# All My Knotted-Up Life by Beth Moore - Blinkist

What’s in it for me? A fascinating glimpse into the ways faith can help us endure life’s trials.

When it comes to many aspects of our lives – whether it’s family, relationships, or even our faith – we often wish for simplicity.

If only things could just run smoothly, with good and bad easily separated and every loose end tied into a perfect bow.

In reality, life is more like a series of tangled-up knots.

Evangelist author and speaker Beth Moore’s life story has taken her on a path full of twists and turns that was far from what she had ever expected.

However, through it all, the anchor of her faith kept her from being swept away – even when she felt like was being pulled out to sea.

In this Blink to All My Knotted-Up Life, you’ll learn about the many ways that faith can help us to endure, even in our darkest moments.

To begin, we’ll take a brief look at Beth’s early years and her first experiences with spirituality.

In the following sections, we’ll cover some meaningful seasons of Beth’s life, including the creation of Living Proof Ministries and her controversial exit from the Southern Baptist Convention.

Finally, we’ll end by learning about an experience that helped Beth find hope and rediscover her faith after some of the most difficult years of her life.

Early Years

Beth Moore grew up in a small town in rural Arkansas called Arkadelphia.

She was the fourth of five children, with older sisters Sandra and Gay, older brother Wayne, and little brother Tony.

Beth’s father Albert owned a cinema house called The Royal Theater, where all five of his children would work throughout their teenage years.

He and her mother, Aletha, were both active members of the Southern Baptist church.

The whole family would attend services together three days a week.

Beth also lived with her maternal grandmother, whom they called Nanny – a stout old woman with the kind of colorful vocabulary you could only earn by growing up in the deep South in her generation.

Beth and her siblings would often joke that they all spoke fluent “Nanny-ese.

” To the outside world, they were a typical family.

But on the inside, their home was full of dark secrets that they would never dare to reveal in public.

Beth’s father was not only unfaithful to his wife, but also sexually abused Beth when she was a child.

Fearful of how she would survive on her own if she left, Beth’s mother stayed with the family, but at great personal cost.

Throughout her life, Beth’s mother would sink into periods of severe depression and would often be near-suicidal.

As Beth recalls, her father’s indiscretions were like a “tornado” that swept through their household, threatening to tear her family apart.

After the affair was revealed, he swore to her mother that it would never happen again, but their relationship remained in shambles.

Although this storm lasted nearly four years, eventually the dust settled and dynamics within the family became less tense.

Around this time, her father received a promotion at work and moved the family to Houston, Texas.

While attending college at Texas State University, Beth would meet her future husband, Keith.

They were just about as different as two people could possibly be, but would later discover they were both suffering from unresolved traumas from their childhoods.

Just as Beth was haunted by painful memories of past abuse, Keith suffered from severe PTSD – the result of an accident that had taken the life of his older brother at just three years old.

Drawn together by this invisible bond, Beth and Keith were married in 1978 and would later welcome two daughters.

Although their marriage certainly had its ups and downs, the couple has now been together for 45 years.

A Call to Christian Service

When you hear that someone has felt the presence of God, what scenery do you picture in your mind?

A glowing white church?

A field of wildflowers?

For Beth, her spiritual awakening happened in a place you’d never expect – a musty old bathroom at a church camp.

Allow me to set the scene.

When Beth was just 18 years old, she agreed to be a sponsor for a group of sixth graders at Girls’ Auxiliary – a Southern Baptist church camp for young girls.

On the fourth day, she woke up bright and early and decided to hop in the shower.

Nothing about the scenery suggested that anything even remotely remarkable was about to take place.

In fact, the bathroom smelled overwhelmingly like mildew and wet bathing suits.

However, as she stood at the sink preparing to brush her teeth, Beth suddenly felt the Lord’s presence.

Contrary to depictions shown in movies and TV shows, she never “saw the light” or heard the roaring of thunder.

There were no visions or even voices in her head.

All she felt was the overwhelming sensation that God was with her – a feeling strong enough to make her grip the edges of the sink until it passed.

As quickly as it had appeared, it was gone.

Beth took this moment as a sign that she had been called to dedicate her life in service to God – she just wasn’t sure exactly what this would look like yet.

In the beginning, it looked like teaching an aerobics class set to Christian contemporary music.

A few years later, Beth would begin studying Bible doctrine under the guidance of a teacher named Buddy Walters.

Mesmerized by his sheer love for the source material, Buddy’s classes lit a fire in Beth that inspired her to become a Sunday school teacher in her own right.

One day, after being struck by a section of the Bible she had never really paid attention to before, she began writing her own study to use in her classes.

With the confidence and naivety only a beginner could have, Beth decided to create the study in real-time.

The process was often down to the wire – at times the class was only a week behind what she had prepared.

But in the end, it was not only rewarding, but would also introduce Beth to one of her greatest passions – using her own voice to educate people about the Bible.

The Perfect Storm

Sometimes a seemingly ordinary experience can change the trajectory of our lives.

For Beth, this happened when she was thirty-four years old.

At this point, she was a wife and mother with a successful ministry.

Everything seemed to be going according to plan.

One day she got a call from her pastor, asking if she would consider speaking with a missionary who was struggling with a history of abuse.

As Beth sat down with the woman and listened to her story, memories from her own childhood began to flash before her eyes.

Almost instantly, her body started to react.

There was a shrill ringing in her ears as sweat beaded her upper lip.

It was as if all the blood in her body had suddenly rushed to her head.

Everything she had been keeping tucked away in a dark part of her mind began spilling out into the light.

Beth considers the following traumatic period of her life a “perfect storm” of three forces coming together.

The first force was the troubled past she had been hiding for so long.

The second was a darkness that threatened to swallow up everything she had built for herself  – including her family, her joy, and even her faith.

The third force was God himself.

The first few months of this storm would test her faith like never before, and the rest of her thirties would be spent trying to grapple with everything that had come to the surface.

Unfortunately, around the same time, her husband Keith had retreated into his own painful issues with mental health.

Isolated from one another, the couple each endured a season full of darkness and self-destruction.

Although they felt it would never end, they would eventually both find their way toward the light.

Beth considers it no coincidence that, around this same time, the Southern Baptist Convention approached her about publishing her study of the Tabernacle from the Old Testament that she had written years before.

Just like that, her life was about to change dramatically once again.

The Rise of Living Proof Live

For the balance of her thirties, Beth would publish four more Bible studies with Lifeway Christian Resources.

As her popularity began to grow, she was also approached about the possibility of doing a few speaking engagements.

During one particularly eventful lunch at her favorite TexMex restaurant, Beth and her colleagues hatched the idea for a series of seminars that would later become widely known as “Living Proof Live.

” Soon after, Beth was paired up with a young, talented worship leader named Travis Cottrell and an incredible group of singers and musicians.

After their very first event, the whole team knew that they had created something very special.

That first year, Beth would host a dozen of these events.

She would also publish her newest Bible study series, called Breaking Free, which she had written in the wake of the devastating period of mental health struggles mentioned earlier.

While her other studies had been well received, Breaking Free skyrocketed to popularity.

The Southern Baptist church had rarely discussed topics such as trauma or addiction.

As it turned out, this was something that really struck a chord with her audience.

By Beth’s mid-forties, Living Proof Live events had grown so popular that they needed to be held in giant arenas.

As the events grew in size, so did possibilities to help more people – as well as opportunities for mishaps!

Beth recalls some very strange moments that probably had to be seen to be believed.

First, hosting their events in large arenas meant that her team had to deal with their fair share of animal intruders – including rats, birds, and even the occasional bat.

There were also times when audience members would show up in costume.

The most notable was a person who attended an event in a full-on clown get-up – bright orange wig and all.

To top it all off, there was also an “accidental exorcism,” where a woman on stage had a fit and nearly fell to the ground before Beth caught her in mid-fall.

Regardless of a few misadventures, these were some of the most exciting, surreal, and rewarding times of Beth’s life.

Not only were they able to bring thousands of people together to worship as one, but they were also able to guide them through healing some of the most difficult traumas imaginable.

Letting Go

If Beth Moore’s rise to evangelical popularity was meteoric, it was nothing compared to the fall.

It all began on October 8, 2016, when she was on her way back to Houston after a Living Proof Live event in Arizona.

Just before her flight, Beth happened to read a newspaper article about the now-infamous Access Hollywood tape of Donald Trump describing acts of sexual assault against women.

By the time she was home and in bed later that day, she had done a deep dive into the subject – reading not only the transcript of the tape, but also the responses that many evangelical leaders had given.

As she continued reading, she became increasingly disgusted by what she saw.

The general consensus from these leaders was that Trump had made a simple mistake and it was just “locker-room talk.

” As a woman who had experienced sexual assault herself, Beth was outraged.

She knew that what was happening was wrong.

The next morning, after waking up in a state of calm resolve, she published a series of tweets calling out Donald Trump and those who had defended him.

As you might imagine, the social firestorm was nearly immediate.

Beth would quickly become the recipient of thousands of angry social media comments and hundreds of enraged emails a day.

The worst part was the blowback that had landed at the doors of Living Proof Ministries.

The phones were ringing off the hook – her coworkers relentlessly harassed by angry callers.

Beth was also informed that the Bible studies she had written were being sent back to her, thrown away, and – in some cases – even burned.

As public backlash reached an all-time high, Beth came to a realization that she had been dreading.

She was going to have to leave the Southern Baptist Convention.

It had become a different place – no longer the safe haven she remembered it to be.

She had been holding on white-knuckled for so long, but it was finally time to let go.

Returning to Church

Following her very public exit from the SBC in March of 2021, Beth was once again feeling untethered.

She felt that she had just lost her connection to something that had been one of the most important parts of her life since she was nine years old.

Not wanting to give up on their religious practice altogether, Beth and Keith attempted to visit a few churches that were close to their original faith.

However, they soon found that the baggage attached to their names was hefty.

They weren’t exactly unwelcome, but their presence made some feel uneasy.

Instead, they continued attending the virtual worship they’d grown accustomed to during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As grateful as Beth was for the online services, they just weren’t the same.

Sitting around a computer in pajamas couldn’t quite live up to the experience of being in an actual church.

One Saturday night, as Beth sulked on the couch, Keith suggested that they search for Anglican churches nearby.

After much debate, they settled on one about thirty minutes away.

The next morning, they hopped in the car and nervously made their way to the church.

Although Beth admits that she stumbled awkwardly through the first service they attended, by the end she was deeply moved.

As she turned to leave, a group of women approached her.

One of these women tenderly told her that they were all so glad she had come and finished by saying, “You are welcome here, Beth.

” At these kind words, the floodgates opened and Beth sobbed.

After such a trying time, this small interaction meant the world to her.

The third time they visited this church would prove even more life-changing.

As the offertory music began, the pianist played the first four notes of the hymn My Hope is Built on Nothing Less, and Beth was instantly transported back to First Baptist Church in Arkadelphia, Arkansas.

A scene from her childhood began to play in her mind.

She saw her Nanny and her church friends in their pillbox hats.

She saw her mother and father.

She saw her siblings.

They were all together in that small church, singing along to a hymn that they all knew by heart.

As she closed her eyes and mouthed the words, she finally felt that she was home again.

Final summary

Looking back over her life story, Beth Moore admits that it is far from what she had expected it to be.

But as she sat there in that Anglican church, surrounded by memories of her childhood, she came to a conclusion that would change her life forever.

It didn’t matter where she was or even how she chose to worship – her faith could never be taken from her.

Through it all – the good, the bad, and the in-between – God had never left her.

Even in her darkest moments of doubt and fear, he was always there.

Life may be a series of tangled-up knots, but somewhere inside the mess, faith and hope can help us keep the loose ends securely tied.