Luke & Ingrid Ellsbury

Neither Luke nor Ingrid grew up in homes where the Gospel was proclaimed or faith was central. 

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Ingrid: During my freshman year of high school, my mom left my dad. A year later, she remarried, and her new husband was emotionally abusive. I would sit at the kitchen table for hours on end and he would tell me what a worthless human being I was, that I would never amount to anything, that I was fat. Just awful things. 

And at that same time, I was estranged from my dad. So, really, I just didn’t have a lot of encouragement or guidance during that time.

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But God provided. While Ingrid was searching and hurting, without any spiritual direction, God was drawing Luke to Himself. And, then, He used Luke to draw Ingrid. 

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Luke: During my teen years, my aunt, who was a strong believer, started taking me to church. I really didn’t know what to think of it at first. But at church with my aunt, a seed was planted. I started to believe that there was a God out there. I ended up hanging out with some Christian friends, and I trusted in Christ, and then I got baptized. 

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I still dabbled in drinking and smoking and this outside world. I kind of bounced back and forth between having this life in Christ and having this life in the world, too. I was never really able to fully devote myself to Christ. I had a genuine faith, but I didn’t fully trust that Christ was enough.

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I: I met Luke my sophomore year of high school. During my senior year, I started going to church with him. That was really where I started getting an idea of what Christianity even was and realizing that I wanted to have a relationship with Christ.

God provided Himself – the Good Father – to meet Ingrid’s need for a loving father. During a time when she had very little support or guidance, God reached out and gathered her into His eternal family. 

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I: We got married not long after high school, and then we got pregnant. We were in a Bible Study group. Luke baptized me when I was four-months-pregnant with Isaac, with our Bible Study friends. 

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L: For me, that really started a period of my life where I was on fire for God. My wife had gotten baptized when she was pregnant with our first child, and we were just walking in faith. 

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I: Those were years when a lot of reconciliation and growth happened. We were growing in our faith. We were going to a strong church here in Cody. We were doing Bible study, and really diving into the Word. I learned to rely on Christ. We didn’t make much money. We had one kid, and then another kid, and then a third kid after that, all in a row. And I depended on God for everything, because I had to. We were making literally zero dollars, sometimes. And I was good at just trusting God and leaving it up to Him. Sometimes a gallon of milk would just show up on our front porch. God just continually provided for us. 

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But, at the same time, there were things I hadn’t dealt with, things I held back. Because of the hurts in my past, I had become a people-pleaser. That affected our marriage, because I was so afraid of making Luke angry or having him leave me. 

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While Ingrid was able to depend on God for their family’s physical needs, it was harder to truly surrender herself, to let God’s love be “enough” to heal old hurts or build new patterns of trust. For Luke, it was a challenge to really trust in God’s provision, and following God whole-heartedly proved to be a long-term struggle. There was a tug-of-war within Luke, and he grappled with his faith. 

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