Two months ago, Kansas native Careth Beard began work as an on-air personality at K-Love, a nationally syndicated radio station based in Rocklin, California. It’s the latest stop on a winding faith and career journey with many stops she never expected to take, but through which she’s found what she describes as God’s true purpose and plan for her life.

The Wichita native grew up in a Christian household, but her journey to find purpose was not a direct or easy path.

“There’s a lot of internal work that goes into it,” Beard said. “I just want to do what God wants me to do and be who God created me to be. When I really opened myself up to that, it’s like he intentionally put me on a path that would be really uncomfortable, not to make me uncomfortable, but to make me stronger, to keep me from being complacent and to keep me humble.”

That uncomfortable path began with years of wrestling with the personal nature of her faith. 

She spend a lot of time on her own during and after her college years exploring the “why’s” of her faith, and what following Jesus really meant to her. Her journey came to a head while she was working at a theater in Iowa after college. Being surrounded by so many different belief systems, she started digging into the Bible to find out what made Jesus different.

“I could find no fault in Jesus. He was so radical, even countercultural for his time,” she said. “Everything he said made sense. The way he lived his life and the way he treated people, he had it figured out.”

“I want to be like Jesus,” she recalled thinking, “I have to believe what he believed, and he said he was the Son of God.”

Kansas career path

Her faith, she said, took her down a career path she never planned on following.

She initially attended college at Southwestern College in Winfield with the purpose of pursuing a theater career, but said her parents were not convinced it would be a productive career, and encouraged her to pursue a different path. 

So she decided to pursue a broadcast communications degree, instead. “It’s kind of like theater, where there’s a performance aspect of it, but it’s a ‘real job,’” she quipped.

“I went into broadcasting, and I fell in love with it,” she said, though radio was not her intended pursuit. Originally, she said she wanted to go into television as an editor.

But the Lord, she feels, had different plans for her life. A job offer at STAR 107.9 in Great Bend prior to the end of her college career in 2007 was the beginning of that journey.

“It was a great learning experience, the first time I was really out on my own,” she said. “I was really grateful for my time there.”

During her time in Great Bend, she grew attached to radio work as a profession.

“I love that radio is this unique platform for helping people connect,” Beard said, “With radio, you can connect immediately with somebody.”

The self-described “uncomfortably awkward, introverted person” said she never expected to wind up in radio, saying the work is “a double-edged sword” for someone with her personality.

“I love it and I hate it (because) talking on the radio – talking at all – does not come naturally to me,” she described. “I was that weird, quiet kid in school.”

She enjoys the challenge radio brings of stretching her comfort zone, though. 

“Trying to get out of my own head space, and the challenge of overcoming that, I think is what’s fun about my job.”

She credits where she wound up to God’s purpose for her life.

“I know I’m not here because of me, because this doesn’t make sense,” she said. “(It’s about) just having faith that He created me to be the person I am, that He put me into a platform where I talk to people for a living for a reason.”

After a year in Great Bend, though, Beard said she felt the “itch” to return to her performance theater roots. After a few years in that work, though, she missed working in radio, and felt a pull to return to it.

At that point, she decided to move back home to Wichita, and had friends from college who worked for a station there.

The station, B98, only had a position as a receptionist/production assistant open, a chance to get her foot back in the door of the field she jumped at.

“You’ve got to get yourself where you want to be, even if you’re not doing what you want to do,” she said. 

The position taught her the value of the behind-the-scenes work and how to seize the opportunities she was given through hard work and service.

“Anything anyone needed done, I raised my hand,” she said. “You do anything and everything you can to make yourself available and prove you’re capable and willing to learn and grow.”

Following this advice brought her career to another turn she was not expecting, landing her an on-air spot as a cohost on the station’s morning show in 2014. It was a position she would hold until late last year when her journey would take another unexpected turn.

A new road In a turbulent time

A year ago this month, Beard found herself being laid off from her long-time work at B98, a job she said she loved everything about.

Though it was unexpected, being laid of was something she said she felt “the craziest sense of peace” about.

“I had, for a couple years, felt a desire to get into Christian radio, because I know what it did for me. I know how it helped encourage me. I wanted to be a part of that and I wanted to be able to be in this ministry somehow.”

Though she said the tears and the heartbreak of losing a job she loved did eventually come during her 10 months of unemployment, she said she always felt the peace of, “this is gonna be okay.”

Beard applied for every radio job she could, including one at K-Love, a syndicated Christian radio station with 569 signals nationally, including one translator in Great Bend.

“When you’re unemployed, you’ll apply for anything – you have to,” she said, saying she never expected the callback on the application because of the size and scope of the station.

“It’s a massive platform, and I’m not in any way, shape or form talented enough, or skilled enough, or blessed enough to be put on that sort of a platform.”

She recalls thinking, “I didn’t even know what the position was, but it’s a Christian radio station, it’s where I want to be, so I’m going to submit my application.”

The call she did not expect did came early this year for an on-air position with the station’s afternoon show, which airs from 3-8 p.m. local time, where she has been paired with K-Love veterans Jeff Detrow and Randi Tyler since February.

But accepting the position meant uprooting from Kansas to near Sacramento, Calif., a process he described as “very hard.”

“There was a very long grieving process that I went through in deciding to leave where I was born and raised,” she said. “But the moment I got here, I felt really at home.

“But at heart, I’ll always be a Kansas girl,” she said.

Her belief God was in control made the move easier in spite of so many unknowns.

“You say, ‘I have faith that You have a purpose, and I’m Your child, and You’re going to take care of me like a father would take care of His child.’”

Learning on the job in the onset of the pandemic, though, has presented a host of challenges because of the many changes everyone has had to make. Being able to “learn the ropes” with her new cohosts, Detrow and Tyler, has been a blessing.

“I could not be luckier to be with any two other people right now. They’re fantastic,” she said, noting how patient and kind the pair have been to her.

She said meshing her Kansas values with Detrow, who is from Ohio, and Tyler, who is originally from New York, shapes the encouragement they all want to share with their listeners across the country in this turbulent time.

“We’re all different, but we’re all exactly the same,” she said. “We can celebrate our differences, because at the core we’re all the same. We’re all here for the same mission, to serve our Father.”

Like all other steps on her journey, though, she believes that being where she is at this point in time is part of God’s calling on her life.

“I know God called me here at this time, knowing all of this would happen, and I’m very humbled that He has given me this mission at this moment in time,” Beard said.

Being in a position where her work allows her to help others find encouragement in the crisis has helped her find strength to get through it, as well.

Lessons for the larger mission

Through the whole of the winding journey, the common thread has been her trust in the Lord and His care and purpose for her life.

“He’s my Father, even when I’m scared, even when I’m questioning, even when I’ve made a major mistake and I have no idea how I’m going to dig myself out of the hole that I’m in,” she said.

“As long as there is breath in my body, God is giving me a chance to be the person He created me to be.”

And the lessons she has learned from her journey, she hopes others searching for their own purpose will take from it, as well.

“The best thing I ever did was accepting ... that this is how God made me,” she said. “Instead of constantly wishing I was different, accept that God made me this way and figure out how can that be worked toward His will.”

When you learn to accept who God created you to be instead of fighting against it is when the Lord can really use you, she said.

“I hope that I can help people find their own way to connect with God through who they are,” she said.