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Northview Grad Promotes Book

A new chapter in the life of 1998 Northview High School graduate Candi Pearson-Shelton was opened Saturday night at the premiere party for her.book Desperate Hope: When Faith in God Overcame My Despair.

It’s the first book for the former Bratt resident, a book that chronicles the journey through the death of her brother Rick Pearson and the glory of God in the midst of the tragedy.

As Rick, her younger brother, battled for his life in the ICU, Candi Pearson-Shelton sat waiting and praying with her family for a miracle. The Scriptures were more precious to them in those hours than ever. As Candi. poured over the words from Isaiah chapter 40, a song was born.

A voice cries in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God…. Then every eye will see the glory of the Lord revealed.

The days and months and years that would follow Rick’s death in September 2005 would be painful, but Candi and her family found in the words of this biblical song a sort of mission—a call to find the glory of the Lord shining through the sorrow and to reflect that glory to all those around them.

The song became the title track on the Dove Award winning album Glory Revealed, and she was soon on the album’s tour with artists Mac Powell, Shane & Shane, Brian Littrell and others.

“The song was finished in approximately five minutes! It was a sweet gift, almost a confirmation that this was our promise from the Lord — that all eyes would see His glory revealed,” Candi wrote in her book. “Everyone involved in the record felt that this was no accident. God is about His glory, and His is about His Word.”

Candi had always been a musician, singing her first solo in church when she was just two-years old. At Northview High School, she was in the band, the chorus and performed in musical theater productions. She knew she was about music, especially music that praised the Lord.

“I’m a musician, and I didn’t know at first that the book was something God. wanted,” Candi told NorthEscambia.com after her Saturday night book release party at Mountain Lake Church in Cumming, GA.

It’s the same church where her brother Rick, then 23, served as worship leader. Leading worship was Rick’s passion, his calling. He was leading worship at a camp in Panama City during the summer of 2005 when he began to feel unreasonably fatigued. The first diagnoses were varied and none as ominous as the final diagnosis — Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

He was admitted to the cancer ward of a Georgia hospital on August 4, and battled a very public and faith centered battle against the disease until his death on September 9, 2005. Daily — sometimes hourly — family members would post the latest on his condition on his blog for the world to see. And the hundreds, if not thousands, would join the family in prayer for Rick and the family. Many, many of those were in the North Escambia area, where mom, Elaine and stepfather, Billy Holk still live.

“I did not start out to write a book, but God had a bigger story to tell,” Candi said Saturday night. It was not to be told through just her music, but through the book that was over four years in the making.

“I write these thoughts out of necessity,” Candi said. “There is value in recording the gentle whispers and hard-learned faith lessons that make up the aftermath, springing up like tender shoots of vivid green grass through the contrasting blackened dry soot. These are my blades of grass, the lessons in the aftermath, told with the heart of an adventurer fresh from the adventure, brimming with tales of terror and scars, of beauty and redemption.”

Candi, her husband Jonathon and son Elias now live in southern California. Candi and Jonathon have recently released a new worship album Sycamore Yet I Will Rejoice. She hopes to continue work and expand the project into a full CD. But for now, it’s the book.

Her book tour is planned — all three stops of it, so far.

“I miss it there sometimes,” Candi said of North Escambia. “It’s so much different than California. You can see the stars at mom’s house in Bratt.”

Every purchase of Candi’s book Desperate Hope: When Faith in God Overcame My Despair includes a free download of the song “One Breath, Then Another.”

“In the salty tears, we discovered the way through is to take one breath…then another,” the chorus of the song says. And that is Candi’s intention — to follow God’s leadership, one breath at a time.

All of the profits from the sale of Desperate Hope will go to the Rick Pearson Memorial Fund, a non-profit that exists to extend the hope of Christ to others by championing the interests and organizations that Rick passionately supported. Monies that are donated to the Rick Pearson Memorial Fund are used to help support organizations like Compassion International, Bigstuf Camps, The 410 Bridge, Passion Conferences and most recently, a scholarship fund for students who want to pursue a ministry of music with an emphasis on missions.

Submitted photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.