by Beth Riner, Messenger Staff Writer

“From My Front Row Seat,” a new book by Susan Binkley, founder of Blue Monarch, is currently near the top of Amazon’s bestseller chart in Inspirational Christianity.

“I feel—like the title of my book—that God gave me a front row seat to the greatest show on earth,” Binkley said. “Putting this book together forced me to think about what’s happened here, and it’s overwhelming to think about the lives that have been changed.”

Blue Monarch, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, is a Christian residential recovery program for women and their children overcoming abuse and addiction.

“‘From My Front Row Seat’ is the name of my blog,” Binkley explained. “I started doing my blog posts in 2015, so I do one pretty much once a month. A couple of years ago, I decided to put them together in the form of a book.”

Her initial attempt to work with a well-known Christian publisher was met with frustration when the publisher sent her four pages of changes, objecting to profanity (use of the expressions Holy Cow and Oh My Word) and gore (a recounting of a story where a little girl made a puddle on the kitchen floor). Deciding this was not the publisher for her, Binkley took her book elsewhere. She found a Christian publisher, the Fedd Agency based in Austin, Texas, who didn’t feel the need to water down her stories and largely credited it to divine intervention.

“The timing turned out perfect because the book was released just four days before our twentieth anniversary,” she said. “Looking back, it would have been great if I’d just planned it that way.”

Another challenge was whittling down her posts.

“I had twice as many stories that could fit into a book,” she said. “I worked with a really good editor who helped me cut out pretty much 50 percent of what I had. We felt like what we kept gave a pretty good, broad picture of Blue Monarch.”

Binkley had several purposes for writing the book.

“I want the book to show that people can truly be healed of addiction and that they don’t have to white-knuckle their recovery the rest of their lives. We really want to change the way this country treats addiction,” she said.

“I also wanted to honor the journeys of the women here, I wanted to give hope for people who have similar struggles, I wanted people to see that miracles do indeed still happen, and that there is tremendous power in prayer,” she added. “I just really wanted people to be entertained and inspired. I think it’s a great example of how God uses imperfect and even reluctant people to do his work.”

During speaking engagements, Binkley often notices people in the audience who are tearful. “It’s not always that they’re tearful about what I’m sharing—they’re kind of grieving over the fact they felt really called to do something and didn’t do it. I hate to hear that because I feel like they probably have missed out—not that it’s ever too late. I would hate to think now that I had missed out on everything I’ve experienced here if I had said no or just ignored that calling.”

Her journey to founding Blue Monarch is a remarkable one.

Binkley, 66, who grew up in Franklin, Tenn., earned a fine arts degree from UTK, directed the art gallery at Belmont College, sold her original artwork at Cumberland Gallery, and then ran a huge horse boarding operation called Xanadu Farm in Triune—the Budweiser Clydesdales even stayed at her farm.

“I’ve had a lot of different jobs,” she said. “I can look back and see how each one of them helped me do what we’re doing here now.”

In 1995, when she was 38, she had a literal dream that would not only change her life but the lives of the many women and children who have since come through the doors of Blue Monarch.

“In this dream, I was required to sit at a large table, and they placed in front of me a thick book. I knew that I was required to read that book. I didn’t really want to because it was so big, but I felt like it was important. I sat there and read that book from cover to cover, and it was all about how you would put together something like Blue Monarch. It even described how the women would be employed by producing a product,” she explained.

“When I woke up, I made jokes about how I had clearly intercepted someone else’s dream because it had nothing to do with my life. It was all about helping women and children, and I didn’t like either. I thought groups of women were annoying, and I only liked my one child,” she said.

Thinking it had nothing to do with her, she put it on the backburner but always thought of it as ‘that powerful dream.’ A couple of years later, when she and her husband moved to their now home near Foster Falls, she was stunned when they drove through Tracy City.

“I was really shocked when I saw the Grundy County High School building because I remembered that building in my dream,” she said. “I thought how bizarre…what could that mean?”

Six months later, the school moved to a brand-new building, which left the old building vacant.

“I decided that maybe someone needed to use that building to do the program that was in my dream, so I just started calling people all over the country to see if anyone was interested,” she said. “Of course, no one was.”

In 2000, she and her husband bought The Blue Chair building in Sewanee. She had a friend who wanted to run a bakery; Binkley thought it should be a coffee shop too and offered to take on the creative part of designing the logo and the interior if her friend would run the business. Four months later, her friend decided to return to real estate fulltime.

“Overnight, I found myself in the food business, which was crazy because I didn’t know how to bake anything, and here I had a bakery. I ran down to Piggly Wiggly and bought up every cinnamon roll and hoped that in the morning no one would notice the difference,” she said. “I think I was just too stubborn to give up, so I decided I would just have to learn the food business.”

She hired people to help her and dove into it.

“I’d never been so miserable in my life,” she laughed. “I was working 60 and 70 hours a week at something I didn’t have a passion for, but during that time I was introduced to so many women who were struggling. I would have women come to me for a job, and then they couldn’t keep their job very long because of the issues they were dealing with at home. It actually gave me an introduction into a culture I hadn’t been exposed to.”

Thinking about ways to expand business, she began considering a commercial kitchen somewhere else where she could give jobs to some of the women who were struggling so badly.

“Then I thought it wouldn’t be helpful to just give them a job—it would be better if we could provide some services that they need to overcome some of those issues. Wouldn’t it be awesome if they could live there, and it was a safe place? What if they could live there with their kids? All of the sudden, I realized what that dream was about,” she said. “That must be what God was asking me to do.

“It was just completely overwhelming. I hadn’t attended church in like seven years, and I didn’t seem like a prime candidate. I really struggled with it—what I call my three days in the belly of the fish. I cried about it for three days thinking I can’t do this. I’m not qualified. I’m already tired from The Blue Chair. My 17-year-old daughter told me I could tell God no—that he wouldn’t love me any less. When she said that, I thought to myself: how could I say no to a God like that?”

Because the old GCHS building had been in her dream, she assumed that was where it should be located. She pitched her idea to Tracy City officials for more than four months without success. “This is what really hurt my heart,” she said. “They said why would we want to put those women and children in there when something better might come along?”

Discouraged, Binkley began to doubt herself and think that she had gotten the dream wrong. A simple trip to the Sewanee Post Office would change her mind.

“In the mail was a card, and I could see that the card had come all the way from California. When I opened it up, it said, ‘You don’t know me, but my daughter is a student at Sewanee, and she told me what you are trying to do, and I want you to use this money in any way you can to get started.’ She had put a thousand dollars cash in that card. I’ve always told her that that was probably the most significant gift we’ll ever get because I was ready to give up. When I got that gift, I decided maybe this thing has a life of its own.”

Binkley realized she needed to keep an open mind and find another site. She envisioned a place in the country with three homes on it. When she heard about a bed-and-breakfast for sale, she took a leap of faith.

“When I drove in, I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “It was on 50 acres in the country. It had three homes on it, but it was 10 times better than anything I could have imagined. The owners were leaving the country and were leaving it completely furnished—it had every single thing and more that we could possibly need.”

As she explained that she was not a qualified buyer and shared her dream with the owners, Binkley was stunned by the woman’s teary reaction.

“We always knew that God asked us to build this place for someone else one day, and we always thought it would be for women who are hurting,” the woman told Binkley. “We’re just glad you finally showed up.”

The property cost a million dollars, and Binkley had no idea how she was going to come up with that amount. Amazingly, the old Grundy County High School building played a big part in it.

“I’d made a lot of trips over there trying to figure out why I was so drawn to this building,” Binkley explained. “On one of those trips, I met a man from Grundy County Rotary.”

The man insisted she go with him that day to meet Howell Adams who, although an Atlanta resident, had strong ties to the Beersheba area. Adams loved her plan.

“Even though I was a stranger to him—with a big old ambitious plan on paper—he and his wife offered to borrow the million dollars and let us just make the note payment,” Binkley said.

Binkley still had to find a way to cover the monthly payment. That’s where The Blue Chair figures into her amazing story.

“It so happened that the two years I stood behind the register at The Blue Chair, there was a young man who would come in there every morning for his cappuccino,” Binkley said. “He would just sit there and read a book. He wasn’t a student, he was young, and we called him Mysterious Ben. Even on his ticket, we would write Mysterious Ben.”

By this time, Binkley had written a business plan for Blue Monarch pretty much like what was in her original dream. She kept hearing in her head that she should share it with Ben, so she gave it to him, asked him to read it, and see what he thought.

“He sat there and read it from cover to cover and then asked if he could take it home with him,” she said. “For two weeks every day, he would come in and ask specific questions. And then he finally asked if he could see the property I wanted to buy.”

Binkley arranged a visit and after an hour’s tour asked Ben what was going on. It turned out his family ran a foundation, and he felt like they would be blessed to be a part of it on the front end.

“They ended up giving us a significant amount for the first three years, which meant I knew we could make our note payment and more, so that’s how we got started,” Binkley said.

“That was in 2003,” Binkley said. “Since then, we have served almost a thousand women and children. A big part of what we do is help women be reunited with their children when they’ve lost custody, so we now have almost 350 children who have been reunited with their mothers.”

Proceeds from the sale of her book, which is available in multiple formats on Amazon, directly benefit Blue Monarch. Expansion plans for its campus include a multipurpose building, a commercial granola kitchen with road access, and a daycare.

For more information on Blue Monarch visit <www.bluemonarch.org>.