Christian singer and songwriter Lori Sealy is sharing her story of the six A’s — adultery, abortion, adoption, abandonment, atheism and autism — that impacted her life and led her to Christ at a free concert.

The event is set for 7 to 8:30 p.m. Saturday, April 29 at the Loft 1880 above Village Pizza on The Square.

Songs and Stories of Grace, hosted by Grace Covenant Church in Athens, is Sealy’s way of conveying her life experience and journey on the autism spectrum with believers and nonbelievers.

“She really connects with a deep side of us — there are so many parts of her story that have affected many of us in different ways so it’s an emotional story to tell and her music brings that out,” church secretary Nancy Hooker said. “She has had an interesting journey in her life.”

Lori’s story

Sealy’s story starts before she was born when her mother was in an abortion clinic but changed her mind and put Sealy up for adoption after she was born.

Sealy’s adoptive parents “had a Christian face in public, but behind the scenes, they were discipling me in an other-than-Christian world view.”

As someone with high functioning autism, Sealy was reading at 4 years old and playing the piano at 5. When she got into high school, she said she began reading deeply into philosophy and decided that she didn’t want to follow the Christian faith anymore.

“I said I was done and I didn’t want to play that game anymore,” she said.

But unforeseen changes lay ahead.

“I was offered an audition at Juilliard and my parents said no,” she said. “I went to this little college in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Converse, and while I was there, God and his mercy crossed my path.”

Sealy met six Christian girls who were different than any other Christians she had met before.

“They were different in how they lived, loved and they were sincere,” she said. “They weren’t perfect but when they blew it, they sought forgiveness.”

Though her family identified as Christians, Sealy said she wasn’t used to hearing apologies or requests for forgiveness. Over the course of a year, Sealy sought to destroy the girls’ faith in God and they sought to restore hers.

Sealy lied to them, tried to hurt their college careers and ruin their faith, and all the the time, they wrote her letters about the greatness of Christ and included Bible verses in them. She said she read them and put them in a box.

“I was wicked. I did everything I could to make them miserable and deny their God,” she said. “I really just toyed with them but they didn’t give up on me and continued to pursue me.”

One day in August 1988, Sealy’s sky fell and she “hit rock bottom.” Depressed and feeling like her life had no purpose, she decided to end it all.

“I was sitting on my basement floor and my dad had a lot of guns so I was just planning on taking one out to the woods with me,” she said. “I looked over and saw that box jutting out of my closet door and I began reading them, one by one. As I read — I read about God as a creator, how God is holy and how man is sinful — the scales fell off and I saw Jesus for who he was and myself for who I was and realized there was a call and offer for me to be forgiven and loved.”

That day, on her basement floor, Sealy devoted herself to Christ.

She said her first test of faith was when she decided to apologize to the girls and come clean about her lies.

“It forced me to decide if I was serious enough about Christ to lose the friendship that led me to him,” Sealy said. “I’ve laughed because God, over the course of that year, had them put his word on notebook paper for me. The whole idea of grace is beautiful because I wasn’t looking for Jesus.”

The mission

Sealy said she uses her music to intertwine her story and her passion to those both familiar and unfamiliar to church. As someone who lives with autism, both herself and with her son, Sealy wants to connect with others on the spectrum and help them understand God.

“They want things that are tangible and God is intangible, but the intangible God has given us a tangible word through the Bible so I encourage people to use that word,” she said. “Folks often get so emotional during alter calls and emotion is hard for people with autism. I encourage people to be present with folks because if people are present with those on the spectrum, it’s tangible.”

Sealy doesn’t limit her music to just those on the spectrum, she wants to reach everyone.

“We’ve had the opportunity to bring people to church and we’ve had a lot of conversations with people,” she said. “This tour is promoting two projects and we’ll do corporate tunes where the audience gets involved. It’s been neat because no matter where I go, we’ll have people from church backgrounds and total unbelievers walking through the door, suffering, because everyone has experienced some type of that,” she said.

“It connects them and opens really neat doors and makes a difference, and for me, that’s Christ. Jesus is my story and my song now and I want to see folks connected with him in not just a saving way, but a sanctifying way, because he’s good even when things are bad.”

Sealy’s music is a mix of folk and Americana.

“I’ll have my guitar and I’m assuming we’ll be using a keyboard, but there’s a lot of harmonies and piano ballads,” she said. “It’s songs and stories of grace throughout the evening.”

Hooker said space is limited to 100 seats so those who want to attend should get there early.