Hi, friend! Welcome to Kelsey Lee Writes! I’m Kelsey Lee, and I’m so glad you stopped by my little corner of the internet!
Here’s the short story:
I live in Oregon, work by day at a daycare, teach parenting classes by night, and serve in my local church’s children’s ministry. In my free time, you’ll find me playing music, reading a good book, or getting coffee at my favorite local coffee shop. I love cozy, rainy days where I can write to the sound of the rain’s pitter patter, and I love sunny days where I can take walks with my family. I love getting to work with children and pour into their lives both at work and church.
Most of all I love my Savior, Jesus Christ. I’m passionate about living for Him with my whole heart. I cannot truly love the Lord with only part of me. If I’m going to serve Him, I’m going to serve Him with all of me. It’s a life-long lesson of learning to live wholeheartedly for Christ.
Here at Kelsey Lee Writes LLC, my blog, podcast, fiction and nonfiction books, and PDF resources are all here to encourage you in your walk with the Lord. We are walking this narrow road together. I’d love for you to join me in learning how to love the Lord with my whole life. Here at Kelsey Lee Writes I’m writing about what God is teaching me in my life. I’m far from perfect and have so much to learn! But God is faithful, and He keeps teaching me and pointing me back to Him.
If you want to keep up with all things Kelsey Lee Writes, please subscribe to my monthly newsletter, and as a thank-you, I’ll send you a free copy of my 3-day devotional, All In!
I pray you are encouraged and strengthened in your faith as you read!
The long story:
I started this blog when I was seventeen as an outlet to share my writing and the lessons God was teaching me through my time in the Word. My only readers were my family, and I thought my blog might stay that way forever. But God had other plans.
In 2019, I published my first book, Third Identity, a mystery-suspense novel for young teens. This quickly turned into a trilogy of books about three friends, Sarah, Rebecca, and Luke, working together to overcome their own inner turmoil and fight against an evil take-over operation. (Psst! The Truth Squad Trilogy is available in paperback, e-book, and audiobook formats! Check it out here!) Oh… and did I mention I published all three books while going to college? (Yeah, that was kind of crazy.)
I attended Corban University and majored in counseling psychology, while getting a minor in Biblical studies and a minor in writing. I fully planned to go on and get my master’s degree and become a licensed therapist and just do writing as a side hobby. But God had other plans!
My Bible class for my first semester at Corban was called Bible Study Methods. It was a class about inductive Bible study. I went into that class thinking this was going to be easy because I already knew how to study the Bible inductively thanks to having done Bible Bee growing up (check out this blog post about lessons from my time in Bible Bee!). However, God really humbled me. My professor pushed me in this class and did not let me take it easy! Each class, we would dive deep into a hard to understand or controversial passage of Scripture, getting me out of my comfort zone. We had a lot of after-class discussions about what we were learning, and my professor really pushed me to dig into the Word, not just with my mind but to let what I was learning instruct how I lived. At the end of the class, we turned in a final paper in which we dug deep into a passage of scripture. My passage was Ephesians 2:1-10. When I got the graded paper back, my professor wrote on the page, “You have been given a gift. What are you going to do about it?” I could not stop thinking about that note. That question just nagged me all four years at Corban.
Fast forward to my senior year of undergrad.
I was spending a lot of time wrestling with what I was going to do after college. My plan had been to get my master’s in counseling unless I got married, but I came to this place where I realized I was trying to prove my worth by doing well academically. I had unknowingly put this pressure on myself to get a master’s simply to prove that I could do it and that I was smart. But once the Lord opened my eyes to that, I suddenly was faced with this dilemma, realizing that I could go on to get my masters, but I didn’t have to. I did not need to prove my worth to anyone by getting more education. I wrestled and wrestled with this question of what to do after college.
My senior year, I took a class called Theology of Ministry. I was again blessed with a professor who poured into me and answered my many questions about my ministry at church that I had been really struggling with at the time. That class really challenged me in a good way as well. One thing he said at the start of class was that we need to have a theology for every aspect of life. We need to know what we believe and why we believe it for all of life, from what we believe about who God is to what we believe about finances, technology use, relationships, etc. If it’s a part of life, we need to know what the Bible says about it and live from that theological understanding. Theology isn’t meant to just be head knowledge; good theology should always lead to godly living.
Now, guess who was also taking this Theology of Ministry class? My professor from Bible Study Methods! After class one day, I told him that I could not stop thinking about the note he’d written on my final paper in Bible Study Methods. I mentioned that I was getting a major in counseling and minoring both in Biblical studies and writing, and I just wasn’t sure what all God was going to do with those three things that felt so different at the time. He encouraged me to keep wrestling with this question, and in that discussion, I just felt the Lord impress on my heart: write a devotional.
The reason this is significant is because I had said for years that I would never write a devotional. I had tried to start one when I was in high school after I’d been blogging for a while, but when I sat down to write I had nothing to say. I didn’t have any huge life experiences to draw from for good anecdotes and I just decided I was never going to try that again. So, when that thought popped into my mind during that discussion, I knew I needed to take it seriously because it was not something I naturally would have gravitated toward.
After lots of prayer, I felt peace and assurance that this was something the Lord was asking me to do, and that is what I focused on post-graduation. Many people asked me when I was going to get my master’s in counseling, and I would just say that the Lord asked me to write a devotional and then I would go from there.
As I finished writing that devotional (which will be coming soon!), the Lord started burdening my heart for my generation. My mind kept returning to Mark 6:34 (NASB95):
“When Jesus went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and He felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things.”
I looked around at Gen-Z and saw that this verse so accurately described us. We are sheep without a shepherd, and the Lord was filling me with compassion for Gen-Z. I heard so many people just bashing our generation, yet what I saw was a generation hungry for something beyond ourselves. Hungry for something real, for a life that matters, for faith that was more than just nice platitudes but a faith that was active in the world around us.
My mind kept returning to the thought, “we need a theology for every aspect of life.” Gen-Z is an overall Biblically illiterate generation. If we don’t have good theology, we will either not do anything for the kingdom or we will live out of what sounds good and get “carried about by every wind of doctrine” as Ephesians 4 warns against.
By the time I was done working on my devotional, my heart was just so burdened for our generation to grow in our theological understanding that I knew the Lord was calling me to write again, this time a book about why theology matters to my generation.
But as I looked at all the things I wanted to write about I was like, this is way too much for one book! How can I narrow this down? So, I prayed and prayed about starting a podcast, another thing that I said I was not going to do because I’m not a good talker. But through a lot of prayer and wrestling with God (and sometimes fighting God because I was really afraid to lean into starting a ministry), I surrendered to God, saying, wherever you want me to go, whatever you want me to do, I’ll do, even if it’s going into ministry through writing and podcasting.
I had told God years ago as a teenager, wherever you send me I’ll go, and this is where He sent me: launching Kelsey Lee Writes LLC in 2024 as an official ministry of writing and podcasting. This is not what I planned and I’m still figuring everything out, but I know that where God leads, He will provide.
There is so much studying and praying going on for this ministry. And I would so appreciate your prayers on behalf of this ministry as I get started. I pray that God will be glorified through my words, no matter how many or how few people hear or read them. My prayer is that this ministry will lift His name high and that He will get all the glory and praise through Kelsey Lee Writes LLC.
If you want to stay up-to-date with the ministry and get a free copy of All In, my 3-day devotional based off the Truth Squad Trilogy, subscribe to my monthly author newsletter here!
Thanks for sticking through to the end of the long story, friend! 🙂 I pray you are blessed by your time here!
With love,
Kelsey