Somewhere in her family’s photo albums is a picture of Becky Green as a young girl playing a baby grand piano. Music has always been her passion, and for many years she believed it was her purpose, too.

“I love music,” she said. “I love to worship the Lord.”

Becky grew up in church, and through watching her father mentor and teach others, she learned the importance of ministry and a reverence for God’s word.

With these gifts, it was easy for her to envision a life of ministry through music.

“And then my dad sat me down and kind of squelched my dream,” Becky said. “He said, ‘Well, what are you going to do with that?’”

Disheartened, she set the dream aside and began a nearly four-decade career at Delta Airlines, first in the office and then as a flight attendant.

“I had a wonderful career there and was able to raise our three kids,” she said. “I loved the flexibility of the job and that I was able to do so many things in the church because my work was not a means to life.”

But for all her career gave her, Becky still believed music was God’s true purpose for her life, and remained heavily involved with the church’s worship team.

This belief persisted until 2013, when the Lord placed it on her heart that His desire for her was something completely different.

At the time, Becky was leading a mentorship program for women at the church, helping them discover their own purpose. One of her spiritual gifts — exhortation — allows her to encourage and help others grow in their faith.

“I pour into them, and I pray for them,” Becky said. “I see their heart. I see what they are meant to be.”

At the close of one of the mentoring sessions, Becky and the other facilitators were praying over and commissioning a group of women. That’s when she heard the Lord speak.

“I’m talking to you, too.”

It caught her off guard.

“I said, ‘Lord, I’m trying to pray for this person here,’ and he kept saying, ‘I’m talking to you, too,’” Becky said. “And I really argued with him.”

But as she began to listen, He revealed a new direction for her life: to go to college.

“The impression I got was He said, ‘I’ve given you a biblical education, but I want you to go to school and get man’s education for the doors I want to open to you,” she recalled. “I said, ‘Lord, do you know how old I am? How is this going to work? I work a full-time job.’

“He walked me through every step of the way.”

While working full time as a flight attendant, she enrolled in Liberty University’s online program, earning her undergraduate degree in three years. She then immediately enrolled in Liberty’s two-and-a-half-year master’s program to become a licensed professional counselor and began her counseling internship, seeing clients under the supervision of a licensed counselor.

These pursuits demanded nearly all her time.

“During that time, the Lord kept telling me to let go of things,” she said. “I love ministry, and I thought my purpose was worship. And he told me to step down from worship. It was very difficult. There was mentoring. I had to let that go, too, so I had the space to do the schooling.”

Becky received her master’s degree in 2019 and was hired to work where she was interning. Then in 2020, Delta offered an early retirement with benefits, allowing her to pursue counseling full time.

She accepted a position at the newly formed Abundant Life Institute in Winder.

The institute quickly grew from a small rented office space at another agency to its own building housing 13 clinicians. In addition to seeing her own clients, Becky is the institute’s executive clinical director, where she gets to mentor clinicians who are on the same path she was, helping them through the licensing process.

Looking back at the experience, she can see God’s hand in it all.

“I feel like I’ve been on my purpose journey the whole time,” Becky said, “a lot of times, kicking and screaming. But I had to learn to believe that God loves me, has a plan for me and is not going to leave me. He is not going to forsake me.”

It was a message she said she had heard all her life, but it lived in her head, not her heart. She credits Pastor Travis’s grace message as what really shifted her perspective on purpose.

“Once I got it in my heart, I believed,” Becky said.

Now, instead of trying to will her own idea of what her purpose is, she’s surrendered it to God.

“It’s different because I don’t have to strive for it — I have the energy to do it, and I have the capacity to do it,” she said.

God isn’t finished with her story. This past month, Becky started classes again.

She’s attending Regent University’s doctoral program for strategic leadership.

“People say, ‘Shouldn’t you be retiring?’” Becky said. “And I feel like I just started.”