Meet Kristen

Restore Ranch is a God-given dream. I am a survivor of physical, psychological, emotional abuse, molestation, rape, and human trafficking. I’ve always been drawn to horses, and God has honestly saved my life through horses many times. 

I’m well aware of the struggles survivors face after the trauma because I’ve been there. I’ve struggled with depression, PTSD, anxiety, dissociation, etc. It’s by the grace of God that I’m healed, and He’s used horses many times and many ways in my own healing journey to teach me about Himself and the love and grace and redemption that He offers. 

The trauma I went through started when I was probably a toddler up until I was 20, but I had blocked it out by dissociating so I didn’t really know what I’d been through until I had moved out of my biological parents’ house and the flashbacks hit. I now know that I wasn’t then, and I am never alone, but I felt really alone those first couple years dealing with the PTSD, depression, dissociation, and anxiety, and I didn’t have the coping mechanisms and was too afraid of people to really reach out. The couple people I tried to reach out to at first didn’t know how to help and quickly saw themselves out of my life. 

God found me, though, and He slowly began to work on me, putting people in my life who would speak life into me and who would chip away little by little at the layers of wall I’d surrounded myself with. He placed people in my life who would pray for me, who would lift me up, who would love me when I couldn’t love myself. And slowly, He showed me that I am worthy of love. I am worthy of kindness. I am not what I’ve been through, what was done to my body, but I am so much more. Because I accepted Jesus as my Savior, I am a child of the King. I am loved by the Creator of the universe, and I am now a part of the best family I could ever be a part of – the family of God. 

I’m not sure who said this, but one of my favorite quotes is, “Be who you needed when you were younger.” That’s what Restore Ranch is all about. I needed to see Jesus in a tangible way in order to survive the healing from my own trauma, and now I want to be Jesus to other kids and teens and adults who have been through the same trauma l have.