Meg Jordan '97, admissions counselor at the School of Law, turns her heartache into hope with her first book.
Meg Jordan ’97 has turned a personal heartache into a professional triumph.
An admissions counselor at the School of Law, Jordan recently published an inspirational memoir titled “Code 1,” detailing her journey of healing and faith.
At the age of 23, while working at a psychiatric health care facility, Jordan was falsely accused of causing the death of a teenage patient while restraining him. The subsequent trial, in which she was found not guilty, led her to question everything about her purpose in life.
“If anyone would have told me then that anything positive could have come from this tragedy, and, subsequently the trial that followed, I would have told them they had lost their mind. But it did,” she writes in the book.
“Code 1” details the experience of the trial and how, after years of searching for peace and purpose in life, she found hope in Jesus Christ at the age of 25.
“It’s my testimony of how I went through a very difficult, challenging and tragic time and how through that process I came to my faith and recognized through a lot of searching and seeking and desperation that I needed to surrender my life, to be saved, to be healed, to have hope,” she says.
She first put pen to paper in 1999, shortly after the trial ended. It was not with the intention of publishing but more as an attempt to deal with her anger and bitterness. As the year’s progressed, she says God began showing her that her story’s significance extended beyond the courtroom and could positively impact the lives of others.
“It’s the message that everybody in life goes through trials,” she says. “If you allow God to use that trial, he will bring something good out of it.”
Though the book has only been out for a short while, she has received positive feedback from family, friends and co-workers and online reviews have been positive, she says.
Along with promotion of her first book, Jordan plans to keep writing and has launched a blog and website. She recently started working on a second book that addresses the topic of control.
“I’m in the very beginning stages of it,” she says. “It may be another 14 years before that one’s done.”
Along with her responsibilities at Elon, she runs a life-coaching business and is also available for speaking engagements – all in an effort to share the hope her faith has brought her.
“The reality is we all have times in life when we need help,” she says. “Some of my best mentors have been coaches on the soccer field or otherwise. Life coaching is trying to meet people where they are, figure out where they’re trying to go and get them to a healthier place.”
Jordan graduated from Elon with a degree in psychology and earned her paralegal certificate two years later, subsequently spending a decade in the legal field. She then decided to pursue her passion for counseling and received a master’s in professional counseling from Liberty University.
“God will use anything he can to reach people,” she says. “I feel like it’s his story, and he just used my fingers to type it.”
“Code 1,” which was self-published at WestBow Press, is available online through Barnes & Noble and Amazon. To read more about Jordan, visit her personal website at www.megjordanonline.com.