A business owner who faced a severe health scare says faith in God’s timing transformed her stress-filled life into something beautiful, allowing her to focus on her true passion.
Brooke Riley’s story includes prayer and a lot of hard work which resulted in a million-dollar home business.
Her faith in the Lord inspired her to launch Re-fabbed, a do-it-yourself craft blog.
Riley told CBN’s Prayer Link that she suffered a mini-stroke from anxiety and burnout at the age of 29 but realized it was God’s way of getting her attention.
“It was definitely my wake-up call saying things needed to change. I believe God works on your heart leading up to those moments,” she said. “You don’t necessarily see it but I know looking back that He had been prompting my heart in other ways and I was resistant.”
Doctors told Riley that the amount of stress she’d been under had taken a toll on her heart and it resembled that of an 80-year-old.
“Everything was just scary but it was the best thing that ever happened to me, looking back because it put me where I am today and I may have never taken that leap of faith if it hadn’t been for that,” she explained.
“I believe God gives all of us talents and passion and sometimes we tap into those and we can use them and sometimes we don’t. I’d always known I loved decorating. I’d always known I liked making things pretty … taking something from the thrift store and making it fit my decor, my home.”
Riley said the idea of being cost-conscious and decorating as a career was a “match made in heaven.”
“I’m so thankful God orchestrated that and let that happen the way it did.”
She encourages others to make a living by pursuing their God-given talents.
“A lot of times we want to downplay everything about ourselves. ‘Well I don’t have anything to offer’ or ‘I’m not good enough for this or that’ and we will push ourselves down and we will second guess everything that we’re good at,” Riley noted. “We won’t give it enough credit. But if you will truly look at your life and where God has blessed you and the things you are most excited about in your life and what He has given you talents to do, you will take those and say, ‘How can I share this with the world in a way that I can also provide for my family, that I can help, inspire, and that I can just make a difference for Jesus. The sky’s just the limit of what you can do,” she said.
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