Michelle’s Journey to The Beauty Initiative
What if God uses beauty in ways we often overlook?
In this story, Michelle reflects on the small but holy moments that shaped her life—from glimpses of flowers in a harsh urban landscape, to awe under a wide-open sky, to quiet walks through the woods during one of the hardest seasons of her life.
Her story is a reminder that beauty is not ornamental. It can become a language of God’s presence—awakening wonder, mending hearts, and drawing people closer to Jesus.
Watch Michelle’s story 👇
Michelle’s story begins in the south side of Chicago, in an environment shaped more by pollution, concrete, and chemical haze than by natural beauty. And yet, even there, beauty found its way in.
It showed up in small things: tulips planted by her mother, little flashes of color in the yard, moments that quietly stood apart from the heaviness around her.
Later, as a teenager, Michelle experienced something that stayed with her for years: standing outside a farmhouse far beyond the city and seeing the horizon clearly for the first time. Watching the sky meet the ground and the stars stretch low across the landscape, she felt a profound awareness of God’s presence. It was simple, but it was holy.
Looking back, Michelle began to see a pattern. Throughout her life, God had been planting small seeds of beauty—moments of awe through nature, music, and the created world—that continually drew her toward Him.
“God was continually using beauty to draw me to Him.”
That pattern became even more significant during a deeply painful season many years later. During a hard transition for her family, when life felt uncertain and disorienting, Michelle found herself walking a rugged two-mile path through the woods behind her home in Kansas. Day after day, in the wildness of flowers, leaves, light, birds, and quiet, God met her there.
Above: Some of Michelle’s photography
What she experienced was not dramatic in the way people often expect spiritual transformation to be. It was ordinary and slow. A leaf with light shining through it like stained glass. Wildflowers growing in abundance. Small moments of beauty that became sacred encounters.
Over time, Michelle realized that beauty had become one of the ways God was healing her heart in places words could not reach.
“These ordinary moments became very, very holy.”
That realization eventually led her into deeper study. Though she had struggled academically growing up, she pursued graduate work and later doctoral research focused on the very thing she had lived: the ways God uses ordinary beauty to draw people to Himself.
Through interviews and study, she discovered that this was not just her story. Again and again, people described how God met them through beauty—in nature, art, music, and everyday moments of wonder. Not always through dramatic experiences, but through quiet encounters that opened their hearts to His presence.
That conviction now lives on in KC Underground’s Beauty Initiative.
The Beauty Initiative exists to explore how beauty, art, and creativity can help bring the beauty, justice, and Good News of Jesus into every nook and cranny of Kansas City. It seeks to equip and empower artists to use their gifts with spiritual purpose, while also helping everyday people and microchurch leaders become more attentive to the beauty God is already using in ordinary life.
Michelle’s story reminds us that art and beauty are not secondary to spiritual formation. They can be one of the ways God forms us, speaks to us, heals us, and sends us.
Beauty can awaken us.
Beauty can restore attention.
Beauty can help us recognize that God is nearer than we think.
And sometimes, the smallest glimpse of beauty becomes the beginning of a much larger story.
The Beauty Initiative is helping artists, makers, and everyday disciples learn to notice beauty, create with purpose, and use their gifts for the good of Kansas City.
Want to explore the Beauty Initiative?
Learn how beauty, justice, and the Good News of Jesus come together through art, creativity, and spiritual formation.