Dear Beth

Dear Beth,

You don’t know me, but I certainly know you. In fact, I’ve been aware of your presence in my life since I was in high school. It’s one of the benefits of being a little older in life when I came to faith (and yes, for a Southern girl raised in the buckle of the Bible belt, not showing an interest in faith until my teenage years seemed late at the time). Ours is sort of a family faith story. My parents came to real faith in that same season, and when they did, Beth, you were right there to meet them.

I remember the dog-eared, highlighted copy of Breaking Free sitting on the end table next to my mom’s coffee every morning when I went to school.

I remember weekends with my dad flying solo at home so my mom could attend one of your conferences.

I remember my parents doing some of your studies together in a couple’s group at church.

I remember my mom leading her ministry volunteers through your work on several occasions.

Yes, in those early formative years of our faith, we all met Jesus, but we also all met Beth.

And gosh, are we changed because of both!

It should come as no surprise, then, that as I’ve become an adult in my own faith, I’ve met you again in so many turning points and pivotal moments of my own.

When I moved to Atlanta after college—no job, no boyfriend, no money, and no prospects for any of it—it was your voice who guided me through Stepping Up.

When I joined my first adult Bible study, it was you teaching us about the life of David. 

When I was struggling to see God’s goodness in my life during an unexpected season of illness, I found comfort in your encouragement in Believing God.

And when I took the step to become a writer and editor myself more than a decade ago, it was your LIT conference that I attended where you so graciously passed on every detail of your work and process to the next generation of women in your field.

Your voice has always been there for me—bravely, honestly, and self-sacrificially telling the truth. Not just your truth (as culture encourages us to say), but the truth. And in a time where our faith is riddled with Christian celebrities who put their power and their platforms over their people, I’m so thankful to be able to find your voice—to find the truth in it—above the noise.

I’ve never had an issue speaking up. I’m the person who says what I think (yes, even when not asked), who speaks up (much to the horror of my introverted sister, who once hid in an airport bathroom while I interjected at a woman yelling at a gate agent), who says something when I think something needs to be said (and yes, this has bitten me in the butt more than once).

See something, say something—I have this one down.

I tell you this because I spent the last few days reading your recent memoir, Beth. And the distinction here stuck out to me with each page turned. Speaking up is one thing; telling the truth is something else entirely. 

Truth telling is frightening. It’s costly. It’s dangerous. It’s controversial. It has the potential to break down your relationships, your work, your own wellbeing. It does not come without cost.

And for you, Beth, I can only imagine the cost.

Because you aren’t a story teller; you’re a truth teller. The words you put on the page aren’t just elements of a story; they are elements of the truth.

The truth of what it is to be a survivor.

The truth of the way our own pain can cause us to become our own worst enemy.

The truth of what it looks like to hold our mess and our miracles in the same breath.

The truth of what it is to be loved by God but wronged by His people.

The truth of what hope in Christ really means.

It’s no secret that the last seven years have been deeply challenging for women in faith. I can’t speak on behalf of all women, but for this woman, it has been brutal.

We’ve had to watch men in power sweep their abuse of that power under the rug.

We’ve been silenced, shut out, and shut down by the churches we’ve loved simply for saying, “This isn’t okay.”

We’ve been victimized over and over again by leaders.

With their words, with their hands, with their actions, with their power—we’ve been wounded.

It’s no wonder so many of us are walking away from the faith that raised us. Because now we’ve seen behind the curtain, and we can’t unsee the ugly we found there. We can’t unknow the lies we’ve been fed in order to keep us where they want us. We can’t undo what’s been done to us under the banner of faith.

This is why, Beth, I’m so grateful to you.

If I have experienced this on some small scale, I can only imagine what these years have felt like for you. As a survivor of abuse, I can’t imagine what it must have been like to see abuse covered up, dismissed, and ignored in your own faith community. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to see predators placed in the pulpit only to be told you have no place next to them. As a woman in ministry, I can’t fathom how it might’ve felt to see your entire denomination turn on you for doing nothing more than telling the truth.

Again, I say, I can’t imagine the cost.

Beth, here’s what I want you to know: You have used that pain for a purpose.  

My mentor and friend Mary Jane is basically the Long Island version of Beth Moore in my life. She’s constantly telling me about the ways in which we can find purpose in our pain. When we give it over to God, there can be beauty that rises from the ashes of it. Of course, this doesn’t mean we want it. It doesn’t mean we’d choose it. It doesn’t put a nice bow on any ugly parts of our story.

But it does give us hope.

That there can be more than this.

That good is still out there.

That the gifts that come after the hurt may help make the cost we paid along the way more manageable.

I see this in every page of your book, but more so, in every woman I know walking the truth-telling road in faith today.

I have a voice in this space because you had one first.
I work with authors whose work is going to change lives because your books made a way for theirs to get on the shelf, too.

I am not afraid to tell the truth to a denomination full of powerful men because you’ve already used a spiritual megaphone to do the same.

I can stay the course in my own faith regardless of the failures of God’s people toward me. Regardless of my failures toward them, too.

I know I can because I’ve watched you do it. You’ve gone before us with honesty, emotion, and authenticity. You’ve showed us what it looks like to count the cost and tell the truth. 

I don’t know if you’ll ever read this. The Internet has a strange way of connecting us to one another, so who knows? But what I do know is that I hope, in my own little corner of the Internet and the world, I will be brave enough to follow in your footsteps, both when the cost is minimal and when the cost is everything. I hope to be brave enough to tell the truth. And maybe, that ministry of truth-telling will change the landscape for someone coming behind me.

Because Beth, you’ve certainly done that for the rest of us.