Carol Kent Shares Six Choices for Living "A New Kind of Normal"

I was blessed to be able to attend the annual women's conference held at Century Baptist this year and I must admit, I was completely blown away by the amazing speaker who had quite a story to tell.

Gwen Damlo from KNDR, Carol Kent and myself.

The conference kicked off on Friday evening with a wonderful time of praise and worship. Shortly afterwards every lady in attendance listened intently as speaker and author, Carol Kent told the story of when her only child, Jason Kent was arrested for murder.

She went on to tell us about the reality of living "a new kind of normal" that included not only her son's conviction but his sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Honestly, I had a tough time comprehending how a devout Christian could carry out such a horrendous act but one would have to know the whole story to understand why he did. He thought he was protecting his young stepdaughters from further abuse by their biological father. Jason's actions affected every person in his family and after he was convicted the story of the naval officer's crime spread like wildfire and was even the subject of a Dateline episode.

Despite being thrown into the spotlight, the Kent family stayed connected through the ordeal and Carol continued to write books and speak at various events all over the world. Her son Jason lives out his days in prison by spreading the Gospel message through Bible Studies and leading many men to Christ.

Carol says her son knows what he did was wrong. At the time he was putting himself above God, making an idol out of himself by thinking it was solely up to him to protect his family.

Throughout her new way of life, Carol says she had to make six important choices if she wanted to continue living the way God wanted her to despite her circumstances.

Her six choices include:

• Choose life
• Choose trust
• Choosing vulnerability
• Choose gratitude
• Choose forgiveness
• Choose positive, purposeful action

She says even her son Jason had to make all of the same choices and that whenever he starts feeling depressed about his situation, he writes out a gratitude list of everything for which he is thankful.

The conference continued the next day and after a wonderful time of fellowship with other attendees during breakfast, everyone joined in on an upbeat praise and worship time. Carol continued to teach and shared with us many life stories, lessons and testimonies. Her talks were based on two of her books, "Six Essentials of Spiritual Authenticity " and "Becoming a Woman of Influence: Making a Lasting Impact on Others."

Carol Kent taking time to talk to a conference attendee

The entire Love Out Loud conference was truly was a wonderful time of learning, growing and connecting with other women and I enjoyed every minute of it. 

Be sure to go to my shopping page to find more books by Carol Kent.