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THE JOURNEY / 2015 SUMMER
A Different Type of Fairy Tale Melinda Elledge Melinda Elledge was searching for her knight in shining armor. Instead, she found the Prince of Peace.
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ife hadn’t exactly turned out how Melinda Elledge pictured it would. She described herself as the type of woman “who lived in a fantasy world.” She expected to have a fairytale wedding with her knight in shining armor, a man whom her parents adored. She expected her father to walk her down the aisle to meet that man. She expected to have a big family. At 38 years old, she had yet to experience the “fairytale”. Elledge grew up in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. She was raised in a Christian home, and most Sunday mornings, she could be found sitting on a pew at Fairplains Baptist Church. She doesn’t remember the day, the month, or even the year that she walked to the altar to accept Christ, but she remembers it being the natural thing to do. “It’s almost like it was just the way you were supposed to do it,” she said. “I don’t remember a difference in my life, and I think I struggled with that.” Throughout middle and high school, Elledge was close with her youth group and the pastor at Fairplains. The pastor, especially, was instrumental in showing her what a Christian should be. “It definitely served as an important piece of who I became today based on the fact that I had that foundation,” she said. But Elledge “was just a kid.” When she moved to Charlotte to begin attending The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, her life began to change. Her friends from youth group all went to different areas, and they no longer shared a weekly Bible study meeting. She made new friends who didn’t share her values and didn’t have her church background. “Once I graduated high school, … I really, truly became the definition of living for this world,” she said. “You hear people say a lot of times about being unequally yoked with a partner, but I think the same thing applies to friendships ... Instead of taking the high road and being the witness to [my new friends] that I could have been, I got sucked in the other way with not seeing the impact they were having on my life.” Soon after starting school, Elledge decided to stop attending
