Member Spotlight: Micah Dillon, My Mended Heart

Why is Micah Dillon a Samaritan Ministries member?

Micah Dillon unexpectedly lost her husband to a heart attack after only 13 years of marriage in 2017. Her faith, however, helped her turn grief and loss into blessings for others through writing and music. She has written two books to date, My Mended Heart and, recently, Heart Scribe Vibes. She also writes weekly on her blog, “Mondays with Micah.”Her debut album, which complements Heart Scribe Vibes, will be released this fall.

Heart Scribe Vibes will include links to the album as a way to turn her loss into an offering and give glory to God as well as a healing balm for others who are hurting.

Upside down: Micah’s world turned upside down when she woke up on June 12, 2017, to find her husband of 13 years, Ben, unconscious in the shower. Despite prayers for a miracle, Ben died after four days in a coma. He had had a “widow maker” heart attack. At the time, his death did not make sense, but blessings would flow from it.

Suddenly Micah, then 36, was raising two young children alone. She stepped away from the real estate business she had built in order to focus on her family. She also suspended her church singing due to voice loss from overuse.

Everything that had defined her—wife, business owner, singer—had disappeared and left her questioning her identity.

Micah’s story reminds us that God’s love is not an abstract concept or just another phrase that’s part of the Christian vernacular. It is deeply personal. God used three distinct steps to move Micah through her grief to who she is today—a mom, a thriving business owner, a singer/songwriter, and an author.

Community helps: Micah had a solid base at her home congregation of 25 years, Rock Church in Franklin, Virginia, as well family there. Her father- and mother-in-law, David and Patty Dillon, had founded Rock Church in 1975 and transitioned the church to her brother- and sister-in-law, Danny and Jill Dillon, in 2015. Ben was principal at the Rock Church School for 20 years. Micah has been leading worship there for seven years.

Members of the church played a significant role in her healing following Ben’s death, meeting for an hour of worship every evening for 17 days.

“It transitioned how we grieved,” Micah says. “One of the gifts I received in this was an eternal perspective, and part of that eternal perspective for me is that we praise our way through things.”

Micah’s use of music to deal with grief comes naturally. She is from a long line of musicians.

“Music is my inheritance, and I’m very thankful for that,” Micah says.

But it wasn’t just her church that stepped in. Ben had served their small community his whole life. He was a barber, having 10 men over weekly for a fresh cut and word of encouragement. He also helped paint friends’ houses, cut grass, and performed many other small but memorable services for friends and neighbors. When he died, residents in turn stepped up and helped Micah and the children for the next two years in practical ways like cutting the grass.

As a newly single mother, Micah felt the need to step down from her job as a real estate agent to tend to her children for the rest of that year. God provided there, too: Another agent handled her business, which helped to catapult that co-worker to where she wanted to be in her own career. Micah is now back working as a Realtor.

Mending her heart: A few months before Ben’s death, a friend had approached Micah after a worship concert and told her she needed to start writing music. Two days later, God gave her the words to a song she titled "Joy of the Lord":

I look to you for help

For the pressure of this life bears down on me

I look to you for help

So, let your presence come and blow through me

Let your presence come until I am free

For the joy of the Lord renews my strength

She led her congregation in that song during worship at her church’s anniversary celebration service two months later. Two days after that, Ben suffered his heart attack. At his funeral, Micah led the crowd of over 800 in this song. In her pain, God had provided a song that would be the first of many she would write and record.

Crisis leads to “aha”: The sudden trauma of being widowed left Micah with an identity crisis and led to questions like “Who am I?” and “What do I have left?” Then Micah's sister-in-law reminded her that she is a daughter of the King. That understanding hit like a ton of bricks.

“I had that ‘aha’ moment,” Micah remembers. “I am a daughter of the King. That is it. It does not matter what I do. It does not matter if I am no longer working as a real estate agent. It does not matter if I am remarried. I am a daughter of the King.”

She even wrote a song about it.

That “aha” moment started a barrage of words and music that became songs, the first of which she titled "Daughter of the King." She believes the Lord gave her five adjectives: A daughter of the King is real, raw, royal, righteous, and regal. There is a balance of praise and rawness. The realization brought her to a place where she was able to tell the Lord that He could take away everything, like He did with Job, and she would not deny Him. No matter what.

Besides finding the truth of who she is, God also revealed the truth of who He is.

She writes,

For too long, I assumed I knew my Creator; I built the story of God and His character in my head without actually seeking and surrendering to Him.

Micah refers to it as “stinking thinking.”

With these new revelations, she moved into the last phase of her grief recovery: action.

“You have to move,” Micah says. “There has to be action.”

My Mended Heart: The newfound truth of her identity and the truth of God changed something in Micah, and she had an insatiable desire to share what the Lord was teaching her. She started journaling during her quiet time, writing down what she felt God was telling her. The head knowledge moved to her heart. When that happens, Micah says, everything changes.

Eventually, journaling turned to writing on her blog and then writing books to help others who may be going through a loss of their own. My Mended Heart, her first book, is filled with 100 quotes from Micah’s writings, with each quote followed by an appropriate Bible verse.

“With trauma, the brain goes in a lot of different places,” Micah says. “The practical part of the book is that it is just one nugget a day, which, for someone in trauma, is all they can take.

“I love talking to widows and finding ways for them to engage in a newfound treasure within. God did not leave us here to drown in our tears but to let our tears be the new current that propels us to the blessed life He has awaiting all of us.”

Heart Scribe Vibes: Her second book, Heart Scribe Vibes, tells the story of each of the 12 songs on her worship album of the same title. At the end of each chapter is a QR code that takes the reader to a private page within her website and gives a simple prerecorded prayer tied to the chapter. There is also a link to the song with lyrics and pages for journaling. Six of those songs are available on her YouTube channel. The full album will be released this fall.

Gifts from heaven: Besides writing books and music, Micah takes a break from leading worship at church each summer and travels to other churches to share her message of hope and to help others experience the truth of God and what He wants to say to them.

Micah says the past five years have been ones of sorting through her spiritual deficiencies, finding her identity, and moving on, something that was particularly important for her children, Stone and Stella.

“When their daddy died in human form, but was raised to life spiritually, I had to make a decision,” Micah says about her children. “Mommy wasn’t going to die spiritually and physically. I needed to make changes for my own health. I started exercising more consistently and eating better instead of choosing to allow food to become my comfort. Jesus truly became my comfort. But I had to take steps towards hope.”

Instead, Micah has surrendered to God, gotten perspective, and exchanged the hopelessness for hope.

“I believe that God is good,” Micah says. “I’ve been living in the fruitfulness of His goodness for the last five years. My husband was gifted with heaven, and Jesus did not stop loving me or my children and family, for I’ve been receiving gifts from heaven ever since.”

Prayer requests

• “New opportunities to serve and grow the widow Kingdom for Jesus.”
• “Good health for my children and me.”
• “As the book and music are released, for Jesus to find the hearts that need to be mended by the Great Mender, our Heavenly Father.”

Kathryn Nielson is a Communications Specialist at Samaritan Ministries.