As a young girl, Delilah dreamed of being the first person in her family to attend college, but it never worked out, and she put the dream on the shelf, where it gathered dust for many years.
She instead pursued a career in the corporate world, becoming a sales representative for a dental supplier. She flourished there—cultivating professional relationships throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex and earning more than enough to support herself and her family. Then everything changed. In the summer of 2014, she went on a missions trip to Peru with some friends.
“I felt God tell me to retire from my comfortable, successful 20-year career and go into ministry,” Delilah says. It was an unexpected call, but she obeyed.
In May 2015, she retired with the intention of training with Youth With a Mission (YWAM), a widely-known missionary organization, and going on the mission field.
Before starting her YWAM training, she went on another mission trip to Peru, and because of her bilingual status, Delilah acted as the team’s interpreter. After ministering to a pastor and his wife at an inner-city church, the pastor’s wife went up to Delilah and started sobbing. And although Delilah could communicate with her, she felt ill-equipped to offer comfort or counsel. The same thing kept happening throughout the five-week trip. “Our team would be painting a bathroom or on a boat on the Amazon river, and someone would start telling me their story,” Delilah says. “There were just so many people who needed to share and be encouraged.” Delilah did the best she could but continued to feel she needed something more in her tool belt to adequately help the broken people in her path.
She came home troubled. The green light to be a part of YWAM wasn’t there after all. “There was just silence and this sense that God was turning the ship around, changing direction,” Delilah says. “I knew I didn’t want my plans for my life, I wanted His, but it was a struggle to wait on Him.” After a tough couple months of waiting for direction, her daughter finally spoke up and asked what was going on. Delilah explained that she felt a change in direction but she didn’t know what it was. They talked for a while, and her daughter eventually said, “Mom, have you thought about The King’s University?” not knowing Delilah had checked out TKU’s website on a whim a few months earlier.
With her daughter’s encouragement, Delilah went back to the TKU website and really started to dig around. The location of The King’s University, the combination of ministry and education, and the idea of growing spiritually and academically in the classes all spoke to her. She continued to look around at degree plans when the biblical counseling degree jumped out at her. She thought about all that happened in Peru and knew then that God was providing a way to get all the tools needed to effectively lead people toward healing and freedom.
At the next TKU Campus Day, Delilah walked through the campus feeling excited and nervous. Although she was a lot older than most of the students she would be attending with, Delilah didn’t hesitate to sign up for courses in the biblical counseling program and has never once felt like she didn’t belong.
“I have not been in school in over 40 years, but the staff, professors, those in the Success Center, and the other students have been so inviting and helpful,” she says. “If not for them, I would be lost in this new academic world I am in.”
Delilah is registered as a full-time student, taking in all the knowledge and information available so she can eventually go out and minister to others. Her thoughts often go back to those people in Peru, and she wonders if another trip back might be in her future, except next time she’d have a full tool belt.