ABOUT 

I was always a creative kid – the one who asked all the questions and never sat still and did all the activities. And somewhere along the way, that hyperactive do-er became a story-telling dreamer, one who after earning my Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee, longed to be a writer; to someday tell meaningful stories that changed people’s lives. I never imagined the first story I’d share with the world would be of my own tragedy, one I never saw coming.

After meeting and marrying my husband Ben in 2017, I was suddenly and traumatically widowed at age 28 when he suffered a severe brain injury just three weeks before our first wedding anniversary. As I grieved and grappled with the magnitude of loss and heartbreak I’d never experienced before, I began frantically journaling to help process my grief, my fears, and my life-long faith that felt a lot like it had let me down. But as our good God does, he took the greatest devastation of my life and birthed from it a decades’ long dream – my first book, Lemons on Friday: Trusting God Through My Greatest Heartbreak. Now, I’m thrilled to share not just my memoir in Lemons, but also the daily resource I longed for in the early days of my grief, Through the Valley of Grief: A 365 Day Devotional of Spiritual Practices for Hope in Suffering.
 
Over these past years of grief and questions, healing and beautiful redemption, what I know with more certainty than ever before is that pain and joy DO coexist. Brokenness and beauty are so unfortunately yet mercifully intertwined. Even in my darkest hours, it was up to me to courageously choose to see joy in the world around me. And that’s where you can find me most of the time – chasing joy on my own podcast, In-Joy Life!

Because here’s the thing - life is tough and it can leave us feeling pretty broken at times. But you don’t have to LIVE broken. You can intentionally choose joy even when life has knocked you down. No matter the hurt you’ve experienced or what unknowns may lie ahead, there IS joy waiting for you - right here, right now. And I’m here to help you find it.

Mattie lives in Nashville, TN with her husband, Connor, and beloved yellow lab, Ryman.