There’s Extraordinary in the Ordinary

Katy Nichole on When God Shows Up

What if the moment that changed your life looked completely ordinary when it happened?
For Katy Nichole, it did.

Katy shared, “I can look back on my life, and they were maybe ordinary things, but I feel like there’s extraordinary in the ordinary. And maybe one of those things is that I ended up in Christian music from what seemed like an ordinary gig.”

It started with a coffee shop invitation to an art fest in her hometown in Arizona. “I went to an art fest that I had no idea was affiliated with the church. I just was invited by the church’s coffee shop—again, didn’t realize that everything was, like, interconnected.”

She showed up. Played her set. And met someone she wasn’t expecting. “When I got there, I met the lead singer of a band called “The Afters.” And even then, I still didn’t necessarily think anything crazy was going to happen. And I wasn’t actively a worship leader. I wasn’t really necessarily active, even in church—like, I went to church, but I just didn’t feel like I found my people yet.”

“I Cannot Do That”

Josh, the man she met, was persistent. “He invited me into his church, and I wasn’t able to go because—funny enough—I was having back surgery a week after I met him. And he was like, ‘I want you to come sing at my church.’ And I was like, ‘I cannot do that.’”

He kept asking.

“He was like, ‘I really want you to come sing at our church, and I want you to do some special music for us.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, I don’t do Christian music, but I will try to figure that out.’”
But then, what happened next stopped Katy in her tracks.

She said, “In 2019, I sang my first Christian song I wrote, and that day changed my life forever.”

Figuring It Out

She admits, “I had no experience leading worship, and I kind of just stepped into it blindly. I had no idea what I was doing, but I did have a lot of people cheering me on and supporting me, and being like, ‘It’s okay if you mess up. you’re just figuring this out.’”

Before all of this, Katy had a completely different plan for her life.

She continued, “I became a certified medical assistant in high school. I was going to college. I was like, I think this is what I’m going to do with my life. …Now I can look back and say, ‘This was God preparing me for the future.’”

The mistakes she made in those early worship leading years turned out to matter more than she knew.

“Getting that experience, and me making a lot of mistakes in that, allowed me to be more confident now, when I do this for a career and when I go out into the world. And you know, this is a ministry. And I look back on my years of worship leading, and I’m like, that was a ministry that prepared me for this ministry.”

The Thread You Couldn’t See

Katy shared, “I never would have thought that it would lead me to where I am now.”

But looking back, the thread was there the whole time—ordinary moments carrying extraordinary purpose—that God stitched together, preparing her long before she knew she needed it.

If your life looks ordinary right now, pay attention. God has a long history of showing up in exactly those moment.

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