FOREWORD

You can lose your rhinestones, and it can feel like someone just lifted a millstone that’s been breaking your neck.

Yeah —lose a rhinestone or two and you lose the rock that’s been weighing you down.

Kristen Welch turns a corner in her life and finds her face right up against what she never expected: Was Jesus an accessory to her life? Or the only thing necessary?

This is a story of one woman, one mom, who decided to simply say yes to doing the next thing in front of her —and discovered the startling truth:

Small Yeses to the Next Thing translate to Huge Yeses and New Things in the Kingdom of God.

Changing the world started with changing her words. Instead of saying, “No, I could never do that” she started saying, “Yes, God could even do that —through even me.”

It wasn’t that she thought she was a woman who could really do something big —but that she really believed God could do anything big with anyone willing.

Kristen and I have sat together several times. I’ve leaned forward to hear the heartbeat of Jesus in her quiet words. I’ve heard the tremble in her voice. I’ve listened to her honest laugh, her understated, brazen vulnerability. I’ve watched her face tell this story —the story of deciding that she didn’t want her life to be about just getting by, just getting through. That’s the thing: they say that life’s just about putting one step in front of the other. But the real truth is, sometimes there is no way through anymore, no more just taking one step in front of the other. Sometimes the only way through is by taking wild leaps of faith.

I’ve been captivated by just that in Kristen’s life. There’s nothing like it —to witness the raw beauty of a woman who really lives into the fullness of wild faith. There is no really living without really saying yes. Without really taking one step that is actually a leap.

There comes a moment in every woman’s life when something she was tightly holding on to —just slips from her hands. Sometimes it’s a dream. Sometimes it’s a place . . . a person . . . a purpose. Sometimes it’s the life you always thought you’d be living.

And you find yourself standing in front of the mirror, realizing that the faith you’ve been pulling on every day doesn’t seem to be enough.

What happens when you look yourself right in the eye and realize, I’m not living like just Jesus is enough for me.

What happens when you realize that, really? You actually want a lot more than just Jesus.

That’s the moment when the rhinestone falls, clatters, across the floor.

That’s the moment you find yourself invited into endless diamond fields of real faith.

The actual Kingdom of God.

This book in your hands is your invitation to The Real More.

So the whole Body of Christ could look into the mirror and see it right there in the eyes, in all of our eyes . . .

a shimmer that is genuine Jesus.

Ann Voskamp

Board member for Mercy House Kenya; author of the New York Times bestsellers One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are and The Greatest Gift