Stripped.

That was me in the Winter of 2013. Life had seemingly stripped me of everything – my health, my career, my family, and even my marriage. There’s a much longer story which you can read about in my blog, but the shorter version goes something like this: I was on my 2rd esophageal surgery and feeding myself from a G and J tube; I had just lost my brand new executive job because we moved to the East coast from Seattle; my husband and I lost primary custody of my step-kids (also due to the move) and my husband had relapsed with his addiction to alcohol, because, well all of the above. Yup, everything, absolutely everything I treasured was gone.

God used this experience, however, to intervene and give me the much-needed spiritual wake-up call I needed. You see, although things looked great on the outside and even though I was a dedicated Christian, everything that I thought made me, “me” had been taken away, and I was broken. For me, this was devastating because over the years I had, unwittingly, built my identity, worth, and purpose on things like accomplishment, success, and popularity. I did this, even as a child, in my athletic performance, my career and parenthood, and marriage. I thought, mistakenly, that the more I succeeded and did everything near perfectly, the more people would like me. So, as you can imagine, when all of these things were stripped away, what was left, wasn’t pretty. I had no idea who I was, what I was supposed to do or how to move forward. As you can imagine for a type A personality like mine, this was almost unbearable, but thankfully, God understood and worked to revive me, right where I was at, and that’s how Revive began.

More about Heidi:
Heidi lives in Mukilteo, WA with her husband John, son Caleb and big Bernese Mountain Dogs, Boomer and Snickers. With 15+ years doing creative work in the corporate world, Heidi brings her creativity, business acumen, and passion for people to the world of interior design, creating meaningful and beautiful spaces for everyday people. When not creating, painting, or designing something, Heidi loves to bake, hike or shoot landscape photography.