(OPINION) I love a good story about grace. And if Stephanie M. Raglin’s story is about anything, it’s about grace.
Raglin, 59, has been senior pastor of the Historic St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Lexington, Kentucky, since October 2023. She is the first woman to hold the position. She was also previously the first female pastor of Embry Chapel AME in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
Her resume is stunning: 18 years in the clergy, over 20 years in various positions at the Hope Center in Lexington, which she left early last year, her own counseling center in Versailles, Kentucky, “Serenitee (cq) At Its Best,” five college and ministerial degrees, including a doctorate in theology, and membership on numerous boards, such as the board of Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, and the Opioid Abatement Commission in Lexington, of which she is chair.
She is married to the love of her life, Mark Raglin, and is the mother of three children, a 32-year-old and 18-year-old twins.
She may appear to you as the figurehead of an elite circle of saints who have made the right decisions and achieved outstanding results in all of them.
But when you talk to her, you quickly come across another part of her life, which she describes with the same smiling openness as her achievements.
She tells you about sexual abuse as a teenager. About the years she spent trying to relieve that trauma with cocaine, which drove her into addiction and despair. About her numerous marriages, including the unusual fact that she and Mark are married for the third time. Both have also married and divorced other people.
“I’ve been through a lot of storms in my life, been down, been in places I never thought I’d be, and was actually ready to give up on life,” Raglin said.
This part of her life—the messy part—is my favorite because the chaos illustrates things I deeply believe in: that it’s never over until it’s over, and that God—sometimes unbeknownst to us—has bigger plans for us than we can even imagine.
Raglin grew up in Simpsonville in Shelby County, Kentucky, in a middle-class family that attended both Baptist and Pentecostal churches. She was active in the church.
Then came the sexual assault. She kept it to herself. She had been taught not to talk about her problems publicly. She tried to move on.
It didn’t work. The sequence of events is complicated and I’m not sure I’ve got the details right. But she met and married Mark. They had a daughter, Melanie. At some point, Raglin started using drugs to ease the pain of her trauma.
Eventually, her marriage fell apart in the chaos of her addiction. She and Mark divorced. They remarried, only to divorce again. Raglin lost custody of Melanie.
It wasn’t the life she had been raised for. It wasn’t the life she had expected.
She cursed God: “Why did you allow this? If you are so powerful, how could this happen to me?”
Then, in 2000, something miraculous happened, as it sometimes does. Maybe something had to happen, otherwise she might have lost the fight altogether.
“There came a time in my life when I cried out to God and said, ‘I need help.’ I heard Him speaking to me and saying, ‘I have you. I have you.’ … Since that day, my life has changed drastically.”
She participated in therapy programs and sought counseling to cope with the sexual assault.
“I got clean,” Raglin said. “I’ve been clean ever since. All I can say is I’ve been set free.”
After about a year and a half of sobriety, she got a job working the night shift at the Hope Center, which, as its website says, offers comprehensive “services to promote recovery from substance use disorders, mental health disorders and homelessness.”
For Raglin, working there became a calling to help people who were suffering. Over time, she became a licensed clinical alcohol and drug counselor and is now a certified clinical supervisor.
“After I conquered the demons and knew that God had a plan and purpose for my life based on what He told me when I recovered in 2000, there was no turning back,” she said.
She also started going to church again. She felt called to preach, but had always heard that preaching was not a woman’s job. Instead, she volunteered in music.
She finally answered her call to preach at an AME service in 2006.
Afterwards she said, “I was in a state of exhilaration that I had never experienced before.” That is, the spiritual exhilaration I felt from accepting her calling was more intoxicating than drugs had ever been before.
In 2015, she and Mark married for the third time. This time it worked.
What struck me about Raglin is that she tells her story with surprising calmness. No boasting, but no shame either. She tries to be “transparent” in her own words.
The core of her approach to pastoral care is love, she said.
She remembers years ago crying out to God in desperation: “Why me?”
“But I’m not asking such questions today.”
For her, the pain today seems to have served a higher purpose. When she sees people acting counterproductively, she sees a version of herself in it. She knows the pain of assault, addiction, and broken relationships. She knows that every person, even the most troubled, can be a vessel of God.
“I use it,” she said of her past. “I say that everything I’ve been through has only prepared me for the next thing that’s going to happen in my life. And I’ve been able to minister to the needs of so many broken men and women and bring them a sense of healing and wholeness through the anointing of the Spirit. That’s why I love people.”
Yes, that’s the message of grace. Grace says we’re all messed up, every single one of us. But despite our mistakes, we’re also God’s own children. Grace says God loves us anyway and is always ready to pick us up from the trash heap, wipe us down, and bring us to safety.
