Andrea Kaye Goodman | Christian Retreat Host, Speaker, and Founder of The Candlelit Letters
Here I Am Lord
Send Me
A testimony in two parts: the road God walked me through, and the room He sent me to build for you.
Let me take you on a journey. One where a girl from Arizona ended up writing letters to Christian women all over the world. The story is mine, but the road is yours too. Snuggle up with a cozy blanket, and stay for a bit.
There's a reason you found this page today, and it is not an accident.
Every great calling usually begins with resistance. And overtime, it turns into a burning desire to step into it, accompanied with a Heaven YES. This is what I experienced as a coach inside the personal development industry. I sat in those conference rooms for years. I learned what they had to teach. And eventually I learned what they didn't. Then I stopped chasing a seat at their table and started building a new room entirely. One rooted in scripture. Lit by the Holy Spirit. A Christian alternative to personal development, designed for the woman leader who already knows she is called to something greater. That woman is you. The road was long, the obedience was loud, and the space is here now because YOU were always meant to walk into it. Who is on the other side of your obedience? They are praying for you to step into the gifts God blessed you with right now.
FAITH IN THIS INDUSTRY IS ITS OWN REBELLION.
I am an author, an investor, a connector, a speaker, and a global evangelist. A wife to Dan. A mother to Ryder, Reagan, and Londyn. But more than any of those things, I am a woman who said yes when the Lord asked, and then learned what the yes actually cost. Even though it was incredibly difficult, I would say yes again. Every time.
And the reason I am telling you all of this is so you know the road is survivable. Whatever you are in the middle of right now, it has a way out. I am proof.
I hold a degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. I have coached thousands of women across two decades. I danced on an NFL sideline and coached on it.
I have built and sold companies, lost everything in a recession, and rebuilt from the ground twice.
HOW I WALK WITH YOU, THE THREE ROOMS
CALLED. COMMISSIONED. CONSECRATED. CALLED. COMMISSIONED. CONSECRATED.
DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR
A luxury Christian snail mail subscription
THE CANDLELIT LETTERS | ROOM ONE
ANYTHING I CAN DANCE TO. PREDICTABLE, I KNOW
IN MY EAR
BURT'S BEES CHAPSTICK
NEVER WITHOUT
THE SPA WITH SIX HOURS AND A BLANK CALENDAR
GUILTY PLEASURE
ANYWHERE WITH A COAST
TRAVEL
SPOT
PRAYING FOR A FRIEND
PICK ME UP
THE WORD BEFORE WORK
daily habit
A TABLE WITH MY PEOPLE
HAPPY
PLACE
THE PARTICULARS
What it had to do with was rooms. The ones I would walk into. The ones I would walk out of. The ones I would eventually build for women like you. I did not see them coming. I am not sure anyone does
BEYOND
the PEN
BEFORE I BUILT ANY OF THIS, I WAS A GIRL FROM ARIZONA WHO GOT NOMINATED "MOST LIKELY TO BE INDEPENDENTLY WEALTHY" IN JUNIOR HIGH. SILLY AS IT SOUNDS, THAT PHRASE BECAME A LAUNCHING PAD. IT LIT SOMETHING IN ME I COULD NOT NAME YET. IT TOOK YEARS TO LEARN HOW LITTLE OF IT HAD TO DO WITH MONEY.
THE BECOMING
PREPARING
BUILDING
STEADYING
SCALING
SENDING
Before I knew What I Was Being Prepared For
I danced on the NFL sidelines in Arizona for four seasons and coached on them for two. After September 11th, I flew on a cargo plane to raise morale for the troops, slept in military quarters, and came home a different woman. I earned my aesthetician license and worked the floors of the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa. I was building a body of training nobody else could see the point of: discipline, grit, the ability to smile through what hurts, and how to honor people whose calling is bigger than yours. None of it looked like preparation at the time. All of it was.
PREPARING
BUILDING
STEADYING
SCALING
SENDING
The Credit Card and the Open Doors
My mom went through a long battle with breast cancer, chemotherapy and radiation and she beat it! She also let me charge two thousand dollars on her credit card, so I could start my first company. Boot Camp Babes was born. Arizona named me one of its 30 Under 30, I hit six figures in six months and almost made The Amazing Race that same year. I sold the company and moved to Texas. Two months later, I found myself in a divorce, a bankruptcy, and a non-compete that would not allow me to work. I started over with nothing. A few short months later, I had opened the first Orange Theory Fitness in Arizona, gone on to be a head trainer for the company, and begun studying social media in earnest. Every door that closed, the Lord opened another. I was learning to walk through them faster.
PREPARING
BUILDING
STEADYING
SCALING
SENDING
What the Money Was Actually For
One of my first live events, over a decade ago.
I launched Babes Empowering Babes and held women's empowerment conferences that still rank among the favorite work I have ever done. There is something holy about a room full of women showing up for each other. I knew, even then, that I was being trained for rooms like it. Around the same season, I perfected my high-ticket coaching program and added Instagram influencer to my resume because the work demanded it. The money came in. The schedule was mine. The vision was meeting the bank account. And the Lord, in His quiet way, was teaching me what most women never get told: the income was not the assignment. The income was the equipment for the assignment. He had built every dollar, every follower, every front-row seat for a reason He had not yet revealed. By the time He did, the answer was already on my tongue. Here I am. Send me.
PREPARING
BUILDING
STEADYING
SCALING
SENDING
The Room God Asked Me to Build Out of Rest
Mom passed on August 26th, 2024. The silence was the loudest thing I have ever heard. In the months that followed, I went through what she had kept — almost nothing of value, a few sweet letters from people she had loved — and the Lord whispered the next room. The Candlelit Letters, a Christian subscription box for women, is the only business I have ever built out of rest. She funded the first one in 2007. In her absence, she funded this one too. The Sapphire Court convened soon after — Christian retreats for women, sacred gatherings rooted in scripture. AWAKEN began, a Christian blog for women leaders. And now my children are old enough to help build it with me — Ryder the young entrepreneur, Reagan the artist, Londyn at the keyboard. The road has been long. I would walk every mile of it again to land here, with my pen in my hand, with the Lord at my back, with my children at the table, and with your name already in the next envelope.
What is the question no one ever asks you, that you wish they would?
What does it cost to refuse the industry that built you. The answer is more than money. The answer is rooms, friends, invitations, and a thousand quiet doors closing in a single year.
When have you most felt the Lord answer you directly?
On a hospital floor before Londyn, after Mom passed, and every time I sit down to write a letter and the first sentence is already there.
What is the trait you have refused to perform, even when it cost you?
Restraint. The Lord did not call me to be palatable.
What do you want the woman reading this to know, more than anything else?
That her quiet years are not wasted. He is preparing her for a room only she can walk into.
If you had to name the prayer you pray most often, what would it be?
*Here I am. Send me.* It is the prayer I started saying before I knew what I was agreeing to.
What truth has cost you the most to tell?
That faith and personal development cannot share the same throne, and that pretending otherwise nearly cost me my own.
What is the room you wish you had left sooner?
Every room where I felt the Holy Spirit grow quiet. I now leave the moment I feel that quieting.
What is the lie you most often hear repeated to women?
That softness is a strategy. It is not. Softness is a fruit of the Spirit, not a brand position.
What does your mother's death still teach you about being a mother yourself?
That the small moments are the inheritance. The voicemail. The handwritten note. The seat at the table on a Tuesday. She left those things, and I am leaving them for my own.
What do you carry that no one sees?
The cost of obedience. Every yes to the Lord has been a no to something the world told me I should want. I do not regret a single one. I also do not pretend they were free.
If you have arrived here, you are someone who reads to the end. A rare quality. The road has earned a few honest answers in return. Mine are below.
the record
OFF
Esther 4:14
"Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?"