This is My Story | Isaiah Amador

I am 29 years old and I was born and raised here in Central Florida. My parents had me at a young age of 19 and 22. At this point they already had my older sister Noelle, and they continued to have five more children after my self so I am one of seven. Out of those seven are five boys so I’m sure you can imagine what my childhood was like

Around the age of 9 my parents started attending a local church here in Deltona by the name of Pine Ridge fellowship, it was here that my parents gave their life to Christ and my entire family was introduced to the gospel. So about half of my childhood was spent in children’s ministry, serving in children’s ministry, in student ministry, outreaches, summer camps, etc. And even though I felt God pulling on my heart at times in my youth, my faith was something that was always secondary. Looking back I think it was a combination of not having the life experience and putting other things in my life before it, like athletics or anything I was pursuing or trying at achieve at the time.

I graduated high school in 2015 and it was now time to enter the workforce and start a career for myself. I was given an opportunity at an entry level position in the auto industry, specifically at a large dealership collision center in Daytona. The auto industry can be very rewarding due to most positions being either fully commission based or flat rate, a predetermined amount for a specific job rather than for the actual hours spent working. However, this unfortunately creates a breeding ground for selfishness. Advisors, technicians, parts personnel, insurance adjusters, and even management often operate for their own benefit rather than the benefit of customers, quality of repairs, or the benefit of those around them. Being one of many advisors at a large dealership I very quickly picked up on this on and understood all I had to do was outperform the other advisors, and technicians would want to complete my tickets rather than the tickets of others.

God continued to open doors for myself in this industry and I continued to grow, taking higher paying positions at multiple shops from managers I had met through the industry. This allowed Megan to quit her full time job in 2019 when we had our first daughter, Isla Rose, and work a smaller and less demanding part time position. Although we had both always expressed we wanted children this was unplanned and I now understood I had to do everything possible to be the bread winner for our family. This made me think more about my future long term and it was within these couple years I noticed a generational gap within the industry. There is a generation of managers, technicians, and advisors who are between the age of 50-60 years old and then there is a large gap to the generation of people like myself in their 20’s to 30’s, but my generation is very few and often inexperienced compared to those before us. I planned on bringing in young people like myself and training them to do what I do, so when it’s my time for a management position I wouldn’t have the same problem the current generation has of not being able to find good help, and that’s exactly what I did.

In 2021 Megan and I had our second daughter, Romy Loren. It was shortly after she was born that God had started to show me my priorities were not in order. After Romy was born, Megan experienced a postpartum unlike her first with Isla. Being only 24 at the time I was still a young and inexperienced husband and had no clue how to handle it. Rather than support her in her time of need I withdrew. I spent even more time at work than I did before, I spent nights out with my coworkers in places I should’ve never been in the first place, and I spent our money how I wanted to regardless of what bills were do or what we needed as a family. I remember thinking to myself that if I wasn’t the man Megan wanted me to be, I was going to become who I wanted to be regardless. Although I have no stories of infidelity, substance abuse, or addiction from this time, what I had done was just as terrible. I failed Megan as a husband and I failed to be the man that scripture called me to be. When I had finally realized this I attributed it to three things, myself having poor physical health, poor mental health, and poor spiritual health, in that order. During this time I had very little physical activity, my sleep schedule was a mess, I ate and drink whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, I was not in control of my mind or my thoughts, and I spent zero time in the word or doing fellowship with other believers. I now very firmly believe you have to have good physical health, to have good mental health, to even be able to hear what you need to hear, to have good spiritual health.

The next couple years of my life I spent improving upon those three pillars. I woke up at 5am seven days a week, I never missed a single gym day, there wasn’t a calorie I consumed that I didn’t count, I took control of my mind and my thoughts, I began a better work life balance, I spent time in scripture on a weekly basis, I read books like “Wild at Heart” by John Eldridge, which if you’re a man in this room that hasn’t yet read it I strongly encourage you to, and I got plugged in to groups here at Gracelife with other believers. I became a fan of a philosopher by the name of Mike Mentzer, a very influential athlete and intellectual. One of his philosophies that stuck with me during this time is “That any growth in life is forced”. When you really think about it, can you actually name when you grew in or at something in life that you didn’t have to force? These were all great things that helped me become a better man, a better husband, and a better father, but what I hadn’t realized is where my heart was still wrong in all of this. My prayers were not, God help me become the man you want me to be, they were, God help me become the man I want to be or God help me achieve my I’m trying to achieve.

Leading up to the birth of our third child, my father had the idea of purchasing property and building a multi family and multi generational compound. For him it was a combination of decades of experience in the construction industry, the ambitious person that he is himself, and wanting a better life for his children than what his parents provided for him. Originally he was going to purchase the property and build his house and I was going to build my own house later down the road once I had financially prepared for it. However, my father was going to be able to build his house, like an owner builder but through the company that he currently works for, for permitting purposes, and basically at cost compared to what most people would pay to build a home. When he offered me to be able to build my home at cost, at the same time he built his, it seemed too good to pass up. To be able to build a bigger home than Megan and I had for our growing family, to be able to live that close to my immediate family, and to be able to do it for a fraction of what it could cost me later down the road. But it would mean that Megan and I would have to sell our home to cash out on our positive equity, pretty much right after our third child that we were expecting was born, and find somewhere to rent while the house was being built. I ultimately decided to do it because I felt like if I didn’t it would be something I regretted later in my life.

In 2024 Megan and I had our third daughter, Esme Raquel. We then started the process of selling our house and finding somewhere to rent that would accommodate my commute, being close to our families, and being close to Gracelife. We unfortunately had a very hard time finding something that fit all three of those and were within our budget, being that majority of what we cashed out on our house we would have to put down on the loan for the house build and renting prices were through the roof. Knowing all of this, Chris and Diane had so graciously offered us to stay with them rent free until we found somewhere else to rent or even until our house was complete if we wanted to. Even though this was a bigger blessing than we could ever ask for, shortly after moving in with them we were given bad news leading up to the start of the build. Starting in 2025 there was going to be new regulations in Seminole county that would require us to add to our build plans which would unfortunately cause us to go over the budget we were allotted from the bank. So before we even broke ground we now understood we would already be between 20-30 grand over budget and my father and I would have to come up with that out of pocket by the time the build was complete. As you can imagine I was very stressed on how I was going to come up with the difference while our build was supposed to take less than a year. Unsure of what to do I prayed that God would show me a way to overcome this. One day I received a phone call from a friend of mine in the industry that a manager who had recently take over one of the largest collision centers in central Florida, was looking for an advisor like myself to fill a position. I sat down with this manager and I was sold on coming on board, bringing other advisors like myself, bringing good technicians and parts personnel, helping build this shop to do more than it had ever done before, and a management position once the shop had scaled. Coming up on a decade in the industry, here was my opportunity to achieve what I had always wanted to and at the perfect time I needed it to.

As 2025 began so did my new position and our home build. But within the first month of starting there I very quickly realized that everything I was sold to come on board was never going to happen. The current set of managers operated solely for their own glory and benefit. I witnessed lies, deception, selfishness, and mistreatment of technicians, even to those who had worked there 10 plus years, like I had never before seen in this industry. I realized that they were just looking for capable individuals like myself so they could take tasks off of their plates and give them to others. I was miserable, I often worked 11 and 12 hour shifts to keep up, my gym schedule went out the window, the stress of the work environment negatively affected my sleep, I spent less time with my wife and children than I should have, I felt alone, away from the team I had surrounded myself with, and living further than I ever had from my immediate family. I wanted out every single day of working there. Unfortunately I was stuck, because of how large the shop was and how much volume it could handle, I was taking home more at this shop than I ever had, and I of course needed it to financially to cover the costs of our home build.

One day I had prayed that God would give me wisdom on how to handle the current situation I found myself in. Growing up in church I had always heard of Solomon and his wisdom but I had never studied it or understood why. As I read Solomon’s prayer for wisdom and studied his life, there was much I didn’t understand because I had never really studied the life of his father King David. Which is what I believe God actually wanted me to study. Here was a man that God had put through so much in order for him to become the man that God wanted him to be, and my problems started to seem like nothing compared to what he had gone through in this life. This is where God has started a transformation in my heart and in my prayers, they went from “God help me achieve this” to “God, if this is your plan for my life, use it to grow me into the man you want me to be” and “God, use me to be a light to others around me”.

During this time Megan and I had conceived our fourth child. As you can imagine, being one of five boys I had always wished to have a son, and having three girls back to back it started to seem like something that might not happen for us. Leading up to the gender reveal ultrasound I prayed that whatever God’s will is for this child, that he would use it to grow me the become the man he wants me to be. We walked out of that ultrasound understanding we would have a son and his due date would be right around the exact time our new home was supposed to be complete. I believe that God was blessing me, not because I deserved it, but because my heart had started to surrender to whatever he has planned for my life. Right before our house was going to be complete and our son born, I received a phone call from an old friend in the industry who had taken over a large dealership collision center in Orlando and wanted my help to rebuild it. So to end 2025, all within a span of just a month or two, I started at another shop which was closer to where we built our home, our son was born, and our home was ready for us to move in.

At the start of 2026, everything that was promised but not given to me at the prior shop, God has awarded me at this shop. It was after that I realized why the prior opportunity didn’t work out for me, not because of the poor management or corruption I witnessed, but because I sought my own glory and my own kingdom instead of God’s. God had showed me that the growth I needed to force was to surrender. Very recently, as I was sitting on my back porch, spending time in the word and reflecting on my entire life. I felt this overwhelming wave of emotion and gratefulness that brought tears to my eyes. God has blessed me with two parents who love me and care for me, siblings who are my best friends in this life, a wife that he had already planted a seed in and dropped right into my lap, he blessed me with children, and had a plan to give me more children when I didn’t deserve the ones I already had, a home that I wouldn’t have been able to afford if my father didn’t do what he did or if my in laws didn’t bless me with somewhere to live while it was built, and a career that allows me to provide for my family. I have everything I need, and I lack nothing at all. In asking God why he has been so gracious to me in this life, the gospel hit me in a way that it never had before. As amazing as all these things are in my life, they are just a small fraction compared to the grace that God has given me, by sending his son to die for my sins. Through all my sins, my selfishness, all my time spent chasing my own glory and my own kingdom, God never stopped pursuing me. Who am I to try and plan my life, when God has already planned it all for me.