HELPING PREGNANT women has been woven into the fabric of Amanda Curtis’s life. During the 1980s, both her mother and her aunt served as pregnancy help counselors, and in the early 2000s her father co-founded a nonprofit in Nashville that provided ultrasound equipment to pregnancy care centers. “In 2014, my father passed away from cancer,” said Curtis. “Standing at the funeral home mourning his passing was a pivotal point for me. It was there that my father’s board chairman asked me to fill the void he’d left. This simple request would shape my future in a big way.”
“In 2017, I was climbing the ladder at Boeing and serving on the board of my father’s nonprofit when I felt a tug on my heart for Lincoln County. In 2018, I resigned from Boeing after a 15-year career and set about the task of building a nonprofit from the ground up.”
“As Rick Warren once said, ‘Kay (his wife) and I have come to the conclusion that life is not a series of mountaintops and valleys, but rather a set of railroad tracks where sorrow and joy happen side by side.’ This describes my journey from the very beginning to now. I hold both sorrow and joy – the sorrow of losing two incredible parents who taught me the value of life, and the joy of carrying on their legacy. I held the sorrow of grieving my dad, while also holding the joy of being invited to join his nonprofit. Even now, there are days at Crossroads where we hold the sorrow of a rescue that slipped through our fingers, while also holding the joy of babies who almost didn’t make it. The tracks of sorrow and joy run parallel — which one we focus on is largely a decision we get to make.”
Curtis, along with an incredible board, staff, and team of dedicated volunteers has worked tirelessly to make the center a place where loving your neighbor is put into action every day in Lincoln County. “Our baby boutique is fully stocked by our community with everything a family needs: diapers, wipes, cribs, crib mattresses — it’s an amazing “store” where items are redeemed through a points-based system. Our core services are pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, but we also offer support through pregnancy decision coaching, parenting education, adoption connections, material support, pregnancy loss support, post-abortion healing, abortion pill reversal, personal budgeting, sexual risk avoidance education, and simply a listening ear. We get in the pit with our clients and walk through those hard places with them. We do it all without judgment in a safe, loving environment, all completely cost-free regardless of one’s socioeconomic factors.”
“We don’t want to be the best-kept secret in Lincoln County,” says Curtis. “Follow and share our posts on Facebook, talk about us to your friends, schedule a walk-through, and encourage those in your circle to get to know us. Help us spread the word about what Crossroads has to offer.” GN
