to forever change lives with hope. As we gear up for 2023, we believe God is calling us to do even more retreats, along with relaunching our conferences. I ask that you prayerfully consider Beautifully Flawed in this season of giving. God is doing big things, and we are so excited for what the future holds. Please be blessed with Nan’s story below…
Little Miracles – Nan’s Story of Hope
She lost her leg and her dad on the same day less than four years ago, but it’s not what you’ll remember about Nan. If you talk with her, what you’ll probably remember is the way that she drew out God’s story in you. You’ll remember the moment her eyes light up when she realizes the hope in your own story and asks the rhetorical question, “How much does God love you?”
Maybe it’s the way that she chooses to see life and to share about it, but it’s hard not to pick up on the many little miracles that make up Nan’s life. The way that she was thrown clear onshore in the jet ski accident that took her dad’s life. The way that nearby fishermen arrived quickly enough to save her life. The way that she somehow bypassed our closed 2022 retreat applications and the way that a confirmed attendee had dropped out just at the same time.
“God has made so many things happen in my life just so that I could be where I needed to be,” says Nan. “How much does He love me?”.
But at length she will tell you how much such realizations have been and continue to be a non-linear process as she heals. In fact, it took much of the last few years to seriously consider attending the Beautifully Flawed Retreat at all after hearing about it for the first time.
In the hospitalized months after the accident, Nan explains how much she avoided the consequences of her reality.
“I didn’t like to think about being different,” says Nan. “I just wanted my friends to come visit me so that I could hear about the drama at school, not about how I was going to live my life with one leg. Everything was so new to me in those days so the thought of anything else new felt like too much.”
But a visit from Kelsey Johnson, a former attendee of the Beautifully Flawed retreats, became one of many steps in changing that mindset. Shortly thereafter, she’d also get connected to Lauren Kennedy, co-founder of the Beautifully Flawed Retreat and founder of the Lauren Scruggs Kennedy Foundation. It was because of these new relationships that she first heard about the Beautifully Flawed Foundation and would then receive a care package from the organization on the week of her father’s memorial.
“Looking back now on what it meant to me, that gift package became a big step in becoming more comfortable in being a person with a disability,” says Nan. “It became something that could be cool and that was more appealing to me. I now saw these women that were associated with disability that I admired and I realized that people that I didn’t even know cared a lot about me.”
But life caught up – Nan started college at University of Georgia, studied abroad in Europe and interned at Whizz Kidz, a nonprofit organization serving youth in wheelchairs, as a part of her undergraduate studies towards becoming an occupational therapist. The idea of the retreat fell back in her mind and sat in a list of reminders for someday.
“Someday” showed up, but what Nan didn’t realize at the time was that it was, technically speaking, too late.
“I feel like it was a little miracle that this one door closed and another opened and her application came through to us,” says Sarah Hill, Executive Director of Beautifully Flawed Foundation. “How God works in mysterious ways and He knew that’s what she needed.”
How much does God love her?
“I hadn’t realized how much I subconsciously thought about my prosthetic until I was at the retreat – from the way that I walk to the sound it makes when I stand up or if I’m going to trip,” said Nan. “And I didn’t realize how free I was going to feel around people like me and to know that this is how I’m supposed to live in a way that’s secure and confident.”
Nan doesn’t look at her story to be about limb loss. She doesn’t look at it as a loss of family, as much as she will share how much she misses her dad’s presence. She sees it as a story of God’s love and it’s out of this wisdom that she’s able to see God’s love so profoundly in other people’s stories, too.
“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”
Ephesians 3:16-21
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