For over two years, Ashley McGuire said nothing. You may already know a piece of her story. A post she wrote on her personal Facebook page, up for less than twenty four hours, was shared tens of thousands of times overnight. TikTok picked it up. So did the New York Post and the Daily Mail and TMZ. Reporters filled her voicemail. Inside Edition offered her a segment. Strangers who had never met her decided who she was in the comments. She turned all of it down. She deleted her social media, closed the business her whole identity was wrapped up in, moved back into her childhood bedroom with her four children, and went quiet. This is the first time she has told the whole thing. Ashley was Plymouth’s most sought after makeup artist and esthetician, the owner of Snatched, the woman every bride wanted in the room on her wedding day. She was also newly married, pregnant with her fourth child, and about to watch her husband leave for work and never come back. What followed, in her account, was a spiral into addiction and psychosis, hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, investors demanding their money back, and voicemails from her husband warning her that he had stolen from the wrong people and that if he turned up dead, this was why. Then a man came into her life offering to rescue her business. Weeks later he put both of their phones in the bathroom, turned the fan on, patted her down to check for a wire, sat her down in her own kitchen, and told her he had been hired to kill her. What happened over the months that followed, inside her own home, with her four kids asleep upstairs, is the part of this story nobody has heard. It is also where she discovered that God had never once left the room. This episode is long. It is heavy. It is worth every single minute. Because Ashley does not come to this table as a victim, and she does not come to burn anyone down. She comes forgiven and forgiving, with a testimony that lands exactly where every testimony on this show lands. The serpent struck the heel. Christ crushed the head. A NOTE BEFORE YOU LISTEN This conversation includes discussion of infidelity, addiction, stalking, threats of violence, and a season where Ashley no longer wanted to be alive. Please take care of yourself while you listen. If any of this is your story right now, you are not the only one and you do not have to carry it by yourself. In the United States you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 1-800-799-7233. CONNECT WITH ASHLEY After two years off social media, Ashley has finally returned. You can follow her at https://www.instagram.com/ashmariemcg_ CONNECT WITH THE HEAD AND THE HEEL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theheadandtheheel/ If this episode encouraged you, share it with someone who needs it, subscribe on YouTube, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify so you never miss a testimony. ABOUT THE SHOW The Head and the Heel is a Christian testimony podcast rooted in Genesis 3:15, the first gospel promise, that the serpent would bruise the heel but Christ would crush the serpent’s head. Every week, host Paula Hoss sits down with a guest and asks three questions. Who are you? Where did the enemy try to bruise you? And how has Jesus met you there and begun to crush the serpent in your story? These are honest, gospel centered conversations about identity, suffering, spiritual warfare, salvation, and the power of testimony. Remember, the bruise is not the end of the story. In Christ, the serpent does not win.
