A Little MORE About Me

I was creating the About Me section of ByGraceSaved.com and the next thing I knew I had a full blown blog post… So I converted it to a post and shortened the about me. So here is the original version!

I am Kelsey Hensley. I am learning to be a daughter of God first, a wife second and a mother third. Somewhere in there I have to make room to be myself too. We forget too often about ourselves. We are so busy being what we are to everyone else that we forget what we are to ourselves. It has taken a lot of therapy and prayer to realize I always put myself last. So while I want to use this about me section to talk about my wonderful husband and two kids who make up my world I’m instead going to try something different and tell you about me. The real me. I’m just getting to know her for the first time in nearly 34 years so bear with me. This will change over time.

I am a believer in the power of knowledge, specifically knowledge of self. I am learning the power of the Enneagram for understanding yourself and others. If you aren’t familiar with it here is a great resource. My core style is a ONE. Per WEPSS, “ONES are attracted to and value goodness. They endeavor to be good persons, seeking to make the world a better place to live in. They want to realize all of their potential and help others to do the same. For ONES, life is about doing your best, setting high standards and goals and living up to them.”

I also identify with NINES, the peaceful person, which is fitting because I am a middle child and my mom always referred to me as her “peacemaker”. I revisited my WEPSS test results to write this post and found the description of the NINE to be very fitting to the calling of By Grace Saved. Per WEPSS, “NINES are attracted to and value peace, harmony, and unity. They want to make the world an inclusive, harmonious, and conflict-free place to live in. They like being peaceful, calm, and ordered, and they prefer to go with the flow. They are confident that events are unfolding as they should, and they see no need to push the river, recognizing that it’s flowing fine by itself. For NINES, being at one with yourself and your surroundings is what life is all about.” God’s goal (as I interpret it) with this website, is to help you see where your own river is flowing just fine through me sharing about mine. Sometimes understanding how someone else sees the world is just the lens we need to see our own world more clearly.

Under stressful conditions, I am a FOUR. I’ve spent more of the last four years in stressful conditions than not, so I currently identify closely with this version of myself. FOURs, as defined by WEPSS, “are attracted to and value originality, authenticity, individuality, and artistic expression. They want to be sensitive, refined persons, seeking to make the world more beautiful. Valuing the inner journey, each FOUR is on the quest for the Holy Grail, his or her real self. Honoring your uniqueness and deeply connecting to others and to the world is what life is all about for FOURS.” Anyone else getting a little freaked out yet? I have not revisited these definitions in almost a year. The applicability of this definition to the mission of this website is astounding to me and is unfolding in real time as I write this.

Yet part of me is not surprised. God has shown me how everything we experience He can use for His glory. The mission He has laid on my heart is to share these observations with real life examples in my life. Things like how my first job, in the middle of the great recession, which felt like something I happened into in desperation to get a job, was in fact preparing me for a business I wouldn’t own for almost 10 years. The bible shows us the omnipotent power of God again and again but most notably in the story of His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Who’s coming was spread throughout the bible over many authors and many years. We read it, believe it, and teach it to our children but we don’t trust it in our own lives. I feel confident, God will inspire me to share my life in a way that I may see for the first time some of the connects I have missed in addition to the ones I already see. And I know that by reading about these examples in my life you too will start to notice, find and seek these examples in your own life. Once you see them and know them you gain a freedom in Jesus to trust no matter the storm, He remains in control.

This section took a tangent I was not expecting but I’m a tangential storyteller so there is not a more authentic way to tell you about me than to show you what you can expect from my posts. A whole lot of randomness with some love for Jesus and my family sprinkled in.

And now for the quintessential about me… I’m an Arkansas girl, born and raised. I live in the same small town I grew up in, Marion, where beginning January 1st, 2021 I will be a city councilwoman. My husband, Ross, and I started dating in the 9th grade and short of a few disagreements along the way have been together ever since. My first breadcrumb of divine providence is a 1990 preschool graduation 8mm home video where a young Kelsey keeps peeping down the line of graduates at a young Ross clad in teal pants and a pink and teal plaid button up. We didn’t go to school together again until the 7th grade, but the seed must have been planted because in 9th grade on AOL instant messenger he asked me to be his girlfriend and I said yes. Today we have been married for 10 years and on most days, I would call us happily married. Most importantly we are married for life, so happiness is not a prerequisite in our marriage. That one condition is enough to make sure we work on that happiness thing most days.

We have two beautiful children (whose anonymity I am protecting by not mentioning them by name). Our oldest is nearly seven and was an only child for 3 years and 6 days. He is a great big brother to his nearly four-year-old sister. He looks just like his daddy and acts just like me. She looks just like me, except for the unexpected curly hair, but acts just like Ross. They would each like a younger brother and a younger sister, but God will have to grant that request. My beloved children were a labor of love from well before conception. As a woman living with PCOS it took a lot of effort to get pregnant with both. As a Catholic family we are open to God’s will for more kids but are not actively seeking them. So, God will need to cure my infertility if they are to get the siblings they desire and they would have to be twins as I will NOT be having a 4th c-section if you catch my drift. 🙂

I’ve spent most of my life being defined by my intelligence and professional success and am still learning how to view myself as something other than that, despite that fact I had to google the spelling of no less than four words just to finish this post. Handwriting? Just forget about it! If you need help in Excel or problem solving, I’m your girl. I owned a logistics business called BGS Fulfillment which was never actually successful, hence the learning to define myself by something more than professional success. Even so, I managed to use what little value I was able to salvage from it to start a new company called NovEx Supply Chain where much to my surprise I serve as the Director of Sales and Marketing. Talk about God using your failures to build skills you never thought you would need!

If I go on any longer here, I won’t have any topics for my post. My business partner in NovEx says I talk to much so here is the elevator version of the About Me I should have started with. I am a daughter of Christ, wife to Ross, mother of two, daughter, sister, friend, businesswoman, salesperson, civic leader, novice painter, avid reader/audiobook listener, want to be bible studier, horrible housekeeper, decent cook, student of better health, intellectual, unathletic yet a surprisingly good skier, lover of travel, fan of silence, terrible singer, and an Arkansas Razorback fan.