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The pain began immediately. In her first year, she dealt with intense homesickness. She questioned everything and struggled with the loss of a significant relationship while dealing with the emotions dredged up by her counseling classes. Her carefully constructed world was crumbling. "I had put so much pressure on myself to be a counselor. If I couldn't do that, then who would I be? Because I didn't have the identity of 'wife' or 'mother' (a southern expectation), I couldn't handle the idea that I wouldn't become a counselor. That just couldn't be." Pausing to take a breath, Amanda Grace shared, "I had such a misplaced identity. Then … I cracked." She had always been taught to finish what she started, but it was all too much. She quit, walked out of Shepherd's Gate Counseling Center, and headed back to Texas. "Seeing and hearing people has always been my spiritual gift," she said. "I'd never quit anything in my life before, but I had so much pain in me that I couldn't hear anyone else's stories." Returning to her family's farm, she sought their comfort and the Lord's direction. He gave her direction through—of all things—a billboard. After several weeks at home, she was driving to the airport when a huge billboard of the Rocky Mountains caught her attention with its bold, clear statement: "Come to life." "It felt like an invitation to come back," Amanda Grace shared. "The Lord whispered to me, 'You are not done,' and never once did I feel reprimanded by Him." She returned to classes that fall, this time in pursuit of a master of arts in counseling ministries. It allowed her to take classes focused on grief counseling, short-term counseling, and crisis response. She'd always been drawn to crisis counseling, and while she was thriving in her classes that semester, Amanda Grace felt the Lord nudging her to enter the licensure program again. "It was humbling," she confessed. "It meant reapplying for the program and admitting why I walked away." "The Lord whispered to me, 'You are not done,' and never once did I feel reprimanded by Him." Amanda Grace said, "I was dedicated as a baby, but I had planned to get baptized after seminary as a culmination of the whole experience. However, I was so rocked by that first year that, when I was at my family's farm, my father baptized me there in the pond with family and friends around. I did it then because it was about grace—me needing the Lord instead of me being perfect." Amanda Grace was invited back into the licensure program and graduated in the spring of 2014. FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS Amanda Grace had been back in Houston for three years when Hurricane Harvey made landfall. "Highways sank. Neighborhoods washed away," she said. "Two days into the rain we received an email from the facilities director of the church where I worked." The subject line read "Call for help," and her colleague explained that he felt compelled to open the church as a temporary shelter to those escaping the rising waters. "If you are near the church and can get here despite the flooding, I could use some help," the email read. "Refugees are arriving now, and I am here all alone." Though she was just 18 miles from the church, it took four days to navigate through the destruction to the temporary shelter of her 18 SPRING 2018 TAKE IT FROM HERE Vstock LLC/VStock