We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shannon McGraw Carr a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Shannon , thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
Driving towards the destination of Colorado, across the vast state of Texas in the onset of summer, AC broken, windows down, and my playlist blaring through the bluetooth speaker sitting on the passenger seat because the radio on the 2004 Jetta had offered it’s last tune with the previous owner, I felt at peace. Even though the landscape of my domestic world had been torn to shreds I knew I would not only survive, but thrive.
Divorce was not going to be the one life moment that would render my demise. I had not lived through incest as a child, multiple sexual assaults as a teen, miscarriage, cancer, loss of most physical possessions in fire and then flood, to allow the pettiness of the many things my first marriage had bred to get me down. It is in the knowing that my resilience rises up and carries me through each moment and gives me the strength to know this too shall pass and I will be stronger, wiser, and more understanding to others circumstances and behaviors.
For me, the knowing is my faith in God. Trusting that no matter how bad the moment can appear before me, God has His plan and even in my mistakes He is able to create something new, better, and meant specific for me. It took me 27 years to put my trust into God and to come out of it with the complete understanding that He loved me despite me, all my faults, lies, excuses, and mistakes, and He could open doors I had never dreamed to walk through.
I was 27 years old, and I didn’t know what Faith was, and I thought God was a controlling and disapproving entity over my life, forever meant to cast down dissaprovement and unfortunate circumstances. One night I was alone with my two young sons, one a toddler, the other an infant, and my oldest son decided to paint our bathroom in his feces. He thought this was a brilliant activity but the pent up anger that welled within me from all of life’s unfortunate moments rose up like lava ready to spew from the neck of the volcano and I went after my son.
Something stopped me before I got close and as quick as it had risen, the anger calmed and settled into an empty pit of despair. I didn’t want to be that person. I didn’t want to live my life with the anger, self-pity, and frustration. I cried out, “Jesus help me” and I said it over and over like a mantra. I cleaned up the boys and went into the bathroom to survey the mess – this is when the visual was clear. My life was a bunch of crap. What was I doing?
I went into my bedroom and laid down face flat on my carpeted floor, “Lord if you have something for my life then take it and do what you will, because I don’t want to be this person anymore.” In that moment, I knew. I feel him, smell him, sense him. I knew, God had my very best interest at heart and I simply needed to trust.
Life kept going. It keeps going. Bad things happen. As I mentioned, cancer, fire, flood, and divorce. Going through those moments knowing there is that better day, that winter always turns to spring. This is where resilience resides, not living in the hardship alone and believing a newer, brighter day is ahead.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I founded the 501 c3 Hopeful Hearts Ministry in 2012, we will be celebrating 12 years in January 2024! We are a faith based non-profit that aides in the long term recovery of survivors of abuse. We work with adult women and men who have suffered through past childhood or young adult trauma and have never fully worked through the shame and guilt. We take survivors and join in their healing journey to help them thrive with 1 to 1 peer support, empowerment programs like Just Breathe classes and Healing Yoga, Retreats, and Bible and book studies, and our new Hopeful Hearts Podcast! We offer mini-retreats for companies and corporations who offer self-care programs for their employees as well.
When Covid hit the United States I had to quickly find another source of income to make sure the Hopeful Hearts Ministry thrived so, as God does, He opened a door I didn’t know to existed and I had the great opportunity to begin as a publisher for Decided Excellence Catholic Media. We offer a niche Catholic magazine for both the community and parishes. It was only a matter of months and I had Kingwood Catholic in print and then a few months later I began Atascocita & Humble Catholic magazine. I now also helped St. John the Cross of New Caney with a parish model magazine. Soon I was asked to move up help other publishers in the South region with their publications and I became the South Region Advisor.
This allowed me the opportunity to then put on a GALA for Hopeful Hearts Ministry in 2021 which granted us the funds to hire Tamara Lexow as our Executive Director for Hopeful Hearts Ministry.
With both positions, God has me placed in a position to help coach, support, pray for, and minister to so many all over the world. The path to where I am is not what I ever imagined back when I was in my twenties or even thirties for that matter but I am blessed by every turn God has guided me through.
Please be sure to check out the new Hopeful Hearts Podcast available on both our YouTube channel and where ever you listen to your favorite podcasts!
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I believe the most important quality to have for my journey has been the willingness to go on a journey of forgiveness for certain people in my life, and being able to acknowledge that we are one in the same, even though our actions and mistakes are different we both deserve the same opportunity of change and life improvement.
Whether it is personal or business, people are people. We act out when we are in pain and as the saying goes, hurt people hurt people, so it goes that healed people heal people. Take a moment and walk away from an intense situation and settle yourself enough to look at the bigger picture of the other individual. It doesn’t always provide the answer but it can help to come back to it with a calmer presence and sureness of your resolve and boundaries.
Humility is a key to success – when you can recognize your own areas of improvement and acknowledge the unease in fully reaching your best self status it is easier to understand others and their own struggles, giving you the ability to change the situation with understanding and a chance at compromise rather than shutting the other person and situation down.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
Hopeful Hearts Ministry is always looking to collaborate with other non-profits to help the various levels of the continued journey of healing as well as corporations who want to offer support to their employees for improvement in their mental and emotional well-being. If you are interested in learning more about the programs we offer or ways we can work with one another please reach out to myself, Shannon Carr at [email protected] or Tamara and [email protected]. Or feel free to browse our website www.HopefulHeartsMinistry.org for great resources and information on our programming!
If you are interested in the Catholic Niche market and or know a parish that may be interested in learning more about what I do with Decided Excellence, please visit www.DecidedExcellence.com or email me at [email protected]
Contact Info:
- Website: www.HopefulHeartsMinistry.org
- Instagram: HopefulHeartsMinistry
- Facebook: Hopeful Hearts Ministry
- Linkedin: Shannon (McGraw) Carr
- Youtube: Hopeful Hearts Ministry
Image Credits
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