Small World, Big Influence: Ellen

For the last several weeks, I've been telling you about some people in my life - from upwards of twenty years ago - who were pivotal in shaping me into the person I am today. All of them are people who aren't known on a national level. They're just ordinary people living an ordinary life, and a piece of their ordinary crossed a piece of mine, and I'm forever impacted because of something they said or did.

As I've shared these stories, I've relied on my original words from writing I did over a decade ago, but today I'm going to start from scratch on my story, because I feel like leaving it in its original form would be confusing and incomplete. My message remains the same, but my words are new.

Today I want you to meet Ellen. She doesn't know me at all. And truth be told, this one Sunday night at church was the only encounter with her I ever had. I have no idea where she's moved in life or what's happening with her in the present day, but I can tell you that a speaking invitation she accepted at a little church many years ago left a big impact on me.

I nearly didn't go to church that night. I knew we were having a special speaker, and I knew she represented the Crisis Pregnancy Center. While I respected and appreciated the work of the CPC, I really wanted to go to church for Bible study, not for fundraising speeches. I argued with myself for a while, but in the end, I ended up in my pew for Sunday evening service.

When Ellen stood to speak, she completely surprised me. She did talk about her work at the Center, but she spoke about much more than that. She didn't just rattle off a list of shocking statistics and count the numerous needs to keep the place running from month to month: she talked about the need behind the CPC. She didn't just talk about pregnant teenagers. Her heart broke for the reasons that landed them inside the walls of her office.

It was the first time anyone in my life had ever dared to publicly talk about why people ended up in a crisis pregnancy. Real, deep wounds and losses in life that caused them to turn to sex for comfort. And not just sex...but impurity in general. Girls who felt so unloved by people who didn't take time to invest in them that they wanted a baby to have someone to love.

Ellen had a bunch of her own kids, and at that season, most of them were teens, so her heart for this age group was huge. Her mission at the CPC wasn't just to lower the county statistics. It was to teach young women how to find real answers to their questions. Real food for their hunger. Real change that would last.

It wasn't Ellen's work with the CPC that caught my attention that night. It was not even her passion for kids and teens. It was her passion for life. She didn't care what age any person was - her passion for people burned fiercely because they were alive. The value she saw in an unborn child that drove her at her job was the same value she saw in a four year old, an eighteen year old, a fifty year old, and a seventy eight year old. Age didn't matter to Ellen. Heartbeats did.

That night, I found myself with a deep desire to be passionate for people. All people of all ages. Life is valuable, no matter how young or how old. How collected or how broken. Ellen saw potential in all people. She saw importance in every single life.

If I ran into Ellen today {and managed to recognize her} I would thank her for taking time from her platform that night to share more than a need for money. I would thank her for sharing her heart and passion with a whole church - and especially with the one defensive girl in a back pew.