By Kat Silverglate © 2025
I read her book -- Single-Handedly Blessed – the story of how God blessed her with a child in her singleness. We “met” briefly on a business call and connected on Facebook the way people do, not so much as ‘friends’ yet, but more in a mutual desire to stay connected. Every time I saw a post with her most incredible little girl, my heart warmed because I’d been given the back door pass faith-writers give to facts that illuminate God’s redemption in the dark. There was something about a glimpse into the vulnerability it took to hint at just how far God went to reach her in her wandering and hiding; the suffering behind the husband-prayer; the longing behind the child-prayer; something about the realness of the backstory that lit up the bridge between the depth of struggle and the height of redemption.
Pliny the Elder, a first century secular naturalist, is often credited with this quote about the necessity of glimpsing the depth of suffering in order to comprehend the vastness of the height to which one can be lifted out:
“The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach."
Pliny the Elder, First Century Naturalist
Exact measure? Aspire to reach? Her brutally humble confession in the forward to her book crashes the ceiling of Pliny’s seemingly high aspirational bar. Laura Starsoneck’s bigger story is a “beyond measure” soar through the limits we place on God’s power to redeem.
Laura is an only child raised by loving parents. At five years old, after her mother’s divorce and remarriage, she was adopted by the man she would call and still lovingly calls dad. When you ask about her first understanding of God’s love, she doesn’t hesitate.
“Having been through divorce, they both had a heart for people struggling through the trauma of separation and heartbreak, so they started a ministry at our church. At first, people came to our house for small groups. I watched them minister. Watched them love. More and more people found genuine healing there, so the ministry grew and multiplied. So much so that my dad left his job to go to seminary. He gave his life to counselling hurting people. My parents embodied God’s love in the way they served others.”
At six feet tall and a jock in high school, she went to college on a Basketball scholarship.
“I’m a doer, so once I set my sights on college ball, I was resourceful and determined and focused. With the help of a coach who mentored me along the way, I got it. Sports really framed much of my college experience. In my senior year, I heard a woman describe a master’s program at the University of Alabama aimed at certifying graduates as Child Life Specialists. When she explained their role in helping children through medical challenges – helping them prepare for tests, going with them to difficult procedures like chemotherapy and MRIs and surgeries, speaking at schools about what it’s like to have cancer as a child, helping kids with grief, I knew that was the direction I wanted to pursue. So, I got my master’s degree and started to work in an oncology ward with children.”
She loved her job but nothing prepared her for the amount of suffering she would see. For the emotional toll the job would take on her. For the grief.
“I was 23 years old, and I was walking kids through their last stages of life here on earth, watching children die, speaking at kids’ funerals, seeing really difficult things and learning to manage the complexities of a work environment at the same time.”
When the stress started to affect her, she exaggerated her symptoms and lied in an attempt to get leave. She lost her job.
“I look back now, and I wish I had called my parents right then and said, ‘hey, I screwed up. I need help.’ I could have had all the support I wanted but I thought I was strong enough on my own. I wasn’t. So, I hid. I am a living testament to the snowball of a lie. One lie leading to another and another and before you know it, the way out feels impossible.”
She met a loving family through church who lavished her with the kind of love she and others at the hospital were giving to those sick kids. The unconditional let-me-scoop-you-up and take care of your every need kind of love.
“The wife was one of those people who loves in such a way that makes you wanna say – can you just be my sister! I don’t know why I let them believe I had a serious illness, but I did. And once it started, it was like a snowball, it started rolling out of control. They were so incredibly good to me. They loved me like Jesus loves. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand why I let it happen. I don’t know if it was being so totally depleted from my job or seeing that kind of care for sick kids for a sustained period of time with no release for my own grief, or something else. All I know is, once that kind of attention was offered to me, I felt like I needed it like air.”
The weight of carrying the lie started to make her sick. Physically ill. She went down to 110 pounds [at 6’ tall], had multiple procedures/surgeries for things that were suddenly imploding in her body – gallbladder, tonsils, colon. As David cries out in Psalm 32:3, “for when I kept silent, my bones wasted away.” She was living that verse.
Eventually, the family discovered the lie and asked her to leave.
“I understood but I was devastated because I loved them. I had nowhere to go because I hadn’t shared anything with my parents. So, I called a friend from college and asked if I could stay with her. When I told her what was going on she simply said, ‘I love you. Let’s get you some help.'”
After some counseling, she went to a L’Abri Christian mission in Canada for a few months where she worked and served. When another Christian family associated with the L’Abri community started to show her lavish love, she felt the need for that depth of affection the same way an alcoholic might crave a drink or an addict might crave a fix. So, the lie continued; only this time, when the family figured out what was going on, they chose to love her even more deeply. To see past the lie to the need inside a lost girl to find her way back to the Lord’s lavish affection. And they were going to do everything they could to set her up for an unbelievable redemption story.
“I remember about two weeks before they confronted me, I was lying in bed realizing that the weight of these lies and the toll they were taking on me and others was going to kill me eventually. I don’t think I was praying at the time. But I was certainly thinking about it deeply and desperate for a solution and God was listening and already at work behind the scenes.”
The director of the L’Abri center called the pastor of the church where she grew up and told him what was going on. The pastor called her parents. Together, her parents, the pastor, the L’Abri director and the family confronted Laura together with tremendous compassion.
Now, more than a decade later, Laura tells this part of the story through grateful, awestruck tears:
“It was such a good moment because it was like I had been waiting for this to happen for years. I had been waiting for someone to tell me they knew the truth and they still wanted me. Still loved me. The family said, ‘hey, we’ve taken care of everything. We bought a hotel room and plane ticket. We have a friend who will escort you to the hotel and fly home with you. Your pastor has gotten him a room in Baltimore and a ticket home. Your parents will be waiting for you when you arrive. There was zero condemnation in them. Zero. Only compassion and concern for my restoration. They acted like Jesus.”
When she arrived, her parents embraced her. In the car, her father put his hand on her knee, looked her in the eyes and said, “Laura, I don’t think I’ve ever loved you more than I do right now” and then he hugged her.
“I knew in that moment, I was gonna be OK.”
A wise counselor came in to make a plan to help the family move forward with intentional, methodical, thoughtful restoration. He advised Laura to go slow. Not to rush to make amends to every person who was affected by her sin. To focus on her relationship with God and her parents and restoration in those areas. Giving some distance from the events and the people she had hurt allowed her to start to heal. He told her that sooner rather than later, she needed to do something that prevented isolation. She needed to put her hands and heart to the task of serving others in some way. And she needed to get her physical health in order.
She started to walk then walk/run. She got a job serving at a homeless shelter. She started to attend Celebrate Recovery at her church, a program designed to help people face their hurts, addictions and hang-ups. She started to see her lies like any fix or behavior that attempts to gain what only God can give us – peace, acceptance, value, love. Listening to others who were doing this by various means helped her see that she suffered something common to mankind – the temptation to seek God where He can’t be found – in the affection and approval of others. The more time she spent with God, sorting through the reality of who He is and who He says she is to Him, the more peace invaded her space.
She started to make amends and to write letters to people she hurt. Some forgave quickly and easily. Some took time. Some didn’t respond. She did her best to do her part. When she isolated, she fell into patterns of “stinkin’ thinkin’” believing the lie that her past had ruined her future, that her past would dictate the kind of mother she’d be, the kind of friend, the kind of wife, the kind of daughter, the kind of employee. When she had the courage to fight isolation and surround herself with Godly influences, her thoughts turned to hope.
She worked her way through several promotions at the shelter eventually serving as the Program Administrator of Housing. When an opening came up for a position at Helping Up Mission Center for Women and Children in Baltimore – a Christian mission dedicated to helping people with addiction find their way to peace and wholeness -- she applied. She now serves as the Assistant Director of the Women and Children’s Program at HUM.
“My job was one of the things God used to show me I wasn’t a lost cause. That I have value and purpose. He’s not done with me yet. He intends to use everything in my past, present and future for His good and mine. Nearly every day, I meet women who think they are a lost cause. The worst one. That their past will dictate their future. I can tell them the truth from experience. God redeems. In unbelievable ways.”
She longed for a spouse and a child. After several relationships, she started to pray about adopting as a single mother. She found a wooden shipping pallet and made it into a prayer wall. Every day for two years, she wrote a prayer and put it on that wall. When a friend called to see if she knew anybody who wanted to adopt, she knew God was answering.
“The day my daughter was born, I went to the hospital with my social worker. The baby was surrounded by the birth mom and those close to her. Before the door closed behind me, someone put her in my arms and said, ‘I would like for you to meet your daughter, Adalynn.’ As Sara Bareilles says in her song Everything Changes, ‘we were both born that day.’”
When she talks about the lengths to which God went to rescue her and her desire for those who think they are too far away to be whole or too disqualified for relationships, she sounds much like the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians.
“I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power… to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
Eph 3:17-19
If you ask her point blank who her story is for, she says this:
“I want my story to reach anybody who falsely believes that they are disqualified from a hopeful future because they have gone too far. There is no depth that God cannot reach. No ceiling that can cap His extravagant love.”
Our Mission this Month
In your mission pack you have a paper watch with a “Name Alert” sticker. These stickers are used by medical offices to notify staff of patients with the same name so that files cannot be confused. This month, will you consider naming your longings. Your loves. Your go-to’s for peace and security. Nothing can truly satisfy us but God. Have our healthy loves morphed into addictions? Cravings for counterfeits that can never satisfy? On the back of that paper watch, write your loves. The places you go for comfort. Is it time for a Name Alert?
If they are counterfeits, call them that.
By naming them we can avoid confusion over the source of all peace and satisfaction.
Amen? Amen!
Epilogue
Laura eventually took all those prayers on that prayer wall and saved them for Adalynn. She want’s her to see in all those scraps of paper God’s scoop-you-up-and-place-you-in-loving-arms affection for her. Because that’s what Laura sees in the gift of this child. Extravagant affection through redemption.
