Gentle Warrior

by Anneliese Rider

Rachel Donovan’s house burned down, her husbands cheated on her, and her son went to prison. But instead of giving up, she found passion for helping people through trauma.

“It’s such a privilege to hold someone who has just had their world torn apart,” says Rachel, a past chaplain for the Albuquerque police and fire departments. “It makes a difference to tell them, ‘I’m here. I will walk with you through this.’”

Three times a bride

Rachel didn’t walk with the Lord in the early stages of her life. She got pregnant at 16, married the father, dropped out of high school, and got a job.

She grew up in a believing home in the Chicago suburbs but didn’t accept Christ as her Savior until her early 20s. After coming to saving faith, her love for Christ—“I was one of the original ‘Jesus Freaks,’” she says—drove a wedge between her and her partying husband.

“One morning I came home at 7:00 a.m., and there was a girl in the apartment,” Rachel says. “My husband’s girlfriend.”

She and her husband divorced in 1976. After a second disastrous marriage to an unfaithful man who called the marriage “a mistake,” Rachel became pregnant with her second child, a son. Her boyfriend at the time wasn’t thrilled and offered Rachel $1,000 to abort the baby. She refused, and they parted ways.

In 1989, Christopher was born 10 weeks early, and Rachel was, once again, a single parent.

When Christopher was a toddler, Rachel married a man she’d met through her job as a mortgage officer. But he tried to cheat Rachel out of her life savings and framed her for cutting him with a knife, and they quickly divorced.

After a string of disappointments, Rachel narrowed her focus to her career and raising Christopher in their Chicago home—which became more challenging as he got older.

The call no parent wants to receive

“My son was very impacted by friends and wouldn’t heed the advice of a single mom,” Rachel says. “I was worried because if he went down a bad path and went to jail in Chicago, he’d be dead. He doesn’t like to fight.”

When her daughter moved to New Mexico, Rachel considered moving there, too. But she didn’t want to live in a desert until one day she was mowing her lawn and felt God encouraging her with the words, “It’s not a desert to Me.”

That was the prompting Rachel needed. In 2004, she and Christopher picked up and moved to New Mexico, with no house or job. But God provided a job within a week and a house next door to her daughter.

In a new setting, Rachel hoped that Christopher would find mentors and friends who would steer his life in the right direction. But even after joining the Air National Guard, Christopher still ran with the wrong crowd.

“I couldn't get him away from the friends that he was with,” Rachel says. “And they had made a plot to kill someone. He knew about it and didn’t tell anybody.”

After she learned that her son had been an accessory to murder, Rachel stood in her garage and prayed.

“I said, ‘Lord, I don’t know how, but I know You, and I know somehow You will bring honor out of this,’” Rachel remembers. “And He has.”

Rachel considered getting a high-profile attorney to defend her son, but at the end of the day, she decided not to, instead committing just to walk with him through it.

“He felt guilty about what he had done, and he couldn’t live with himself that whole time knowing it,” Rachel says. “Even though he didn’t participate in the murder, because he didn’t tell anybody, they charged him as though he had.”

Christopher served 13 years in prison.

Walking through trauma with people

In 2013, after watching her own house burn down in 2006 and worrying every day that something awful would happen to her son in prison, Rachel took a class to learn how to be an ombudsman, a form of mediating, and was hooked. At the same time, she started training as a chaplain.

“I have always loved peace,” Rachel says. “I don’t like to fight, but I am quick to do it when I see it as the only option. By the grace of God, He is teaching me that I am to fight a much different battle!”

During her 30-plus-year career in the mortgage and loan business, Rachel completed training to become a chaplain. She started with the Bernalillo County Fire Department, then moved to the Albuquerque Police Department, and also became a court-sanctioned mediator. Throughout her own trauma, she learned the value of a kind support system when life feels upside down.

“It’s such a privilege to hold someone who has just had their world torn apart and let them know, ‘I’m here. I will walk with you through this,’” Rachel says. “I have the training to be able to tell when to talk, when not to talk and just be present, and when to get people help!”

Leaning on God’s Word

In 2016, Rachel opened her own mediation company, which she continued even after retiring from the chaplaincy in 2021. As she serves the hurting, Rachel leans heavily on resources from Moody. To help others, she read a book from Moody Publishers called The Weight of Your Words. To encourage herself, she listens regularly to Moody Radio’s Praise & Worship online channel and reads devotionals from Today in the Word.

“I love the Scriptures, and I love to spend time studying them,” Rachel says. “Moody is filled with wisdom that builds others up in Christ. Wise counsel, thoughtful answers, gracious information.”

Over the years, as she’s sent in questions to Today in the Word, Rachel deeply appreciates the kindness and depth of the answers.

“The professors and teachers are so incredibly wise,” Rachel says. “Today in the Word is meat for my soul.”

Life hasn’t been easy for Rachel—but she lives up to the meaning of her name: Rachel (lamb) and Donovan (warrior). With gentle but fierce strength, she walks beside others with confidence.

“C.T. Studd said, ‘Some people want to live within the sound of a steeple bell. I want to have a mission table a foot outside of hell!’” Rachel says. “That is me! I can encourage others, be honest graciously with them, and acknowledge their value.”