FRIEND FRIDAY | CYNDI BEASLEY

Friends! Allow me the absolute pleasure of sharing my friend, Cyndi, with you! She is one of my favorite people on the planet. She brings laughter, joy, sass, and so much friendship to this community, world, and to me!

There is so much I could say about this beautiful friend of mine but one of the things that has impacted me most in our friendship is her big ole giving heart.

She has never shied away from taking on an opportunity to be the hands and feet to someone who needs it. She has taught me how to give with a cheerful heart! I have loved watching as God has written the most beautiful story with her.

Enjoy reading about my friend, Cyndi!

Hello Sunshines! My name is Cyndi Beasley. I am a daughter of a King. I am Forgiven. I am Redeemed. I now live to love others as Jesus has so graciously loved me. I love all things sunshine, yellow and light!

Man, I love that I can now breathe all of that into my life, and sing a new song every day, but you know it hasn’t always been this way, actually it has just been this way for the past five years… and so let me share how I got here.

My mom was fifteen when she gave birth to me, she had respectfully decided that she was going to give me up for adoption. My mom’s home life was dark, sad, and bleak. Her biological father committed suicide when she was young, her mother ran away from their family, and my mom was now left to live with her brother and older sisters and stepdad. Not a good place for a baby to come into.

My mom’s stepdad told the nursing staff to whisk me away, but when he had left the hospital to run an errand a nurse came in and asked my mom if she wanted to see her baby, my mom said “yes,” and there my mom decided to keep me.

My first five years of life we moved from place to place, my mom had multiple relationships, and there was just a lot of uncertainty and instability in my life when I was very young. I felt almost like an orphan at times, not prayed for, not hoped for and not cared intentionally for, just survival.

My mom got married to my stepdad when I was seven, I felt like maybe things were going to get better for us. Through their marriage I have two little brothers Alec and Dylan. My stepdad came from the Mormon religion, so eventually we became Mormon during that time. I don’t ever really remember learning about Jesus being a Mormon. I just remembered that I could never say, look, or act the way that the people at church want to me to be. On the outside my stepdad seem like a great guy. But on the inside he had a lot of secrets and dark places. When I was ten my stepdad sexually abused me. I did not tell anybody about this for many, many years. Shortly after this, my parents separated and it was just my mom, and us three kids.

Growing up without a good father figure, with a single mom suffering from an undiagnosed mental disorder and the free reign to do whatever I wanted when I wanted to lead to me being completely obsessed with finding “love.” I was very insecure, would hop from relationship to relationship and just felt empty inside. In my teenage years I attended Young Life and I quickly started being intrigued about the faith they were sharing. I did accept Christ as my Lord and Savior at that time, but I can honestly say that nothing really changed in my life. I still talked, looked and acted like the rest of the world, if not worse at times.

When I was in my early twenties I met my husband Rich Beasley. Rich was so handsome, humble, kind and giving. One of the things that attracted me to Rich the most was that he flew 1-2 times a month to be with his daughter Sydney who lived In Texas. He also had a great relationship with his ex-wife Stephanie and her husband Tony. And to really put the icing on the cake, Rich considered himself to have a bonus daughter Taytum, who is Stephanie and Tony’s little girl. (Hopefully I didn’t lose you with all of that awesomeness!)

Although I had never seen or heard of anyone having this good of a relationship with their ex-spouse I admired it and thought it was so inspiring how the three of them were raising the girls so well. I eventually met the whole family and fell head over heels in love with all of them and I named us the BB Crew, The Beasley-Buford Crew that is!

Another thing I loved about Rich is that he loved God, Rich and I attended church and I loved being there. It really taught me so much about the bible and I fell in love with worship. In this season of finding what faith was all about I had developed anxiety and panic attacks from having an anaphylactic reaction to a medication. Nothing I was doing was helping, so I went to see my pastor and there he shared scripture with me and prayed over me. I would cling to the scriptures and pray to be released of this trial.

Simultaneously God was gutting me of all the things from my past that I just could not let go of and that were truly eating me alive. I remember thinking this is so physically and emotionally painful to deal with, am I going to be stuck like this forever? Now I know that this was God’s way of changing my heart and drawing me close to Him. Two of the biggest triumphs in this season was to reconcile my relationship with my biological father, and start building a relationship with him, and to tell my stepdad I forgave him for what he had done to me.

Rich and I dated for a couple years and got married in 2009. Shortly after, the economy plummeted in Las Vegas where we lived, Rich lost his business and we nearly lost everything that we had. I started to work at a popular local bar that I made good money at, the only problem was that I was letting it start to run my life.

It really played a toll on mine and Rich’s relationship. Through this confusing time I decided that I wasn’t cut out for this marriage thing that the grass was definitely going to be greener on the other side. I started engaging in an affair with a customer at work. I moved out of our home, and got my own place.

Looking back I know that sin took me to places that I never wanted to be in and convinced me that God did not love me. During this time, Rich would call and text me. He would share scripture with me and prayers that God had put on his heart. He knew exactly what I was doing and he still was fighting for me. After a series of events, my husband shared with me that even though he wanted to turn his back on me, God kept telling him, "do not leave her side, as I have never given up on you, do not give up on her".

One day after working a shift at the bar and a heart to heart with my manager, I quit my job. I went back to my condo and I called Rich and I asked him if I could come home. Without hesitation, he said ‘come home’. This simple phrase ‘come home’ changed my life forever.

Not only did my husband say it to me, but that is what my Father in heaven has been saying to me all along ‘come home my daughter, I love you, you are mine, you are enough and you are worth so much more than what you have been living.” This is what I call Redeeming Love.

When I returned home, we very quickly realized we needed to get out of the environment that we had been in for a great majority of our lives. We knew that God did not want us to stay in Las Vegas any longer.

Out of complete obedience to God, with much, much prayer, and several miracles that had to take place at the exact time we needed them to Rich and I were able to uproot our lives to Frisco, Texas.

Just over one month from the day that we moved here, our daughter Chaelan Sunshine was born into our family. Although things were not easy between Rich and me, I felt in my heart that her life represented a new beginning. I was so happy to be a mommy, but I was still so guilt ridden and shameful for what I had done to my husband, and to our family. At this time things were still strained with the BB Crew, I hadn’t seen them in a long time, I hurt them in the process of my sin. I remember going on walks through our neighborhood holding Chae and just sobbing and asking for forgiveness and for our hearts to be mended back together.

I knew that God was with me in this time, even though I was sad I knew that there was a light at the end of the tunnel and that I had to just cling to Him for the strength to get through it.

After just a few short months of living in Texas, we all were reunited on Fathers Day, everyone was so kind and loving to myself and Chaelan and it felt incredibly good to be back together with them. In the past five years our blended family has become stronger than we ever were before. Not only did God answer my prayer of a reconciliation but He redeemed our family dynamic and made this beautiful bond between all of us.

Chaelan cannot love her sisters and Auntie Steffie and Uncle Tony more, we get to spend Graduation trips in Cancun together, dance shows cheering together, and Sunday afternoons eating BBQ and playing board games together when we can.

THIS is the family God had planned for me, THIS is His beautiful masterpiece.

Also, in just a month of being here we found our church home Preston Trail Community Church, for the first time in my life I felt like I could be who I was, honest and open about my past, my sin, my hurts and that God and His people still were going to love me and accept me. I found the world’s greatest friends who hold me accountable, I have got to serve my church in multiple ways, and I have been able to help others do the same.

Although God has redeemed so much in my life about a year in a half ago my mom was having a psychotic breakdown. She had not had one since she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder ten years prior. It completely rocked my world and threw me into a tizzy where everything I felt like I had overcome was all of a sudden right back at the forefront of my life just consuming me. My life breathing friend Terra and her mom J’net prayed bold prayers over me. Terra proclaimed in the next year I would experience victory and freedom over my life like never before. Even though I didn’t want to recognize it, I still had junk that I had not fully dealt with. Feeling like an orphan throughout my life, abandonment issues, and sexual sin, etc.

Through the process of preparing to share my testimony with a few hundred people at our Mops group this past March it made me really have to work through and deal with the stuff that was buried deep in my soul. I would work on it little by little because it was difficult for me to see the words on paper of what my life had looked like. It was hard but so worth it. As I stood on stage and shared I knew that everything I had been through to get to that moment God had prepared a pathway for. There was a release of a new found freedom that day for myself and I hope for others.

In true God-fashion our Mops theme this year was “Free Indeed” and that is EXACTLY what I experienced. To mark this beautiful moment in my life I decided to get the Mops Free Indeed birds flying on my wrist, and also decided to get a cross on my finger. Now when people ask about the tattoos I get to share with them that the birds exemplify “freedom” and at the cross of Jesus is where freedom is found.

“So if the SON sets you FREE, you will be FREE INDEED.” John 8:36

Thank you for letting me share my Freedom journey with you, if anything I shared spoke to you and you would like prayer or a further conversation I would love to connect with you. For You Were Once Darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord. Live as children of light. Ephesians 5:8

Let His Light Shine Through You My Darling.

#friendfriday