Kayla Stoecklein - Rebuilding Beautiful: Welcome What Is, Dare to Dream Again, and Step Bravely into What Could Be

PRAISE FOR REBUILDING BEAUTIFUL

Rebuilding Beautiful takes you on a journey of compassion and hope that helps you pick up the broken pieces in your life and put them back together. Its filled with hard-earned wisdom and life-giving inspiration that encourages you to seize the season that God has given you and find joy along the way.

B RITTANY P RICE B ROOKER , MOM , WIFE , WIDOW , COMMUNICATOR , CHAOS COORDINATOR , SPEAKER , BLOGGER , SINGER - SONGWRITER

Kayla has been a friend of mine for a long time, and she is equal parts kind, sensitive, and absolutely ferocious. She loves God and her family passionately and has written another beautiful book. It is a kind and hopeful invitation to us to warm our hands by the embers of whatever may have felt like it burned down in our lives.

B OB G OFF , N EW Y ORK T IMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR AND C HIEF B ALLOON I NFLATOR AT L OVE D OES

Rebuilding Beautiful is a tender, tenacious, and at times painfully vulnerable invitation for us to dare to dream again when life has cast us on the shores of devastation. Kaylas eloquent words are seasoned and tempered by her own encounters with loss. You will find her a faithful guide during seasons of pain and loss. Each chapter is a dose of courage to help you get up, put one foot in front of the other, and walk forward in hope while honoring the painful lessons of the past.

L ISA B EVERE , N EW Y ORK T IMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

Rebuilding Beautiful is a compelling message of resilience. A road map of hope for anyone who has ever wondered how to begin again when it feels as though life has led them to a dead end. It will inspire you to embrace your pain as a pathway to a new kind of beautiful life.

E D M YLETT , GLOBAL SPEAKER , BESTSELLING AUTHOR , AND HOST OF T OP -R ATED P ODCAST

What a gift Rebuilding Beautiful is to every heart that reads it! The love poured into every page directs the searching soul to comfort in God but also declares a battle cry of hope over the darkest seasons of loss. I love Kayla Stoecklein and the profound and practical way she shares truth. There is an anointing on her life to illuminate the faithfulness of Jesus in the midst of unimaginable loss. Kaylas transparency brings freedom and a radical perspective shift that the deeply painful journey of rebuilding a beautiful life is also hope-filled.

D AWN C HER W ILKERSON , LEAD COPASTOR , VOUS C HURCH , M IAMI , F LORIDA

Rebuilding Beautiful

2022 Kayla Stoecklein

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Nelson Books, an imprint of Thomas Nelson. Nelson Books and Thomas Nelson are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

Author is represented by Whitney Gossett of Content Capital, LLC dba, Capital Literary. PO Box 160114 Austin TX 78716

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation. Copyright 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Ministries, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version). Copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked T HE V OICE are taken from The Voice. Copyright 2012 by Ecclesia Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

Any internet addresses, phone numbers, or company or product information printed in this book are offered as a resource and are not intended in any way to be or to imply an endorsement by Thomas Nelson, nor does Thomas Nelson vouch for the existence, content, or services of these sites, phone numbers, companies, or products beyond the life of this book.

ISBN 978-1-4002-3421-9 (HC)

ISBN 978-1-4002-3433-2 (audiobook)

ISBN 978-1-4002-3432-5 (eBook)

Epub Edition AUGUST 2022 9781400234325

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022935878

Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook

Please note that the endnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication

To my boys,

We are rebuilding this life together.

I am so proud of us.

Love, Mom

If you cant fly then run,

if you cant run then walk,

if you cant walk then crawl,

but whatever you do

you have to keep moving forward.

M ARTIN L UTHER K ING J R

I step out of my car and stare at the small single-story home. Its bright red with white trim, just like a barn. The bottom half of the home is covered in layered brick with grey mortar oozing in every direction as if it is melting off the exterior. The cracked driveway curves around a large front yard filled with weeds and dirt. The home itself isnt beautiful, but its nestled into a charming, historic area of town known as College Park. A neighborhood with wide-open streets shaded by large mature trees and lovely homes dating all the way back to the early 1900s. It is wonderfully idyllic.

I close my eyes. I breathe in. Six months a widow, desperate for respite, chasing down a deep desire to stand on my own two feetand this place fits within my budget.

Yet, I want to run away from it all.

I feel like an alien in my own life. I want to go back to the warmth of my husbands arms, to the familiarity of a worn-in routine, to the comfort of shared responsibility and deep love, to a life that is safe and predictable. I want to run away from this new world and never look back.

My soul aches. How am I supposed to do this on my own? God, give me strength.

Nothing could have prepared me for this new life. My husband Andrews tragic suicide swiftly swept away every beautiful dream I had for what my life would be. The journey forward has been disorienting. In so many ways, Andrew was my home. So what does home look like here? How do I rebuild my life, my family, my future, my home without him? The questions swirl endlessly about my mind as I stand on the uncertain edge of something new. This red barn symbolizes so much more than a home. Its my first baby step toward rebuilding a new life on my own.