Showing the grace, peace, love, forgiveness and healing that Christ has for us in an extraordinary way through our horses and the incorporated programs we offer with them.
A Message from Chelsea Miller,
Founder and Executive Director:
Hope Lives Slaughter Horse Rescue and Storyridge Ranch
Our mission and the adventure of how Storyridge came to be are very much entwined. Beautifully woven together by God's hand, like a vine of three branches becoming one. God, our family and the horses.... We were purposed to be together as we now are but separated from God's fulfillment of this purpose for many years by our own faithless rebellion. For many years my husband (Matt) and I chose to live solely pursuing things that we thought would bring value to our lives as we put our faith in our careers, our finances and ultimately our selfish desires. We believed the all too common lies told to us by the world that our worth and value comes from achievements and the material. Our will to 'have it all' fell flat when our small and large achievements were hard won and quickly forgotten. As disappointments in ourselves turned into prescription drug and alcohol addiction in my husband's life and co-dependence and self hatred in my own life, I made the decision to surrender my life to Christ. Truly broken and abdicated to the realization that I had no true joy or satisfaction in anything that I had gained by my own hand. I dared God to do better, I dared him to reveal himself to me and to show me my true purpose in life. I wanted healing for myself, my husband and for our daughters and I knew it was impossible to do it alone. I look back at that time of turmoil (almost 10 years) and I see God's hand working
Our Mission
the hardened soil that was my life, like a gardener preparing the land to place a seed, my surrender symbolized the placing of that seed into readied soil. As I began to grow, I let go of the anger and resentment I had toward my husband. I prayed for his addiction and I asked God to take the burden of 'fixing' my husband from me. I let go of all that I tried to control and God began to show me that my life mattered. During this time in my life I saw that the word of God was truly living, that depending on God did give me a peace that surpassed all understanding and that the God of the universe heard my prayers. My small seed of faith that began as a simple prayer of surrender began to grow upward, reaching for the light. Through a series of truly miraculous events, July 3, 2014 was Matt's first day of sobriety and soon after, a chain of unbelievable events occurred that brought us to rescue a a small white horse who was more dead than she was alive. We named her 'Hope' and our lives will never be the same . Storyridge did not come-to-be and our purpose in life could not be fulfilled until we surrendered our will and the dismal story we were writing for ourselves to God. Our family was in need of deep spiritual and emotional healing and God chose to speak to our hearts and began to heal our family as we poured out our desire for healing in our own lives into the life of Hope. In less than two years (and 20 rescued horses later) God has opened the doors for our ministry and shown us that His desire for our lives is that we walk with others and give others a similar healing experience through Storyridge. Showing the grace, peace, love, forgiveness and healing that Christ has for us in an extraordinary way through our horses and the incorporated programs we offer with them.
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A word on Storyridge and our thoughts on organized religion.
Matt and I were both raised in the church. In fact, my dad was a youth minister and Matt's father was a music minister. We both had different experiences with the churches we were raised in but a similar disengagement with organized religion as a result. We know that many people are not attuned to organized religion and we are not here to preach it's goodness as we see it as a massive failure on many levels. What we do know, is that there is a God of the universe that loves us, that he is aware of our every breath and that he has called us to love others as Jesus did and to walk with others through their pain and trials on this earth. Matt and I were utterly alone for many years. We reached out to our church for help but our outstretched arms were not met with an embrace. They were ignored and most painfully we experienced rejection and shame for voicing our pain and struggle. We know now that God allowed that to happen so that we might see the gaps that need to be filled. We have a deep desire to grab those outstretched hands, to laugh, to cry, to pray-for and to walk beside others who are struggling to overcome addiction and depression. We know from the difficult paths we have walked that it is possible with Christ and the love of others to write new chapters full of faith, healing, joy, abundance and purpose.
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