I understand sometimes we go through life just living it without ever realizing that our journey is taking us somewhere. We think we can guess where we are going, but have little idea as to the actual plans God has in store, so when we hit those “memorial stones,” do we realize how far He has brought us & how big the plan actually was.

My name is Missy (Dr. Melissa Hood now), but 41 years ago, you would have seen me as just some girl struggling with life. I was struggling with learning (Severe ADHD/Dyslexia- & because I’m also a prophetess- but didn’t know, I felt like a walking/talking radio tower every day as I lived my life). I would find myself knowing things about people, seeing visions (randomly), and I had this FAITH, this BIG BIG FAITH, to where I would tell my parents, “Mom, Dad, I asked God for this/that, and I know He’s going to give it to me.” To which they would freak out (because my parents weren’t rich, and they knew they didn’t have the finances for the thing I was believing for). But (every time) GOD DID. So I learned to DREAM BIG right from the start, and my family watched as God took me into bigger and bigger dreams that most people only dreamed about. However, on the sidelines, I still could not progress/learn. 

As a young kid, I was carefree, and very happy because I knew my family deeply loved me. My life was spiritually free until I turned 7 years old, and began to be sexually abused by someone outside my family. That was when the darkness began to settle. The abuse went on for 3 years until I got smart and realized that if I stayed close to my dad at family functions, the perpetrator couldn’t touch me. So I did; & the abuse stopped, but the darkness didn’t. I later learned that the enemy was after my prophetic gift and my gift of Love (some are given the gift of faith, others joy, but very few are given the gift of Love from birth). Where the Holy Spirit would teach me that his presence had been instilled in my vessel (and in a few others like myself) from the womb. To prepare us for the Joel 2:5 Army, God was raising up for these end times. But we’ll get to that later in the story. 

After the abuse, my life spiraled out of control causing Bulimia (because I could control my body when I was in emotional pain). I kept spiraling downward until my 22nd year which was the year when my entire life fell on its head, the day the enemy took the only protection I had known because, up to that point, away. I didn’t really know God. I knew Him in my prayers, but to know Him, well, that would be the beginning of my journey on Oct 31, 1987. The day my dad went down in a field cutting wood on a family outing. 

He died instantly of an aneurysm, and I was the only one who wasn’t there for my friend. I had been out partying the night before with my boyfriend, doing drugs, drinking, and doing all the things my Christian family had raised me not to do. 

At this point, I was overloaded, frustrated, and trying to drink my pain away, while fighting an eating disorder, and I felt SO STUCK in life. And I had this HUGE dream of designing in Hollywood. Never dreaming that my testimony would be the thing that God wanted me to use as a gift. But it’s our past (when we overcome it) that gives us the greatest gifts through Christ.

I was ANGRY- SO ANGRY at God for the loss of my dad/my protector from all the perpetrators of life, and it was all gone. So, I had to learn to defend myself. 

but do you understand that when you have the gift of Love, you live life to the fullest until it overflows, EVEN if you live it wrongly. 

You do everything to the extreme because that’s the nature of faithful Love. To love and live life DEEPLY, everyone around me saw it in me as I began self-destructing. 

In my 26th year, I broke up with my boyfriend, enrolled in college, and decided to go back to school to start learning about my God. The God I had only known about in my prayers. I felt Love calling me back to Himself- my most genuine sense of self. And I started having this unbelievable drawing to help people. I had actually had it since I was 8 years old because, at that point, I was a year into the abuse, and maybe I felt like no one was there to help me. My dad tried; he knew something was wrong, but he didn’t know what, and he was desperately trying to help me before he died (both of my parents were).  

God would allow me to walk in heaven a year later to tell him “goodbye for now,” as my dad told me, “God’s going to use you to help bring the Glory/Love back into His Church. Life just kept moving me onward after that.  

I had this BIG faith that kept telling me, “Move towards Hollywood- THAT will be your ticket out of the pain, and then you can BE SOMEBODY!” So I got my BA in design and spent the next 28 years designing for college & church live productions; I handled budgets up to $150,000.00 for choir and show costumes. 

Sometimes, making theatrical costumes ranging up to $5000.00 (for Mi Mi Rogers on the film Stop Loss). What propelled me into film occurred after our million-dollar production, the “Austin Christmas Pageant,” which I designed yearly for about 4 years.  

In the 4th year, I would find myself standing in the middle of a room full of pastors when my choir director would spin around in front of over 500 people, telling me, “Missy, we’re going to pray for you! We’re going to pray for you to design for churches!” 

To which I quickly spun around, telling him, “DON’T YOU DARE! I’M GOING TO HOLLYWOOD!”

Immediately, I felt this silence fill the room and this sadness that I couldn’t put my finger on until years later. That sadness was the Holy Spirit as I had declined His invitation to come up OUT of religion/OUT of my knowing of who I thought He was and get to know my NEW protector! My Father in Heaven. As I left the show wrap party that night, I heard a voice say to me:

“Ok, if this is what you “Think” you want to do, I’ll let you chase this dream that you think is of Me, but I’m going to visit you in a while, and we are going on a journey.” I thought the conversation was strange but dismissed it as quickly as it had come, and I was off to pursue my dreams of design and fame. The thing that would give me identity and value. 

Little did I know the only way to find identity was through My Father in Heaven, a lesson I would later learn. 

I spent the next 10 years designing giant movie sets for Paramount and Warner Brothers films such as “Gunman & Stop Loss” (with Mi Mi Rogers (Austin Powers Movie), Sean Patrick Flannery, Joey Lauren Adams (Big Daddy with Adam Sandler), Cerin Hines (Tinker Tailor Solder Spy), Ryan Phillipe & Channing Tatum). 

God has allowed me to meet so many stars and be connected to all the fame in the world, but even that never settled my soul. 

It wasn’t until I walked into a set trailer one day and said, “I hate this job!” I realized that this wasn’t my passion. HOWEVER, designing came naturally to me while learning academics DID NOT (because of severe ADHD). 

I had tried to work in the working world for years (outside of design/arts), and I wound up losing 40 jobs in 15 years because of how I learned.

But I was at this place where I was unsatisfied, very broken, and knew I needed a new life. Or something. I had gotten so far away from my Christian roots that I had lost myself and the purest sense of Love in what Love really is. Hence, just like the voice had told me years earlier, “I’m going to come for you and take you on a journey, MY REAL JOURNEY BEGAN!

God would pull me out of the film industry because I prayed for stars ALL THE TIME on set (I didn’t know why, I just felt compelled to out of compassion), and He would put me into a mundane BORING technology job THAT HE maintained so that I would learn to trust Him. As a provider, protector, keeper, and DEFENDER, I would begin to understand more about the Father I had been missing. 

God connected me into prophetic ministries where He would use my vessel to minister to people nonstop here in Austin, New York, & New Jersey until I went through a betrayal with my best friend (prayer partner) with 2 other leaders in our city. During those 9 years in technology, I learned about business, myself, and my God, for which the preparations had begun. 

God would also have me face my biggest fears of learning, to which He would place me into my TRUE dream of attaining a Masters in Occupational Education, earning me awards for my Master’s Thesis. 

My thesis was written to help those suffering from ADD/ADHD/ALL learning disabilities and would be the ticket that would also get me invited into my Ph.D. program.

Why is this important? During my “BA years in college,” God had shown me patterns in the ways that I had learned, so I realized if I could develop coping mechanisms, I could pass classes (with A’s) in some of the most demanding professors classes in the university. I knew I was onto something, and I was because of the conferences I would later be invited to speak at to help\ students with Disabilities. So! God was now introducing me into public speaking. God would also have me write my first book called “Memoirs of an ADHD Mind: God Was a Genius in the Way He Made Me” (Amazon, Barnes and Noble & at Missyhood.com).  

It’s also important because out of ALL high school students with ADHD, only 12-15% graduate. Out of that percentage, only 7% attain their BA. Out of that percentage, only 4% advance to earn their Masters. And out of that 4%, ONLY 1.2% WILL EVER ATTAIN A Ph.D./Ed.D.! 

God helped me to graduate with my Ed.D. (in Educational Development/Transformational Leadership) on May 18, 2018. He took me all the way through to show me that I wasn’t stupid- I just learned differently, as DO most prophets and people who are visionaries. 

I told God way back when He started me on this journey- “You interrupted my life to have me follow YOU and Kingdom, and if we’re going to do this, then I want to be the “best of the best!”

I want to help your people, warriors, intercessors, and Front Runners – those called to battle at the front lines of the body of Christ. So that they can show others the way to REALLY pray. 

Also, God was teaching me a NEW WAY TO PRAY during this time. To weld His sword with such agility & strategy for high-level warriors, enabling them to take challenging regions BACK for Christ. 

Meaning: He’s turning this ship around, baby! He’s raising a Joel 2:5 army, and a particular regiment of warriors called the Ps 104:4 (Ministers of Fire! the Josephs!) to teach His body how to fight back into the warm, unconditional Love of Jesus. 

And these warriors have been “Primed” by fire; we were born into fire, and our entire lives have been consumed by “strange fire (or the onslaughts of the enemy) to the point of Fragmentation/brokenheartedness. 

We are now in a season where God is teaching us how to stand back up to where we KNOW how we are to walk. We’ve been raised out of the pain of the past to where we now use the past as a platform to help others learn how to climb their mountains. 

Church Reformer Leaders that are preparing the end time Army for such a time as this! Teaching them how to maneuver through the 4 contraction points of the year (the birthing of Jesus Christ) through His remnant so that we can be the LOYAL, HONORING bride He meant for us to be. 

Think about it! Would you ever “befriend or date/OR EVEN MARRY anyone who dishonored or betrayed you? Absolutely NOT! Neither would God, so why should we think He would accept any less from us? He’s demanding a pure, spotless bride, a bride that is truly ON FIRE for Him, passionately in Love (in the spirit) to where we can show others how to get back into the “real deal!” 

Back into His spirit like we once walked as a society but at deeper levels. 

Back into truth & love the way God always meant for us to walk in. 

Blessings, 

Dr. Missy Hood