![\"Susan's](\"http:\/\/werockinc.com\/weROCK\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/SusansStory.png\" "\\"SusansStory\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nYears ago my mom gave me a wooden sign.\u00a0 It reads, \u201cHome Is Where Your Story Begins.\u201d<\/span> My story had an exceptional beginning.\u00a0 My parents, along with my older sister and two younger brothers, were incredibly blessed with amazing friends, Christian faith and values, good health and tons of sun and fun\u2026on Lake Michigan.\u00a0 There\u2019s a reason it\u2019s called a \u201cGreat Lake.\u201d\u00a0 Its greatness forged at the very core of me a love of water that remains intensely passionate.\u00a0 As for the \u201cwhere\u201d – put your left hand up and pretend it\u2019s Michigan.\u00a0 I grew up right about where your pinky meets your hand.\u00a0 Still to this day, I echo what Dorothy proclaimed in The Wizard of Oz<\/em>, \u201cThere\u2019s no place like home.\u201d<\/p>\n My parents invested and sacrificed greatly to send all four of us kids to private, Christian schools K-12 plus Catholic University tuition multiplied by four.\u00a0 Ka-ching!\u00a0 What an investment.\u00a0 What a gift.\u00a0 After I focused my studies on Marketing & Journalism, I graduated with a B.A.\u00a0 My story continued to follow the All-American script.\u00a0 Go to college.\u00a0 Graduate.\u00a0 Move to big city (Boston in my case).\u00a0 Interview.\u00a0 Accept job.\u00a0 Get promoted.\u00a0 Meet Prince Charming (Keith Conley in my case).\u00a0 Get promoted again.\u00a0 Fall in love.\u00a0 Get big rock then get married.\u00a0 Move to Atlanta, GA, to begin a new life together while watching a city prepare for, then host, the 1996 Summer Olympic Games (Thrilling BTW).\u00a0 Join Arthur Andersen as a Business Developer for the Family Wealth Planning practice.\u00a0 Get promoted to Southeast Area Director of Marketing.\u00a0 After six successful years at Andersen, enjoy the recruiting efforts of Ernst & Young to hire me away.\u00a0 Accept a phenomenal, potentially culture-shifting position with Ernst & Young.\u00a0 Can you hear the upbeat Hollywood musical score playing in the background right now?<\/p>\n My fairly wrinkle-free life skipped on.\u00a0 Problems would pop up here and there but nothing I couldn\u2019t handle.\u00a0 For the first five years of our married life, Keith and I stayed fit at the gym and enjoyed scuba diving trips.\u00a0 We were jet setters enjoying two sweet salaries, flying free on Keith\u2019s million-miler points with Delta, cashing in free hotel room points for glam trips to destinations like Bora Bora, Hawaii and Bermuda.\u00a0 We wanted to have kids so we slowly adjusted our lifestyle.\u00a0 We practiced for what it might be like to have kids with our dogs, KayC & Skyler.\u00a0\u00a0 Late in 1998, we welcomed with great joy our first child, a son, a mini-me of Keith.\u00a0 The power of God is so very evident in the miracle of new life.\u00a0 The entire experience left Keith and me in awe of our God as we soaked in our precious new baby boy.\u00a0 My heart was expanding but my body was still contracting with intensifying pain months after the birth.<\/p>\n After a multitude of medical tests and doctors, the following year I was diagnosed with Crohn\u2019s Disease.\u00a0 This chronic, oftentimes debilitating disease, can strike anywhere in the digestive track \u2013 in my case the small intestine.\u00a0 There\u2019s no known cause or cure.\u00a0 If you\u2019re plotting my story on a graph this is where the downward curve begins.\u00a0\u00a0 In time, as the disease progressed and the prescribed meds grew increasingly toxic, the dream of having a second child came into serious question.<\/p>\n On top of this huge uncertainty, my new mom heartstrings coupled with my rapidly declining health brought on an emotional onslaught and a priority war with my beloved career.\u00a0 I knew what I had to do.\u00a0 I had to face head-on the horrible stereotype I slapped on every part-time working mom\u2026I secretly labeled them all high-maintenance, uncommitted slackers.\u00a0 When I wrestled this falsehood to the ground\u00a0 the internal war finally quieted.\u00a0 I chose to go part-time and was grateful to the Ernst & Young leaders who were so accommodating.\u00a0 I was even more grateful when my meds were altered to provide the chance to be a mom a second time.\u00a0 The first bit of good news ended in a heartbreaking miscarriage that stunned Keith and me.\u00a0 The next pregnancy a year later brought news that a healthy little girl was on the way.\u00a0 Joy and relief don\u2019t even begin to describe the emotions surrounding her arrival in 2002.\u00a0 Keith had his mini-me and now I had mine in the gift of a daughter.\u00a0 DNA is a powerful thing.<\/p>\n Immediately following the pregnancy, my health went from bad to worse.\u00a0 This is not how the All-American script is supposed to play out.<\/p>\n The writing was on the wall.\u00a0 Everyone could read it but me.\u00a0 I was sinking deeper and deeper.\u00a0 I could barely manage the home front being a wife and mom, let alone maintain my part-time work schedule. Yet in denial, I clung to it all.\u00a0 I refused to loosen my death grip on my rewarding work with Ernst & Young.\u00a0 Often family and friends had to wrestle me into the car for a trip to St. Joseph\u2019s Hospital rather than a trip downtown to the office.\u00a0 More and more frequent trips to the emergency room resulted in longer and longer hospitalizations.\u00a0 In time, the increased absences from work forced short-term disability on and off for a few years but my declining health finally made long-term disability imminent in 2005.<\/p>\n My weight plummeted.\u00a0 My skin tone turned gray.\u00a0 My labs and blood work would not improve.\u00a0 The abdominal pain was excruciating and the exhaustion from the most basic tasks was surreal for this high-octane woman.\u00a0 I became a medical mystery which prompted two different trips to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.<\/p>\n The disease progressed to the point that I could not get food down due to a two-foot blockage.\u00a0 I faced the choice of re-sectioning surgery or hooking up to a food pump every day so surgery won out.\u00a0 Rather than improving after surgery, the disease spread to the upper third of my digestive tract.\u00a0 One night in the hospital, while experiencing an onset of unspeakable pain, I pounded the nurse call button because I truly thought I was going to die.\u00a0 I thought I would be taken out early.<\/p>\n Keith did too.\u00a0 He feared he and the kids would lose me.\u00a0 The stress of our situation, coupled with some challenges that were brought into the marriage, landed us straight into marriage counseling for crisis situations.\u00a0 Divorce or stay together?\u00a0 That was the question we were wrestling to the ground.<\/p>\n My life seemed to unravel.\u00a0 In the sea of misery and inactivity, I didn\u2019t recognize any part of my life or myself.\u00a0 \u201cWho am I?\u201d\u00a0 The harsh reality hit me: my identity was all wrapped up in my work and performance. A major identity crisis ensued & detox from the drug of doing began.\u00a0 It was excruciating.<\/p>\n I hit rock bottom physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and spiritually.<\/p>\n Life hurt beyond words.\u00a0 I came to the very end of myself.<\/p>\n To make matters worse, I couldn\u2019t even take care of my own family.\u00a0 My amazing extended family, friends and colleagues took over to serve and love the Conley 4 in every capacity imaginable over the next three years.\u00a0 Those I love made an invisible God visible to me.<\/p>\n God was clearly at work. As the layers and layers of how I defined myself were stripped away so too were the complex layers of my religion.\u00a0 It proved a cold comfort when my world went dark.\u00a0 The faulty foundation crumbled when I did.\u00a0 While at the bottom, I experienced Jesus at the core.\u00a0 Pure. Simple. Real.\u00a0 I slowly unbundled religion and Jesus.\u00a0 Some profound occurrences prompted me to start hanging out with Him more and more often\u2026in the morning hours\u2026in my big, cozy chair.<\/p>\n This Bored, Bible-Blind Believer actually bought, opened and started to read the Bible.\u00a0 As I did, I found TRUE FREEDOM.\u00a0 Freedom from the lifelong, guilt-producing, performance burden of trying to earn my way into heaven.\u00a0 (news flash for me:\u00a0 the eternal party is a total gift; freely given never earned)\u00a0 Freedom in learning what God has to say about Himself rather than what people have to say about Him.\u00a0 Freedom in the timeless truth that God is love and only love and His love runs deeper than words can express for each and every one of us.\u00a0 Freedom in knowing that I didn\u2019t have to earn God\u2019s love.\u00a0 In the words of Scripture, I learned my true identity as a beloved child of the King.<\/p>\n My weekday early morning time was spent with God and my Sunday morning time was spent at North Point Community Church soaking in the extraordinary teachings of my Senior Pastor, Andy Stanley.\u00a0 I gradually learned what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Drivenness and duty melted into devotion and desire.\u00a0\u00a0 Rules, routines and rituals transformed into a relationship.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I established a new faith footing and foundation on the ROCK Eternal.\u00a0 Today I know that through His unfailing love, I will not be shaken.\u00a0 No matter what this life throws at me.\u00a0 Today I am grounded in the belief that it\u2019s the relationship not the religion that ROCKS.\u00a0 I am no longer locked up in legalism.\u00a0 I have been liberated by God\u2019s love.<\/p>\n Authentic Christianity is not a checklist.\u00a0 Authentic Christianity is a real, ever-deepening, love relationship with its founder.\u00a0 A natural outpouring of this growing relationship is the growing desire to live and love like Jesus Christ.\u00a0 The new vision for my life is now the vision of we<\/em>ROCK, which grew out of my journey:\u00a0 To Love People In and Into the Body of Christ<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s how the story of we<\/em>ROCK unfolded In The Beginning\u2026<\/a> As for the other parts of my story?\u00a0 The doctors released me from long-term disability in December 2008.\u00a0 Think back.\u00a0 That was just in time for the global market meltdown of epic proportions. The shrinking economy and growing uncertainties left no capacity for me to return to my former position.\u00a0\u00a0 I was shocked and humbled to be living out the headlines.\u00a0 This was, after all, the place I had planned to pick up my All-American script and resume my charmed story.\u00a0 God had other plans.<\/p>\n While at the bottom, I went deeper into all of my important relationships and gained an even fuller understanding of their value.\u00a0 It was the right time to launch the vision that unfolded during those three critical years on long-term disability. It was time to create a brand that\u2019s all about relationships. After all, relationship is where influence is deeply rooted and it’s the foundation for success.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the completeROCKplatform\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n My foundation is ROCKsolid<\/em> as I move into these next chapters of my life.\u00a0 I am still married.\u00a0 Keith and I have some tough work ahead of us but we plan to finish together.\u00a0 Our kids are thriving, healthy, awesome\u2026\u2026\u2026..and saved.\u00a0 Both of them freely chose to be baptized on June 24, 2009.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t expect their decisions for Christ so soon so it was a huge day!\u00a0 Our parenting is far from over but our biggest mission has been accomplished.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n