29 | Second Chances, Front Porches, and Grace | Christian Encouragement with Melissa Alyse

Some stories entertain us. Others somehow feel like home.

Author Melissa Alyse has created just such a place in Willow Creek, Texas, the fictional small town at the heart of her grace-soaked Christian fiction and cozy mystery series. It's filled with coffee, baked goods, front porches, church potlucks, friendship, a delightfully determined group of bridge-playing women, and people discovering that God's grace has room for them exactly as they are.

Melissa joins Laura at the counter for a warm, laughter-filled conversation about much more than books. They explore our longing to belong, the pressure to become who others expect us to be, the freedom of releasing perfectionism, and the courage it takes to choose a different story for our lives.

Melissa shares why grace became the drumbeat running through Willow Creek and why Ephesians 2:10 has shaped her message: God made you just as you are on purpose. Through characters like Sammy and Michelle, her stories wrestle with questions many of us know personally. Where do I belong? Who am I beneath everyone else's expectations? Have I made too many mistakes? Is it too late to become someone different?

And then there are Glory and the Bridge Ladies, women shaped by faith, wisdom, friendship, and the kind of grace that knows how to sit beside someone without trying to fix them. Melissa shares how women who have left “footprints on her heart” found their way into these beloved characters. 

Together, Laura and Melissa talk about seeing ourselves through the lens of grace, letting go of the polished versions of ourselves we think God expects, and discovering that our mistakes cannot cancel what God has called us to become. As Melissa beautifully reminds us, God is bigger than all of our mistakes. 

And yes, there is plenty of conversation about coffee, brownies, baked goods, glitter pens, and why Laura would very much like Glory and the Bridge Ladies to adopt her. ☕✨

At the counter:

•  Why Willow Creek feels like home to so many readers 
•  The difference between fitting in and truly belonging 
•  Learning to believe God made you just as you are on purpose 
•  How perfectionism and people-pleasing can keep us from being ourselves 
•  Why seeing our younger selves through grace can be healing 
•  The women who mentor, encourage, pray for, and walk beside us 
•  Why fiction can help us recognize that we're not alone in our struggles 
•  Offering God our real selves instead of a carefully polished version 
•  What Glory teaches us about holding space without judgment 
•  Why mistakes and missed opportunities don't put us beyond a second chance 
•  Finding grace, purpose, and belonging in ordinary life 

About Melissa Alyse

Melissa Alyse writes grace-soaked cozy Christian fiction and cozy non-murder mysteries set in Willow Creek, Texas, a fictional small town where faith, love, and second chances bloom. Her stories offer hope, encouragement, and the reminder that God made you just as you are on purpose.

Melissa lives in Alaska with her husband and their rescue pup. She loves quiet mornings journaling with Jesus and coffee, FaceTime with the grands, creating beautiful things, and noticing the beauty tucked into life's ordinary moments.

Learn more about Melissa, Willow Creek, and her books at MelissaAlyse.com.

A Blessing for the Week

May you release the pressure to be perfect.
 May you find people who remind you that you belong.
 May you discover grace in unexpected places.
 And may you trust that the Author of your story is still writing it. 

Continue the conversation inside the At the Counter community. Find encouragement, connection, and a place to remember you don’t have to carry everything alone.

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At the Counter with the Baking Pastor is for anyone looking for Christian encouragement for hard seasons, grief support, burnout recovery, soul care, and faith in everyday life.

We talk about grief and loss support, caregiving, life transitions, unwanted change, emotional healing, spiritual weariness, rest and renewal, and practical soul care for the days when life feels heavy, faith feels tired, or you simply don’t feel like yourself anymore.

Pull up a chair. The counter is open. ☕

Transcript

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Speaker 0:02

There are some stories that entertain us. And then there are some stories that somehow feel like home. Stories that remind us who we are. Stories that help us believe healing is possible. Stories that leave us feeling seen. Today's conversations is about one of those places. It's a little town called Willow Creek. A place filled with coffee, friendship, faith, second chances, front porches, church potlucks, baked goods, and people learning that God's grace is often found in ordinary moments. Today we're joined at the counter by author Melissa Alyse. Melissa, I am so glad to welcome you to the counter. I'm so glad to be here, Laura. So, listeners, I'm just going to tell you, I have been reading Melissa's books. I have read them all, and I am having a fangirl moment here. So just know that. Melissa is the author of Grace Soaked Christian Fiction, set in Willow Creek, Texas, a fictional small town where faith, friendship, healing, and second chances bloom. She has beloved characters like Sammy, Michelle, Glory, the Bridge Ladies, and Melissa Creet states these amazing stories that explore real-life struggles, including perfectionism, fear, identity, belonging, grief, forgiveness, trust, and discovering who God created us to be. Melissa lives in Alaska with her husband and her rescue pup Gilland and loves journaling with Jesus, creating beautiful things and finding God in everyday moments. After reading your books, I think many readers wish there were an actual place called Willow Creek. What first inspired this little town?

Speaker 1 2:00

A little bit of everything in my world. I was looking for a story and I couldn't find it. And so I started writing Sammy's story, and Willow Creek just became, along the journey, this beautiful, fun town. And um, you look around the corner and there was another place to explore. Why do you think people connect so deeply with it though? Gosh, I don't know about you, but I'm drawn to grace. I'm drawn to being accepted just as I am.

Speaker 2:24

And the coffee and and all the baked goods, they kind of help too.

Speaker 1 2:29

They definitely help. And especially as Lora starts to cook more and more, we find all sorts of fun baking goods.

Speaker 2:35

I just want to go visit Lisa's coffee shop and just have whatever the special of the day is.

Speaker 1 2:40

My goodness, I would love to have a conversation with Lisa. She is so zany. Like she really hasn't had her time in the spotlight. She's just a side character, but she owns the coffee with your cream cafe. And I want to get to know her better. She's so funny.

Speaker 2:52

She is. And the name she comes up for each of those coffee drinks just makes me just laugh out loud, and people around me are like, What do you do? Nothing.

Speaker 1 3:00

One of them was a gingerbread latte with a side of kindness.

Speaker 3:03

Yes, I will take two of those today. Thank you. Absolutely, absolutely. When readers say, I wish I could live in Willow Creek, what do you think they're really longing for?

Speaker 1 3:13

I still think it's the grace. This was all God's idea. Every bit of this, these stories is his. Whenever I finished the book, I the Lord had slowly taken everything away from my world. And I was like, Well, Lord, if it's okay with you, I'm just gonna go ahead and make your grace famous. Not like he needs my help, but he totally said, Go for it, girl. And it got me busy just sharing these stories. And just the grace is the drumbeat always. And when you read the reviews, that's what people see. They want Glory to be their grandma. They want to hang out with the bridge ladies.

Speaker 3:39

Definitely. And by the way, folks, Glory makes these brownies. Oh my goodness. They're not glorified brownies like I make, but they still look really, really good. Um, let's talk about Sammy. She arrives carrying disappointment, uncertainty, grief, and questions about who she is. What drew you to tell her story?

Speaker 1 3:59

Honest to goodness, the first story I wrote for myself. I had read all the books in the library I wanted to read, and I couldn't find one about faith in a woman and her pursuing her purpose. And I've been a purpose chaser ever since I knew that was a thing. I finally found vocabulary for my DNA of wanting to know who I am and how God made me and what he's called me to do. So I wrote Sammy's story for me, just getting to watch her take steps forward, letting go of her plans, look kind like beginning to take, see glimpses of God's plan and move forward through the doors that he opened, just scared but courageously. And it was just, it was so neat to follow her journey as I wrote it.

Speaker 4:36

I think we're all looking for that place to belong. When people are struggling, that's one of the things they want. Where do I fit in? Where do I belong? And how do I find it? Because it seems like there's a lot of searching going on.

Speaker 1 4:52

You know, there was a lot for Sammy. And in fact, I had planned to title the book a purpose type of title. And then just the longer I hung out with the Lord, the more I it became about belonging. That's really what the story was about. And truly, the big thing I try to help my readers see again and again is Ephesians 2.10. We're the masterpiece of God and he has created great things for us to do. We all have that DNA and purpose. And the Melissa version is God made you just as you are on purpose, just as you are. And you don't have to change to be who God's called you to be to be honestly amazing. You get to be you, and that's actually how God made you. So you can shine just as you are. It was neat watching Sammy just go deeper to who she is. And the more she became comfortable in her own skin and with who she was, she felt safer because you are safer whenever you just trust that God made you just as you are. You don't have to pretend. And so belonging just grew from that.

Speaker 5:43

I just love that. For our listeners, I want you to take a deep breath in and as you let it out, ask yourself where do I feel most at home? And who helps me feel seen, known, and welcome? Maybe belonging begins there. So let's switch to Glory and the Bridge Ladies. I have to confess, I secretly want Glory and the Bridge Ladies to just adopt me. I mean, we're in all of us. One's a magnificent business person. One bakes, they each have their own neat backgrounds, and yet they come together, they play bridge, they figure out mysteries in another series, and they are just the neatest people. And I just I think where do these people come from? And doesn't every community need to have them?

Speaker 1 6:38

I think every community actually does have them, all the types. I actively search when I come to a new community for my mentors. My best friends right now are 86, 72, and 65. I lean towards those older women because I love, I linger in that wisdom. I really enjoy hanging out with them. But all my life I've been like that. Like when I got married, I had a bouquet of roses, and one set was white roses, and they were for my prayer warriors in my church. And they were just older women who had kind of adopted me and prayed over me. I can see little pieces of every single woman who's ever put a footprint on my heart on this journey inside those four women for sure.

Speaker 7:19

Your books consistently include women who encourage, they challenge, they mentor, and they just love you as well. Why was that important to include all of those?

Speaker 1 7:36

I wish I could tell you a lot of the story, Holy Spirit. I tell everybody, Holy Spirit's in the details of these books. And I write what's in my outline, and then I let Holy Spirit add in the details, but it's just who they are. They've lived life. Once you feel grace from God, once you truly know you're forgiven, know He loves you just as you are on purpose. You live a different life, you step in different steps. So I don't know that they would know any other way to be, other than encouraging and kind and graceful, because that's what you do. You're transformed from the inside out.

Speaker 8:06

Amen. So in another book, you wrote about Michelle, and her story just touched me deeply. She spent so much of her life carrying expectations and trying to become what others thought she should be. What were you hoping readers would discover through her journey?

Speaker 1 8:25

Okay, so I was really surprised. I finished the first book and I thought I was done. But as soon as I finished it, Michelle's story came to be. I'm like, oh Lord, you've got to be kidding me. Because in real life, I would never have hung out with Michelle. She scares me, quite frankly. She wasn't nice to Sammy. I don't want to be her friend either. It's okay. But it was actually stunning because having to hang out with her, I realized that everyone's on their own journey of grace, but even Michelle is on her own journey of grace. And that what I loved about it was it's never too late to choose a different way to be. You can choose to walk away from. I don't know if the walk away is the word. I thought it was neat the courage she had to say, I don't want to live this legacy anymore.

Speaker 9:05

That took a lot of courage. Absolutely. And then to make a new path and a new legacy that the family still was okay with and that most importantly, she was okay with.

Speaker 1 9:19

That last scene when she gets to be her authentic self, that is just really neat to watch her go from the porcelain doll Michelle to the sweet, shining Michelle at the end of the book.

Speaker 9:33

Perfectionism shows up in our lives in so many aspects. Why do you think it has such a strong hold on people?

Speaker 1 9:42

I don't know. I know I grew up as a people pleaser. I think a lot of people did. I was thinking about Michelle's story, though. This does not have to do with perfectionism. But it that's there's a moment with her that she has the scene in the barn where she just reflects back on her younger self. She sees her younger self and she just says, I'm so sorry I didn't let you be who you are. Because she wanted to be perfect for her mom. And it just that was so healing for her. And I know for me in real life, that's been healing for me on this journey. Just seeing yourself through the lens of grace is healing. I didn't know I was going there with the conversation. Sorry if I'm heading in the wrong direction.

Speaker 10:23

Holy Spirit was here. We prayed before, so wherever he takes us, we will go. But I love that scene because I in that she was doing inner child work. It wasn't called that in your book, and unless you studied it, you don't know necessarily what that is. But as you were healing from something that's happened, you need to go back to the last time when things were okay, or you were happy, or it was good, and and work forward in age. And so I love that she was there with the little her and and trying to still honor what little her was doing. That was so cool and so powerful. And I was like, people, you need to be talking to your inner child, absolutely. But I think that was when she started letting go and she started experiencing freedom. And I think that's what it means to live unashamed before God.

Speaker 1 11:20

You know, in the sermon series is uh the sermon, I don't know if we did a series in that one, but Pastor Mark talks about David walking down the street with the ark and dancing naked and McCall up in the window teasing him, and how he says, I actually was reading that part today, and it's how he says, Come down out of the window, stop making fun of yourself for trying to be you and just go be you, go be who God called you to be, go dance for him. I love how scripture gets to kind of reflect the beauty of what's going on in the fictional story, too.

Speaker 11:53

And I love that you include church scenes with sermons, with scripture. That's real life to me. Um that was the thing.

Speaker 1 12:02

I wanted, I want to make a storyline where people get to be Christian. It's okay to be Christian and live a Christian life.

Speaker 12:10

There was one scene where the pastor said, God doesn't want your filters, he wants your fire. I underlined it, highlighted it. Can we talk about that message? Because I think people spend years trying to offer God like a polished version of themselves and are so tied up in that that they never actually get before him for him to use them. They're just too tied up.

Speaker 1 12:36

Yeah. I think again, that's why I come back down to Ephesians 2.10. God made you just as you are on purpose, just exactly as you are. I wish everybody said these words all the time to all of us so we could just remember, like, oh yeah, I get to be me. It's okay.

Speaker 12:53

Definitely. I just love that your books have faith woven all through them into everyday life, not perfect, not performative, but just real. I think I could see that is that is very important to you. It's who I am. I just try to I don't know. And that's what it should be, right? I shouldn't be writing all these other things. I'm writing who I am, what I feel, what God's telling me to write. And if He's asking us to write, then we know that there's somebody out there that needs to read it.

Speaker 1 13:30

Yeah. Yeah. I love hearing from readers that when they read a certain book, it's just what they needed to hear in that moment. I'm like, go, God. I'm so glad I actually have a prayer team on my email. Part of them are prayer warriors, and we pray for the right readers to find the books when they need to read them. Because it's just, it gets noisy online. So we just try to help clear the way for them to find it.

Speaker 13:52

I think one of the other reasons that I love your books is your characters wrestle with real life stuff: fear, doubt, grief, perfectionism, insecurity, identity. Why do stories sometimes help us process things that a vice alone can't?

Speaker 1 14:11

I actually love that I get to process some thoughts and realize I'm not alone through these fictional stories. Oh, this is how they handled it. Oh, this is the struggle they went through. Oh, I've been through that struggle too. I remember when I had that question. My husband actually has tattooed on his arm, nunca solo. In Spanish, it means never alone. And um, he wants the whole world to know that he actually has pottery and it's nunca solo pottery. Because everything there's a cross logo on it, and he just always is trying to help people remember you are not alone on this journey, no matter where you are.

Speaker 14:45

I really want listeners to hear that because a lot of the listeners have been through a lot of junk and they do feel alone, and they're not, they're not. They can reach out. He's with them everywhere.

Speaker 1 14:56

You know, in fact, it's Psalm 139, 7 through 12, uh is the scripture verses for him. And is where can I go where he is not there? Because he's everywhere.

Speaker 15:08

Amen. Amen. Grace shows up throughout every book, not just as theology, but as something people experience. What does grace mean to you today?

Speaker 1 15:20

Well, actually, right now I'm in Matthew, and I was in, I think, Matthew 5 or 6, and he was talking about an eye for an eye. And I read a parallel Bible, so I read NIV and message, and I hang out in the message version because it really breathes life into me for scriptures. And um, it said, uh, don't live tit for tat, live generously. And I was like, and then again, he talks about right after that, he again he says, What I need you to do is just live the God-given purpose you're called to live and live generously with others. I was talking with my husband about that this morning. The word generously, if you look at what it really means, it means to live your life with grace. I never thought of the word generous with grace, but that's what I'm chewing on today when it comes to grace.

Speaker 16:07

Generously and grace. I like that. I like that. If someone walked into Willow Creek carrying shame, disappointment, grief, or questions about who they are, what do you think Glory would tell them on her swing?

Speaker 1 16:22

Welcome. Glory is amazing at holding space for the person in the in the seat, in the swing to whenever they have a question or want to share, she's there and ready. And I love that about her. I love that she's not there to judge us or even tell us what to do, but just point us in the right direction when we're looking for that. Looking for that.

Speaker 16:45

Of course, you had to have Ethel Sue and all her sparkle, right?

Speaker 1 16:49

I love Ethel Sue. She is so zany. And I love that she is funny and loud, but she's also incredibly kind. Like she is pivotal in Amanda's journey, but she's not her guide. Lora was actually Amanda's guide. So it's been, yeah, I love Ethel. I love that Ethel Sue is the lead sleuth in the spinoff mystery series. Like, I think it's going to become more Ethel Sue on the journey as the other bridge ladies, their arcs kind of their arcs change throughout the series. So it'll be neat to see what she does.

Speaker 17:25

I mean, she's all in, right? Because she made her dining room wall into the the mystery board, and she got all her little supplies, and of course, there's sticky notes, which are my favorite, and glitter pins. And it's like, okay, she's in this to continue. She's like waiting for that next mystery.

Speaker 1 17:43

Ethel doesn't do anything halfway. Ethel Sue is an all-in-100% girl.

Speaker 17:49

She is, she is. And then one of the other bridge ladies is Nelda. And I just love that she's so entrepreneurial and giving and is there at every turn and has some of the most amazing wisdom that you wouldn't necessarily expect if you just like met her at Lisa's coffee shop.

Speaker 1 18:09

Yeah, she is the most reserved of the group. Um, I wouldn't say reserved, I say guarded of the group. She keeps her feelings close to her vest, but she actually shares a piece of her heart in the Christmas book. And um, every time I read it, it makes tears come into my eyes because I know she's sharing so much of her heart in that moment.

Speaker 18:28

Like it's just a sweet moment. So if someone listening today feels like they've made mistakes, missed opportunities, or are waiting for their second chance, what would you want them to know?

Speaker 1 18:43

Welcome to the club. We've all made mistakes, and God is bigger than all of our mistakes. We can never screw up what God has called us to do or who he's called us to become. He's still there and ready when we are to join him. And he made you just as you are on purpose, darling. Don't ever try to be anyone else.

Speaker 19:05

Exactly. If you want to connect with Melissa, and I hope you do, because you're gonna want to read all of the Willow Creek books, the Christmas book, and the mystery books, you can go to her website, Melissaalise.com. Don't worry about spelling, I'll put it in the show notes. I hope you love stories filled with faith, friendship, grace, belonging, and reminders that God isn't finished writing your story. And if that is you, I think you will feel right at home with Willow Creek. Melissa, thank you for joining and letting me fan over you. Um, I can't wait for the next book. I mean, I'm like on pins and needles, and I didn't even know the last book was coming out that quick. It just popped up. I just finished another book. It was time, and I I may have read it in like three days.

Speaker 1 19:56

Well, it was a baking book, so that makes sense.

Speaker 20:00

It we can't spoil it, but yeah, it was a good baking book. Melissa, thank you so much for joining me at the counter today. It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Maybe that's why stories matter, because they remind us that healing is possible, grace still exists, and belonging can be found, and that God is still writing beautiful things into ordinary lives. Maybe we're all a little like Sammy, or maybe Michelle, then we'd like to admit, and maybe that's exactly why their stories matter. My friends, hear this blessing. May you release the pressure to be perfect, may you find people who remind you that you belong, may you discover grace in unexpected places, and may you trust that the author of your story is still writing it. Pull up a chair until next time.