Highlight: CU America member, Erika Lamara Garrett, LMFT
By Erin Conner
“It was the fall that saved my life,” Erika Lamara Garrett explained. In January of 2020, at the age of 33, Garrett fell. The injuries she sustained from this fall confined her to a bed and made her dependent on others to perform basic daily activities. Despite the desperation of her circumstances while on bed rest, she sensed the Lord telling her, “Erika- you will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”
In her 30’s, this mental health professional and native of New Haven, Connecticut had to start her life all over again. She said, “it was a community affair that required me to rely on the Body of Christ to provide what I needed.” And for two years, God provided everything– including an invitation a year ago to join Christian Union America’s community of believers.
Garrett now owns her own business in New Haven, Connecticut. She said, “Through this journey, God opened up the capacity in me and around me to work more, to start my own private practice, and to extend healing to my clients and deliverance through Christ to those of faith.” God is using her as an instrument of hope and healing in the lives of others; He is enabling and equipping her to have a greater Kingdom impact in her community and church.
God provided Garrett with everything she needed from her physical needs to her emotional and spiritual ones. God took her from barely having community due to her recent relocation back to Connecticut to being a life-giving business owner with a strong community through Christian Union America.
What fueled this growth in Garrett’s life? Her love, trust, and dependency on the Lord is the foundation upon which God is building. She demonstrates this love through her lifestyle of closeness with Him. In the last year, God challenged her to refine her lifestyle through what Christian Union calls “Daniel Spirituality.”
Daniel Spirituality is a life of hungering after God Himself by following Biblical principles and practices. Christian Union America encourages all Christians and members of its community to adopt a lifestyle of “Daniel Spirituality,” – of whole-heartedly seeking God, which includes: prayer, fasting, a massive intake of Scripture, obedience, perseverance, community, and repentance.
Garrett found Christian Union to be a catalyst for restoring balance in her spiritual practices with deeper conviction. She began attending weekly online Christian Union Bible Studies, which gave her a sense of normalcy after experiencing a period of restraint. In addition, she began hosting quarterly Christian Union Fire retreats. She also agreed to mentor a CU Universities’ alumna through its mentorship program. Her desire to realign with the lifestyle she had prior to her injury occurred with a newness of intimacy with God and a depth of His power and love that she had not known before.
“Since the day I accepted the invitation to be part of Christian Union’s community of believers, I’ve been on a path of life in Christ to experience the fullness of God. Christian Union is the community I prayed for when moving back to my home state and is beyond anything I could have ever imagined. It feels like family-one I am completely aligned with.”
Garrett said she sees signs, miracles, and wonders all around her in her daily life because her eyes are open to see His goodness. She is chasing after the Lord, not in a vague, metaphorical way; but in a practical way that reveals the goodness of God to those around her.
“This community has been the support structure that I needed in my walk with the Lord, especially in re-establishing life after such a turn of unexpected events,” Garrett said. “Christian Union unleashed healing at an accelerated speed in my life and provided me with people to help me access my "Promised land"– to live in a mindset of freedom.”
Garrett professes, “I want to be a conduit for God; joining with Him in doing for others what He has done for me.” She continued, “I have been able to be a part of a like-minded community of believers who help me to understand, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we can trust God. I see God’s character through the many facets of Christian Union and this is important because healing comes through strong community with others. Start confessing to the Body of Christ and just watch how God heals,” she said with a joyous laugh.
Reflecting on the spiritual disciplines that she practices in her walk with Christ, Garrett said, “Fasting is the purest way you can die to yourself each day. Prayer is a lingering conversation that goes on all day with the Lord. And discipleship is a way I stay accountable to the Lord– by offering it and receiving it.”
“If I could exhort anyone, I’d tell them to live to leave a legacy for the Lord and invite him into everything with a child-like dependency and demeanor,” she said. “God is a God who transforms and restores; He is a God who keeps taking us to new levels with Him, if we are willing to go; He is a God who sometimes takes us back to the very thing we want to avoid in our lives, so that He can mend us and cleanse us to grasp the wholeness that He intends for us to experience in this life– in the land of the living.”
Learn more about Daniel Spirituality, a Biblical lifestyle of seeking God, here.
