It All Started with the Oil is Christina Gray's deeply personal account of trauma, faith, motherhood, and the journey toward restoration.
Drawing from her experiences as a military veteran, wife, mother, worship leader, and woman of faith, Christina shares the wounds that shaped her life and the encounters that ultimately challenged her to confront them. Her story moves through military sexual trauma, miscarriage, her daughter's struggles with ADHD and Tourette's syndrome, depression, anxiety, therapy, motherhood, essential oils, and her evolving relationship with God.
For years, Christina had learned to survive by pushing forward. The military taught her to place the mission first and herself last. But wounds left unattended did not disappear. Eventually, what had been buried began affecting her body, relationships, family, and sense of self.
As Christina sought healing spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically, she began recognizing a pattern in the way she experienced God's presence throughout difficult seasons. That pattern became the 3R's Method: Revelation, Restoration, and Rejoicing.
Revelation taught her to recognize truth and become aware of what God was revealing. Restoration invited her to confront what had been wounded and participate in the process of becoming whole. Rejoicing taught her to identify God's faithfulness and find reasons for gratitude even while walking through difficulty.
Blending memoir, Scripture, personal reflection, and lessons drawn from lived experience, It All Started with the Oil invites readers to examine their own stories differently. Christina does not present healing as a perfect or linear process. Instead, she shares the setbacks, questions, discoveries, relationships, and moments of faith that helped her continue moving forward.
For readers navigating trauma, loss, motherhood, emotional wounds, spiritual growth, or seasons that have challenged their faith, Christina's story offers a message of hope: the difficult parts of your story do not have to be wasted.
There can be revelation in what you have endured, restoration in what has been wounded, and something worth rejoicing about even while the journey continues.