On a November morning in 2024, Curtis Pennyman made a choice that would alter the entire trajectory of his life. He left his stable corporate job behind and took a leap of faith. 

“God told me to leave,” he says. “There was too much disrespect. They didn’t value me.” 

His sudden move caught all his colleagues off guard, who thought he would stay for the upcoming bonus in just a few weeks. But Curtis was heading toward a different calling.

“I had a lump in my throat when I told my manager, but the moment I resigned, I slept like a baby. I’ve never looked back.”

Now at 60, Curtis says he’s living a calmer and more purposeful life than ever. His autobiography, “Divine Protection: Advancement From Slave House to Corporate Tower,” tells the story of how a small-town boy from Georgia survived loss, pain, and struggle—and came through with a renewed faith that “I work for God now,” he says with a smile. Nowadays, he spends his time praying, reading, and waiting to see what God has planned for him.

Early Life in Georgia

On February 7, 1965, Curtis Lamar Pennyman was born in a small town in Upson County, Yatesville, Georgia. He grew up in a “three-room house,” which is often referred to as a “slave house” due to its basic amenities – no running water, no air conditioning, and an outhouse out back.

“We had fans in the summer and a fireplace in the winter,” he remembers. “But we never went hungry.”

His grandparents rented a large farm that could support the whole family, while also teaching Curtis important lessons about gratitude even during tough times.

Later, education became his armor. In 1983, he graduated from Mary Persons High School and began working towards a degree in computer science at Georgia Southern University, graduating in 1988. Later, in 1995, he began pursuing an MBA in Information Systems at Georgia State University, completing it in 2000, while also earning project management certifications and skills. He built a strong career in technology through jobs in law enforcement, service, retail, and education.

But beneath the professional facade lay a life shaped by grief and identity anxiety. He lost his mother at just 7 years old. “My aunt stepped in as my divine helper,” Curtis says, reminiscing about the family that stepped in to care for him during his darkest days. Still, those struggles and losses were hard to forget.

Forty Years in the Wilderness

Curtis considers his longest chapter of life to be “Forty Years in the Wilderness.” Because for decades, he lived as a gay man, secretly praying to God to change him. “I didn’t want to be gay. I wanted to be normal,” he admits. But change didn’t come as he hoped, and he decided, “Well, God must have made me this way.”

That belief guided him for 40 years; he had relationships, one of which lasted 16 years, but he never found the peace he was searching for. By 2024, everything came to a head: disappointed with work, overwhelmed by financial burdens, and reeling from betrayal by someone close, he started praying harder than ever amid all the chaos.

Finally, a response from God came, which he now considers a miracle. “I woke up one morning, and I was no longer attracted to men,” Curtis recalls. “I even tested myself—I looked at a man and thought, ‘He’s handsome,’ but there was nothing there. I was healed.”

Almost immediately, he stopped listening to secular music and replaced it with gospel songs. He began engaging on Facebook with relevant posts, which, to his own surprise, he had never done before—talking openly about how God changed him. “I wasn’t the same person anymore,” he says. “I had a new identity in Christ.”

An Awakening and a Calling

Three days later, on his last day at work, Curtis started writing his book, and by the first week of December, it was finished. “I treated it like a full-time job,” he says with a laugh. “I wrote all day, Monday through Friday.”

The book divides his life into sections—childhood, school years, church life, relationships, and career—before ultimately leading to his awakening. Writing it forced him to confront the harsh truths of grief and colorism in the Black community, economic struggles, and health issues, along with relationships that he now believes were “not ordained by God.”

Writing his book also made him remember what he calls “divine helpers,” people who arrived at just the right time. “When my mother died, my aunt stepped in. In college, a friend paid for my books when I couldn’t. When I had a heart attack in 2023, a friend was by my side in 20 minutes. Every time, God placed the right people in my life.”

Curtis’s message is straightforward but meaningful: God’s protection is genuine. “We should always treat people with love and respect,” he says. “You never know who is divinely protected.”

His faith now heavily relies on the command to love God and your neighbor, as drawn from Matthew 22 and Mark 12. “If we really followed those two commandments, so many of our problems in the world would disappear,” he says.

Walking Forward with God

Now, Curtis lives a low-key life in Atlanta, where he’s known for being kind, approachable, and quiet. “I’m naturally an introvert,” he says. “But when God leads me to share, I do.” He helps the homeless without drawing attention to himself, provides support to students in need, and through his men’s ministry, connects with men recovering from addiction and homelessness. “I don’t even call it mentoring,” he says. “We just sit, talk about goals, and remind them they have a future ahead.”

His future, he says, is in God’s hands. “It’s not about my goals. I’m waiting on God. He’ll prepare me and let me know.” Still, his motive is crystal clear: to encourage those who feel hopelessly trapped in a cycle of sin. “God can heal you. He can change your desires. He can deliver you.”

His beloved scripture is Proverbs 3:5–6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

Reflecting on those six decades, Curtis recognizes God’s divine presence in every challenge, whether it’s the fire that destroyed his childhood home, a near-fatal accident as a baby, cancer, or corporate setbacks. “God has been with me from the start,” he says. “He has big plans in store for me. And I know—no weapon formed against me will succeed.”For Curtis, each step has brought him closer to revival. He no longer judges his worth by career titles or past struggles, but by the strong faith that sustains him—and everyone. “I’m a new person,” he says. “I have a new identity in Christ now, and I’m walking in new steps with Jesus as my head.”