When God Gives You Eyes to See: The Story Behind Lyndsey McKinnon and Eyes to See Ministry

Some people build businesses. Others build ministries. Lyndsey McKinnon has spent much of her life doing both — often while quietly rebuilding herself.

Today, the Texarkana native is the founder of Eyes to See Ministry, a fast-growing local effort focused on trauma recovery, relationship education, and healing for people navigating abuse, toxic relationships, and deep personal wounds. However, the road that brought her back home to launch the ministry is anything but simple.

Her story stretches from a turbulent childhood in Texarkana to entrepreneurship across multiple states, through personal crisis and spiritual transformation, and ultimately to a calling she now believes God was preparing all along.

“I grew up in Texarkana, but my parents were divorced when I was three. My story really begins, after their divorce, in a home filled with instability, chaos, and deep emotional wounds,” McKinnon says. “My mother struggled with alcoholism, extreme codependency, and a constant need to have a man in her life.” There was always fighting, yelling, door slamming, toxic relationship patterns, and emotional volatility with her mother’s revolving door of boyfriends. “Going to my father’s house every other weekend while my mom had custody of me was my refuge,” she says.

Those early experiences left a mark long before she had the language to understand them.

“As a child, I was exposed to far too much, far too young,” she says. “I carried emotional weight that no little girl should have to carry. I was made to feel small, adult issues were placed on me before I could process them, and I learned early to become hyperaware of everyone else’s emotions.”

Children in chaotic environments often develop survival strategies, and McKinnon says hers became a relentless drive for achievement. “When you grow up in that kind of environment, you do not spend your childhood simply being a child,” she explains. “My coping mechanism became performance. I tried to do more, be more, accomplish more, achieve more, and become whatever I thought people needed me to be.” That drive would eventually lead to impressive accomplishments at a very young age. McKinnon graduated from high school at just sixteen.

However, one stabilizing presence made a critical difference in her early life. McKinnon’s father gained custody, and she was raised largely by him and her grandmother.  

“My dad was my safe parent,” she says. “He was godly, steady, grace-filled, and prayerful. I truly do not know who I would be today had I not had that one safe parent in my life.” That experience shaped one of the lessons she now shares frequently with parents. “One safe place is better than no safe place,” McKinnon says. “One healthy parent can make an extraordinary difference in the life of a child. You may not be able to control everything your child experiences, but you can be their refuge.”

McKinnon’s early adulthood moved quickly. She briefly pursued a career path in the Air Force, training for a specialized contract rarely offered to women. When that opportunity fell through, she redirected her energy into the fitness industry. “I became a personal trainer, which led to Zumba, which led to my studio,” she says.

At just nineteen years old, McKinnon opened Texarkana’s first Zumba studio. Demand grew rapidly. “Women wanted more than just cardio, so I developed my own program, certified other instructors in it, and got certified in nutrition so I could better serve the women coming to me,” she says. “At one point, my classes regularly had over one hundred women in them.” However, fitness was not the only venture she pursued.

While working at a local flea market and building furniture for resale, McKinnon recognized a gap in the local market. “I saw a need in the community for something better,” she explains. “A flea market or vendor space that felt cleaner, brighter, more welcoming, and better run.” With encouragement from the owner of the market where she worked, she opened the first Owl’s Nest vendor mall while simultaneously launching her fitness business.

From the outside, success seemed to be stacking up quickly. Internally, life was unraveling. “I was trying to fill an internal void with achievement, relationships, and success,” she says. “But none of it could fix what was broken inside.” In her early twenties, that pain reached a breaking point. “I attempted suicide and should not even be here today,” McKinnon says quietly. “God spared my life, and that moment marked a shift.”

Even then, healing would take years.

After a divorce and significant personal losses, McKinnon entered what she now recognizes as an abusive relationship that lasted nearly eight years. Looking back, she says the relationship began with overwhelming affection. “I met a man who made me feel chosen, adored, and finally enough,” she says. “After a lifetime of feeling unworthy and unseen, it felt like the answer to everything I had ever longed for.”

Soon after meeting, she moved to Kansas and married him. What followed, she says, was a marriage shaped by emotional and psychological abuse. “For years I did not have language for what I was living through,” McKinnon explains. “I just knew I was constantly trying to earn peace, trying to manage his moods, trying to become the right version of myself to keep things stable.”

Remarkably, during those same years, she built a series of successful businesses. “With less than two thousand dollars, I negotiated a lease with abated rent and opened Owl’s Nest in Topeka, Kansas,” she says. The venture expanded quickly. “It grew rapidly and eventually became a 23,000-square-foot store,” she says. “The next year, I opened another location after being offered the chance to purchase a 16,000-square-foot building.”

Soon after, she launched a nonprofit thrift store called The Giving Tree. “It was created to serve the community with dignity and affordability,” she says. Despite pandemic challenges and other setbacks, the nonprofit continues to thrive today. “In 2025 alone, The Giving Tree gave away over $145,000 worth of items through our voucher program to thousands of families in Topeka,” McKinnon says.

Behind the scenes, however, life was still unraveling. “I was also overworking to avoid my home life,” she says. “Behind closed doors, my marriage had become a place of fear, confusion, coercive control, rage, humiliation, and instability.” The stress eventually manifested physically. “I coped through binge eating, and at one point I found myself at 210 pounds at only five feet tall,” she says. “It was the realization that I had become unrecognizable to myself.”

That realization became a turning point.

McKinnon’s healing journey began through counseling and intensive personal work. A major shift came during a retreat program in Tennessee. “I thought it was simply a program for high performers experiencing burnout,” she says. “Instead, it exposed how much my childhood wounds were dictating my adult choices.”

Through further counseling and a retreat with the organization Called to Peace, she began to understand the dynamics of narcissistic abuse. “I had never once called myself a victim of abuse,” she says. “I truly thought abuse happened to other women, not to women like me.” During that season, she experienced what she describes as a profound spiritual realization. “God spoke to me in that season in a way I will never forget,” McKinnon says. “He showed me that He was not ignoring my prayers. He was waiting for me to have eyes to see.”

That phrase would eventually become the name of her ministry.

“The name ‘Eyes to See’ comes from a phrase Jesus used many times in scripture: ‘Those who have eyes to see, let them see,’” she explains. For McKinnon, the phrase represents a turning point many people experience during healing. “When someone has lived inside trauma or toxic relationships for a long time, they often cannot see clearly what is happening,” she says. “The patterns feel normal because they are all they have ever known.”

Healing, she says, often begins with clarity. “So the name Eyes to See represents that awakening — the moment when confusion turns into clarity, shame turns into understanding, and someone finally begins to see themselves and their story through truth instead of fear.”

After leaving the marriage and finalizing her divorce, McKinnon began training as a biblical counselor while helping other women navigate abuse recovery and court processes. “Women would sit across from me and pour out their stories, often things they had never told anyone before,” she says. Those conversations eventually led to something larger.  “I began to realize that what I had walked through had given me the ability to see things clearly that many people could not yet see for themselves,” McKinnon says.

In 2023, she sensed a strong pull to return to Texarkana. “I felt God clearly call me back,” she says. After buying a home in town, she began meeting women informally for counseling. “I started meeting with women wherever I could, always for free,” McKinnon says.

Eventually, she leased a counseling office despite having no plan to charge clients. Soon after, she began teaching a church class titled “Is It Abuse?” which eventually evolved into the broader course now known as “Eyes to See: Healing from Hurts, Traumas, and Toxic Relationships.”

Attendance grew rapidly. “Women came in droves because the need was so deep,” she says. By spring 2025, the classes had outgrown their available space. Then, in what she describes as an unexpected moment of provision, a solution appeared. “I ran into John Michael Bullock at Local Habit,” McKinnon recalls. “I mentioned that I was praying for a building before classes started the next week.”

Bullock offered a solution almost immediately. “He told me he had a building and took the time to show it to me,” she says. “It was an old church called DWELL, complete with a sanctuary and chairs — exactly what we needed.” The space now hosts weekly classes. “It was as though God had prepared it ahead of time,” she says.

McKinnon now counsels men and women through Eyes to See Ministry while continuing to teach classes focused on trauma recovery and healthy relationships.

One of the first things she tells new participants is that healing rarely looks the way people expect. “Healing does not mean life suddenly becomes perfect,” she says. “It does not mean you never feel anxious again or that the past never affects you.” Instead, recovery often begins with understanding how trauma affects the body and mind. “For many people, their nervous system has spent years in survival mode,” she explains. That state, she says, shapes nearly every aspect of life. Recovery involves learning to regulate that response and rebuild a sense of safety.

Another powerful moment in the healing process, she says, happens when people are finally believed. “For many people, it is something they have not experienced in a very long time — sometimes ever,” McKinnon says. That moment can restore dignity after years of doubt and manipulation.

For people quietly carrying pain, McKinnon hopes her story sends a simple message. “You are not crazy. You are not alone. And you are not broken,” she says. Many survivors of trauma spend years believing something is fundamentally wrong with them. “The truth is, many people are not broken — they are wounded, confused, and reacting to situations they never had the tools to understand,” she says. “If someone reading this feels like they are silently carrying something heavy, my encouragement would be this: do not stay isolated.”

McKinnon also speaks directly to young women navigating relationships and identity. “First, know your worth before you hand your heart to someone else,” she says. Without a strong sense of identity, she warns, relationships can become sources of validation rather than partnership. “If you do not already know your value, it becomes very easy to stay in relationships that slowly chip away at your confidence and identity.”

She also encourages young women to prioritize character over chemistry. “Chemistry can feel exciting and intense,” McKinnon says. “But character is what determines whether a relationship will actually be healthy and safe.”

Boundaries, she adds, are essential. “It is not unkind to protect your peace,” she says. “It is not wrong to say no.”

Each Wednesday evening, women continue gathering at DWELL on North Bishop Street for the growing Eyes to See classes. For McKinnon, those rooms full of people seeking healing represent something far bigger than a program.

They represent a future still unfolding — one story at a time.

If anyone is needing assistance, please visit http://www.eyestoseeministry.com.

Nomination: I would like to wholeheartedly nominate Lyndsey McKinnon for recognition with Eyes to See ministry. Her work is far more than counseling—it is a lifeline, a source of hope, and a steady beacon for those navigating domestic chaos, childhood wounds, and the long, often painful road toward healing.

What makes her remarkable is not only her professional skill, but the heart with which she serves! She doesn’t see people as problems to solve, but as souls to honor! She creates a space where people feel safe enough to speak the truth, brave enough to feel again, and empowered enough to rebuild the pieces of their story with dignity. – Marcy Marks