Embracing your Unique Expression to Live Boldly

Here's something most of us have felt. You want real community, the kind where people actually know each other, but you don't know how to build it. Maybe you've tried a small group or a bible study and it felt fine but not deep. Or maybe you've just been too busy, too tired or too guarded to let people in. Laura Arnold spent most of her adult life with walls up and didn't even know it.

She was a devoted Christian, a good mom, capable professional, but emotionally she was locked down. She built what she calls a fortress around her heart and it kept everyone at a safe distance. What changed started with a slow, sometimes painful process of learning to let go. And then one Easter morning in 2021, she and her family were singing on a hilltop when a stranger walked up and said, you must be Christians. Her husband invited the stranger's family to lunch and Laura's instinct was to say no.

It was inconvenient, unplanned, messy, but she said yes anyway. And that one lunch turned into weekly dinners, turned into a community of more than 20 people. Something Laura never could have planned and wouldn't have engineered. This conversation tells the whole story, including the emotional commitment and inspired in her and the profound meaning that comes from authentic community. Most of us try to control and organize our lives.

And what's fascinating about this conversation is how meaningful someone's life becomes when she stops trying to control her life and starts receiving it.

Laura, you have been a part of the Wellspring community in several different ways. You first went through a group, what, '20, what year was that?

That would have been 2009.

Yeah. And now you you fast forward, you are a member of the staff and you're talk a little bit about what your responsibilities have been and how long you've been on on the team.

Sure. I joined Wellspring in 2019, and I came on to help support our research project on understanding how to reach the next generation. And my job has evolved and grown and I am now the director of research and development. So I really enjoy talking to people like all of you and learning about your needs, how you've been growing with the Lord and how they can come alongside you.

Yeah, and say something about your family as well.

Oh my goodness. All right, John and I have been married for nineteen years and we moved to Missouri about five years ago when he had a job offer out here and we have four children. Our oldest just turned 13 on Friday and our youngest is five.

That is an exciting household. There's no question. Yeah. I don't know how you make time for it all, but it seems like you're a part of Wellspring for fifty hours a week, and then there's you have some sort of time machine or something to make to make it all fit in. Have to when we have our productivity webinar, you can you can show us how how that's done.

But that's not our focus today. We're here to really talk about how your heart has been impacted by Wellspring and how that's hit your domain. I wonder if you could start us off by we could go back to a a certain point in time to Easter of twenty twenty one. Yes. Tell us about what was significant on that day.

On Easter of twenty twenty one, we had been living in our town for about nine months. As you recall, there was this little thing called a pandemic and everything pretty much shut down out here in the Midwest. And so that meant churches weren't really meeting and we wanted to do something special with our children. We had a pound cake and some grape juice that we were like, we'll take communion, but we really want to find this spot to watch the sun come up and have our own sunrise service. So we went to a local park early in the morning, and we stood out there.

We read scripture and we were singing worship songs. As we were coming down off of this mountain, a young girl stopped us and she said, You must be Christians. I immediately didn't do probably the kindest thing, but I was thinking about the children. It's early. I let my husband take charge.

He met them. He said, Yes, we love Jesus. And she said, We love Jesus. John asked, What are y'all doing for Easter? And they didn't have plans.

They are transplants here from Alabama, so we both have that in common. And so he gave them our address, invited them over, and they ended up coming to Easter lunch and kind of joining our community that we were slowly starting to grow into.

And in the moment when that happened, mentioned you didn't really take the initiative. You let John take the initiative. When John offered lunch for them to come for lunch, how feel did about that?

There was this mixture of emotions. So it's very much consistent with our heart. We want to have our home open to anyone and we want to be warm and inviting and to show the love of Jesus to people that cross our paths. And also, I felt like I don't really have the time and the energy, not sure we've got all the food. And I was very in that moment, small minded in terms of the immediate needs, getting the children home.

Yes, this is consistent with our values, who we are, my spiritual gifting. Since I was a kid, it's been off the chart in hospitality. I know these things rationally. In the moment, I just wanted to get in the car and go home.

Right. And so that's understandable. I can imagine myself in the same mindset. Like, it's Easter. I'd rather not go to the grocery store.

I don't know these people. I wanna spend time with my family. So there's there's definitely that that tension there. And yet you went along with it. What was the outcome of the day?

Like, how did how did the day end end up post lunch? Your guests, your new friends have departed? What were you thinking? What was going on at that time?

There was definitely satisfaction and this fullness of having people that we had never even heard of a few hours before come into our home and to bond with that common connection of Jesus. I'm surprised that I felt energized. And rather than depleted or having given to myself, there was definitely a gift of connection that it only comes from God.

What desire did that touch? That energizing seems to signify something.

For sure.

What desire did it hit?

It definitely hit a desire for purpose and for impact and family. It was sweet given that they're transplants from Alabama. They don't have anyone here. And so to be able to bring them in, to minister to them and to feel that connection definitely felt like meeting the need of home almost.

And where did it go? You said goodbye to your new friends. Did this touching this desire and having these new friends, where did it go? And what was the next step there?

Well, we realized that God was doing something and the next logical thing for us was, well, how about come back next Sunday? How about come have lunch with us next Sunday and we'll maybe go to church together and try out. There was a church that was meeting outdoors, so maybe we'll try that out and then we can eat together. And so what formed was this friendship over Sunday lunch and we began to meet together. We began to study scripture together.

At one point when my friend was leaving, she wrote a little note and stuck it on my fridge. That was such a sweet moment of encouragement and feeling seen by God and just affirmed that, Hey, God's up to something and we did not understand the fullness of it, but it was like, This is special. And So we kept saying yes to opening our home and our dinner table up to them.

So you opened your own home, did you maintain the same two people or did it So

about a year into it, so 2022, my friend and I were sitting at the table and she said, I believe God's saying it's time to open our doors. What's funny was it's mine and John's home. And she's referring to mine and John's door. But there was such a confidence and a boldness like God's saying it's time. Like there's more seats at these tables.

Who else are we going to ask? And so what we didn't know was that there was a young mom and her husband at our church on the opposite side of the church, and she was crying out to God, Please, please bring people into my life that will come around us. And they were in a very tense place in their relationship and desperately needed people to come around them. And I ended up going to the Asbury outpouring soon after that and the word got around at church. And so another mom came up to me and she said, I want to talk to you about what you experienced.

If the Trinity is made up of three, what about this Holy Spirit piece and why does no one talk about it? So we had this young mom who was really going through a tough place in her marriage and then this other young mom who was eager to learn about the fullness of God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And they both came to me and they said, We want to spend time with you. And so as I talked with them, God began to press on my heart, You need to bring your mountaintop friend with you into this conversation. Like, this is this is part of what opening the doors looks like.

Wow. What a like an unexpected, like, it's it's there's nothing to it that seems like a plan. No. It's like you you sat there and said, I would like to start a open Sunday lunch for people. There's none of that.

It's all just things are coming in to to your life that you're receiving. And I wonder, we're all here with folks who've been through the battle for the heart, part of the Wellspring community. For all of us, there's some sort of longing that brought us to Wellspring to begin with. What, if anything, from this do you see that you could trace back to that first experience in 2009? How does that touch any logging that was in that era?

When I came through Battle in 2009, I was not convinced that I needed it. I came to honor my husband who had been asking me to go and they were developing a women's track. And so I wasn't aware of desires or that I needed anything at all beyond what I had received from my upbringing, growing up in a Christian home, Christian parents, trusting Jesus since I could remember. And what I painfully discovered through battle was that I had built a still fortress around my heart and no one could get in. And most of all, there were places that God couldn't touch and that because of that, I couldn't experience the fullness of God.

And so in 2009, I was very much what we call shut down and very disconnected that I had needs, that I had desires. I can remember before John and I got married, I was very much on the path of logistical wedding planning, get the things done and somebody stopped me and they're like, You know you're not like a robot, right? You have flesh and blood, you're human. And that upset me. I did not want to own that.

That feels messy. That feels like I don't want anything to do with it. And so Laura that opened her door to all these strangers and have bought countless groceries over the years compared to 2009, Laura, is vastly different.

And that is that's a Laura who embraces a mess versus Laura who controls what's going on in her life and make sure that it it's perfect. How how did that unfold? Like, have you how have you seen that prior to the the the mountaintop experience of Easter twenty twenty one? How have you seen that?

I wish I could say that it was a smooth, linear, quick process. But when I came through in 2009, I was working on my doctorate. And so there was a lot that took precedence and then I started having children. And John and I grew our family. And so for many years, I was not in this world of seeking to live from an integrated heart connected my feelings and my thoughts, desires, choices to God, much less to others.

And there was this lull. And one of the things that I love about God's heart is that that time was not wasted. He was doing things, he was pursuing. And one of the things that I look back and I love about that time is that there was this tenderizing and also this breaking. That when I got to twenty eighteen, I realized something is not working.

I feel like I'm at the end of myself and all I can cry out is, Lord, help. Lord, help. And shortly after that time, someone reached out to me, probably Dana, thank you, and asked if I wanted to facilitate a group. And so February later from first battle, I get brought back into the folds and realize God's at work, I want to pay attention. And there was this posture of readiness to do whatever it took to get messy, to surrender.

And God, I'm not sure how he brought it into being, but placed me on staff. And Nathan, when I look back, that was the moment where I truly came to a point of feeling fed up with everyone else and pointing my finger at everyone else. And then after being on staff a year, year and a half, God so kindly stopped me and so firmly yet lovingly said, I want you to take a look at yourself. And I realized, woah, you have my attention God, and there have been things because of my unwillingness to fully surrender to you, because of my rigid thinking that everyone else is the problem, that I have not paid attention to the places where you're pursuing me and where you need to do some cleanup.

It sounds like you're describing a process of surrender, letting go of control, and and the the beauty that comes out of that is the unexpected.

The the

this group of friends that you have somewhat spontaneously built over the last few years. You talked a lot about the formation of it in 2021, 2022. What's the latest with that group? How has it matured? What's going on with it today?

At the start of this year, I realized God's putting a burden on my heart for these women to go deeper with Him and to almost level up in a way. And so we began talking about doing this women's retreat and we decided that we were going to set aside a weekend, which happened about a month ago. And in that time, my only request of them was that they would come, leave everything else behind, and that they would commit to twenty four hours with me and my mom and one of our close friends for the purpose of seeking God together and going where he wanted to go. And during that time on worship Saturday morning, God and I, we've been going back and forth around if I'm willing to lay down my dignity. And that's harder than I realized.

And so in that moment of worship Saturday morning, I'm sitting there dignified, of course, and I sense God saying, Get on your knees. I'm like, Okay, I can do that. And then I felt this almost physical ache in my heart and it was like he said, Cry. And I'm thinking, I need questions answered. What am I crying about?

What's happening? Where are we going? What are we going to do after this? I've got my loose schedule and I'm not really clear on the end outcome. And It was like that was all he gave me.

As I laid on the floor weeping, my body shaking, it was like Jesus was there and I sensed his hunger, his heart for these women, but he could not get close to them. Then I got overwhelmed with this hunger as well. Jesus wants to be in your life. He wants to come alongside you and be your friend. And I stood up and I said, There are some of you who are holding Jesus at arm's length and until we clear this up, nothing we else to do.

We have to deal with what's keeping you from Jesus and the things that you're holding back from Him. Two of the women said, I have felt so disconnected from God for the past six months, and I don't know what to do. It led into this beautiful time of fighting for the souls of my sisters and coming alongside them, praying with them, walking with them through forgiveness. There was a lot of unforgiveness that they didn't realize had been lying dormant in their hearts. And so we went with where God was going and we did the detour and it has been beautiful to see the fruit of that and to see their hearts reignited for God and to witness the ripple effects as Jesus is becoming central to every part of them, how they are then ministering to others.

I get calls at like ten at night, you're not going to believe this, Laura. You won't believe who God brought into my path, like a complete stranger. It's been a while.

What what an awe inspiring story. I can't personally imagine weeping on my knees in in front of people that aren't well, in front of anybody, actually. That the courage that goes with that is just astounding. I think about the Wellspring ability to create authentic community, and it's all about it's all based on vulnerability. And the way that we achieve vulnerability is by leading with ourselves.

And you've created you've modeled vulnerable community for these women that are experiencing the depth of something that they probably haven't witnessed before. That's really incredible. So for those of the rest of you, if there are questions bubbling up, you can take yourself off mute and, feel free to to chime in. Or if you prefer, you can type it in the chat, and we'll have Laura address your question. The last question I'll ask you, Laura, is for those of us who are drawn to your story of building authentic, vulnerable community on the fly without a curriculum, what would you counsel?

What what would you suggest that that we take from your experience?

Two of the things that stand out to me about what God has given me through this gift of Wellspring is one, learning how to be fully present with people and to be all in when I'm with people, listening. And then the second piece of that is listening in three directions. We're listening for what people are sharing with us, but we're also listening to the heart of God and what is he speaking through his spirit. And I did not do so while listening on the mountaintop and thank God John was being fully present and listening. And so we had that connection with our first group of friends.

But I think about Nathan being on the floor, just interceding and drawing a line in the sand saying, Today we fight and we're not leaving here until you experience freedom. And so a big piece of that was moving where God's spirit was moving. Saying, okay, you have my attention, I'm going with you.

That's awesome. That's amazing. You for What sharing your

kind of feelings were kind of, what would capture that kind of, I guess surrender? What were the feelings that were generated for you then?

During that retreat?

Yeah, and when like, you know, we're not going anywhere until the spirit breaks this logjam or whatever.

I felt so fierce and on fire and energized and truly, and this is something God's been teaching me throughout 2025 about the fear of God. Truly, that was the only thing on my mind. Like, I'm not afraid of any person in this room, but the fear, the holy fear of God is driving me to come after the things that are keeping him and you from like full connection. And it was kind of funny, my friend, she's a powerhouse and she was one of the women we were ministering to. She goes, Laura, I love when you yell at me.

I was like, I'm not yelling, but

for me

to speak firmly, it got the point across. We're not going anywhere.

Oh my goodness. So is that characteristic then of you?

It is something that I'm realizing is inside of me to be a fierce warrior. One of the things Chuck, that I have tried to temper down and tried to be what I thought was what Southern Alabama Laura needed to be, a good Southern Christian girl. And God's showing me, and it started in 2003, Laura, you are a courageous woman of faith, full of the fear of God and nothing will stop you. And I'm like, okay, like I'm getting glimpses of that and I am on board.

Cool. Wow, that's quite exciting to see the Lord Jesus ignite you like that. That's really fun to see. I probably would have imagined you much more stoic, like you described your sort of proper framework of act, attitude, and manner of living in groups, so good for you. Bless your heart.

Nice work. Nice work for Jesus to have broken through for you.

He is so gracious and kind.

Yes. That's wonderful.

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