When she was just 16, Jaci Velasquez released her first album, Heavenly Place. Five of the songs became number one singles and the album went platinum. She became one of the most sought after artists in Christian and Latin music. She starred in a Target commercial and won New Artist of the Year at the 1997 Dove Awards.
Just a few years later, however, Velasquez found herself married and then shortly after divorced, heavily criticized by her Christian fans and ultimately dropped by her record label. She also starred in a movie poorly received by critics.
In her new book, When God Rescripts Your Life, Velasquez shares more of her life story, interweaving personal testimony with Bible stories to explain how she picked herself up after the dreams she had for her life fell apart.
“I thought all that effort and achievement was me,” Velasquez wrote about that time. “But I had confused my reputation with my character. And when it all blew up, I attempted repair job after repair job until the spackle and the paint couldn’t hold up the wall anymore.”
It was her love of movies, she said, that inspired her to work film metaphors into the book.
“I say that the book is [perfect] for anyone who has ever watched a movie more than once and hoped for a different ending,” Velasquez told Guideposts.org.
If Velasquez were in control of the “script” of her life, things would look different, she said. She would have gone to a normal high school instead of being homeschooled. There wouldn’t be a failed marriage in her past. Her oldest son wouldn’t be autistic.
“God had a different plan,” Velasquez said. “When you stop asking the question, ‘Why me, Lord? Why?’ And you start asking the question, ‘Well, why not me?’ That’s when you can begin to heal.”
For Velasquez that required something she calls flipping the script.
“[Flipping the script] is about rethinking the stories we tell ourselves about who we are,” Velasquez said. “Why are those stories so important and how does changing the way we talk about ourselves and the stories we tell about who we are, how does that change the outcome of our lives and how we see ourselves?”
Finding those answers, Velasquez said, is exactly what she aims to do in her book, which includes a section at the end of each chapter with questions for readers to flip the script in their own lives.
“The [questions] are designed to help you reflect on what you’ve just read,” Velasquez wrote in the book.
For Velasquez, who remarried in 2006 and now has two sons, one of the biggest ways she’s had to flip the script in her own life in recent years has been with her son Zealand, who was diagnosed with autism in 2013. Still, she has found positives from her experience.
“[God] saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself,” Velasquez said. “He saw something that I could be for my son, and that was to be a fighter, to advocate for my son, and to never give up.”
Velasquez’s life has taken twists and turns she never expected, but her faith in God has never wavered. She continues to find ways to change her perspective and seek God’s plan for her life.
“We have the ultimate director if we are willing to tap into His direction,” Velasquez said.
