Order of Lysa TerKeurst Books

Born on July 21, 1969, Lysa TerKeurst didn’t step into this world holding a pen or preaching to thousands—she walked into a storm. Before becoming the bestselling Christian author we now know and quote on coffee mugs and Pinterest boards, she was just a girl growing up in the wake of deep, private chaos. Her early life was marked by the kind of trauma most people run from, not toward: her parents’ divorce shattered her family unit, and the sudden loss of her 16-month-old sister to a rare heart condition cracked her childhood wide open.

She attended Furman University in South Carolina, where her major wasn’t writing, ministry, or theology—it was advertising and marketing, because let’s face it, sometimes God writes plot twists better than any novelist ever could. After college, she worked in the advertising world, completely unaware that her future would involve not selling products, but delivering souls into deeper faith—and healing a few in the process, herself included.

Here’s the irony that defines Lysa’s legacy: the woman millions now turn to for spiritual guidance almost walked away from God entirely. In her early twenties, reeling from her sister’s death and the haunting silence of unanswered prayers, Lysa declared a fierce rebellion against faith. But in a plot worthy of any redemption arc, God came after her in the most unexpected of ways: through a crisis pregnancy and a heart that couldn’t shake the quiet whisper of grace.

Lysa didn’t just “return” to faith—she wrestled it into something real, something raw. She turned her pain into purpose and became the president of Proverbs 31 Ministries, a powerhouse organization that speaks directly to the hearts of women who are just barely hanging on. Under her leadership, the ministry blossomed into a global phenomenon—complete with devotionals, podcasts, online Bible studies, and yes, bestsellers that sit comfortably in the arms of grieving, healing women across the world.

She is the New York Times bestselling author of game-changing Christian non-fiction like It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way, Forgiving What You Can’t Forget, and Uninvited—books that read more like the personal diary of a woman bleeding onto the page than a preacher handing down instruction. Her writing is part theology, part therapy, and entirely born of lived experience: betrayal, divorce, breast cancer, and heartbreak—she’s survived them all. And then? She handed us the roadmap.

Her books are known for asking the hard questions, like:

• What do you do when your fairytale shatters?
• How do you forgive someone who isn’t even sorry?
• Is it still faith when it feels like everything's falling apart?

And she doesn’t give you Hallmark answers—she walks you through the fire with a flashlight in one hand and Scripture in the other.

But here's the twist: the very woman who has taught millions how to forgive, how to rebuild, how to move forward—is still in the process herself. She’s not preaching from the mountaintop. She’s bleeding in the valley, inviting you to join her.

Lysa has five children and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. She’s a mother, a ministry leader, a cancer survivor, and a woman who has stared into the wreckage of broken promises and whispered, "Even this, God? Even this?"

And still, she writes. Still, she heals. Still, she forgives.

And you, dear reader, haven’t even opened her books yet.