Testimony

Hello, 

Welcomed to borrowed breath. I am hesitant to call it a clothing brand because yes, it obviously is but I don’t see it as that. It is a testimony of the goodness of God, a proclamation of faith, a step of faith, God’s redemption story in my life, a way to share the gospel, reclaim souls, a path to be on mission for the Great Commission, and the anointing God has placed on my life. 

In 2018 I was lost. No direction in my life other than wanting to own a brand for my own success and for the materialistic value that could come with that. I wanted to create edgy streetwear that had no mission other than money and was designing hoodies that had profanity on them. And by the grace of God those ones specifically never made it to getting produced. I also designed jewelry with crosses on them but it was more of design than about a savior that died upon that cross for me. I didn’t care about the message I was spreading, to be honest I didn’t even know what that message was. I moved to Arizona in 2019 and finished school out there getting a degree in fashion. My first year out there I felt the call of God in my life while going through the loneliest season of my life. I moved across the country to the biggest party school in the nation during covid not knowing a soul. I had no one. And thank God, because in that season God pursued me and chased me down and with no one and nothing around me I could only hear the voice of God calling me back. I ended up getting saved that year and gave my life to Christ. Now in all honesty I don’t really know how to shorten this testimony because it intricately intertwines over the last 7 years. Maybe I’ll release the full story later on but for now I'll try my best. The edgy streetwear brand I started was called bleached and branded. When I moved to Arizona I kinda gave it all up, I kept putting pressure on myself to keep doing the brand but it was never working out and it kept falling on the back burner. After all, I just moved across the country and was starting school and now there is a God in my life. However it wasn’t that easy. It was like this constant thing chirping at me to pick it up, and do it, and don't give up, and you have to be an entrepreneur. It was more of a mental burden than I was even working on it physically, because I wasn't. And honestly I was really struggling with all of it. I was newly going to church and being mentored. I remember sharing the clothing brand with my mentor and she told me to surrender it. I of course fought that and it wasn’t until my sister said surrender to me that it made sense. I sent up a prayer to God as simple as ‘God, I give this to you, please take it from me.” The moment I said that to God I felt peace and this release of pressure. It was no longer a thing, I honestly forgot it existed and was something I completely left in the past like I didn’t even want to remember it. I continued through school and as I was walking to class one day my senior year, the song “King of Kings” came on and I got a vision that I will never forget. I won’t share it fully yet, as I wait for it to come to pass, but it was from God, with the people of God. A few months after I graduated College and was working in the fashion industry for a little while before I felt God calling me home. Before I left Arizona my church asked me to help design hoodies for them. I had all my blank hoodies they ended up buying for $400 from the brand I surrendered. I remember not wanting to spend this money and save it to put back into a brand, but moving home and not having a job right away, I needed the money. I remember I was so scared to move home. I felt like I was taking a step backward, that I was making a big mistake. I remember calling a family member to talk to them about moving home and they spoke my 3 biggest fears to me that kept playing in my head. And it broke me for a moment. Then God had whispered a dream back into my mind he showed me a few months prior warning me about this. The beauty of it was, what hurt me in the moment and was meant to crush me actually relit the fire within me that I was doing the right thing. I wasn’t doing anything with clothing personally at the time and when God brought me home he told me it was a season to heal. I was trying to make custom clothing and realized it took forever to make something and also be promoting it on social media consistently. I was confused about what God was asking me to do in this season for work, so I asked Him one night what I was to do about clothing and I heard him say ‘Surrender’. Fast forward 1 year and some months later. My sister is going on a Mission trip. She asked me to recreate a christian hoodie she saw on instagram because the website was fake or shut down. I was hesitant because God told me to surrender clothing and I didn’t want to be disobedient. But I'm not going to lie, after not working on clothing for so long it felt nice and to not be doing it for work.

When I finished her hoodie we were flying out to San Diego to go say goodbye before her mission trip and I gave her the hoodie. A few days before we left for the trip my parents asked me if i would start a christian brand and I said no so quickly. Not because God wasn’t asking me, but because of the people that have taken advantage of God's name for profit.  And my parents reply to me was, ‘but you wouldn't’.  Which I knew, but sometimes you need to hear it from others to realize sometimes you keep yourself from things because of the corruption of others. 

We landed in cali and I gave my sister the hoodie and a night had passed. It was the second night and I was laying in bed thinking about all the things I have surrendered over the last year in the season of healing God had me in. Except there was one thing that came to mind that I actually never surrendered, God I have given everything up except the thought of being an entrepreneur. It is always there, always something I am telling myself I have to be or will be and I have never surrendered that to you. So in that moment I said ‘God I surrender being an entrepreneur to you’ and I felt so much peace come over me and I fell asleep. 

2 days later my sister is wearing her hoodie out on our morning walk to get coffee. And we met this sweet woman Christa. The first thing she said when she saw my sister was I love your hoodie. And my sister responded with thanks, my sister made it and immediately looked at me and asked if she could buy one? And it honestly took me back. Her lack of hesitation. She briefly shared that she hasn’t been going to church and was maybe drifting in her relationship with Jesus. My sister shared her church with her and invited her to go. And it shook me that that was her reaction to the hoodie. It was immediate. Can I buy one? My God, did you really just use a hoodie to bring a wandering sheep back to you? The fact she wanted to buy one. I just thought people used His name for profit or to share the message, but never in my wildest dreams did I think a hoodie could actually bring one of your children home and spark a conversation to invite someone back to church. Amen. God, I just thought I was making my sister a hoodie, and in the first encounter you killed a lie I secretly believed. Or a reason I wouldn't start a clothing brand. That other people use your name for their gain and I placed that on me as a lie that I would do that to disqualify myself before you could even mention it to me. 

A few days passed and I went to a bible study with my sister. So many of the women were speaking directly into me without even knowing it. It was exactly what I needed to hear and where I was at in life. I was in full surrender after that. It was the most freeing thing ever. I truly had nothing to hold onto. Nothing I was telling myself I had to believe or be or do. I felt like anything could happen. I realized I was putting my hope in different brands I was planning to start like clothing, jewelry, coffee, and things of this world. That it was okay if one of these things didn't work out because I had something else to work on. But God showed me it's okay if it doesn’t work out because I have Him, not another thing in this world. But I’ve let these things go. Letting God define them. That I'm starting over, a new beginning. 

It was the first time I wasn’t jumping into the next thing trying to figure out what’s next. I just wanted God to present it to me. I was totally trusting in Him.  When I got home from California, I couldn't shake this ‘I want to do something transcendent feeling’. This ‘On fire feeling’. I was fully into doing the hoodies and it was about sharing the gospel. Not making hoodies. But getting his sheep back home. 

When I got home I met up with a friend and we were talking about the hoodies and just that God had told me to surrender and I was really hesitant to pick this all back up. That I didn't want to make it mine, I want it to stay his and she said to me, maybe surrender as in surrender the clothing to Him, not giving it up. And it clicked. Surrender the clothing to Him by honoring Him through it. Doing it all for his Glory. 

Surrender. The power of the word and the way GOD was defining it. Not in total abandonment but in surrendering it to Him. The clothing brand to Him. Laying it down to Him. It has His image on it, not mine, His name glorified, not mine, His name honored, not mine. Surrendered to Him. It's not my brand, it's His brand. It's not my glory, it's his glory. It’s not my profit, it’s His profit. 

When I got home and started to think about the hoodies and understand the responsibility of using God’s name I wanted to talk to Him about using His name for the Hoodies and ask permission.  I understand the huge responsibility that comes with using His name. Not only the responsibility but the power, surrender, the representation, and much more. This is THE GOD of the COSMOS we are talking about. It’s not just some brand and it certainly is not just some name when there is the power of life and death in His name alone. I will never forget the intimate conversation we had but when I asked God to use His name, His response was “I have anointed you.”

Now that I am getting ready to leave home and go where God is calling me and has put this hoodie brand on my heart, my family member, the same one that spoke my 3 biggest fears to me about coming home, paid me 400 for doing a job for them. The same family member who spoke my fears to me was now being used by God to confirm what God was doing. That 400 I wanted to save for clothing but couldn't. God returned right at the perfect time after he told me to start this brand. 

During my senior year of college I used bleached and branded for the name of my senior project and kept the logo (bb) because I always liked it. I would always try to think of other bb names so I could use the logo one day and nothing ever stuck. When I first moved home in 2023 I was driving and I just heard God say to me ‘borrowed breath’ I knew exactly what He was saying at that moment. That was the name for the reclaimed bb logo. Fast forward to Maybe a month ago 8/2025 I walked into my room with a bleached and branded hoodie on the floor and I started thinking about the logo and I don’t know why, call it the Holy Spirit, but I started to wonder if the style of the b I used for my logo looked like anything like a letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Don’t ya know I googled it and the logo looks exactly like the letter as the hebrew letter lamed. Upon some brief research Lamed is the 12th letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Its symbolism is that it is the tallest letter, reaching above all others to represent shepherding or leading. It is sometimes linked to the meaning of the King of Kings. (remember that first vision I got at school where the song that was playing was King of Kings) since it is the 12th letter and is considered the central letter or the heart of the Hebrew alphabet. I have had an obsession with hearts forever. I just thought I liked them never thinking anything of it. I would draw them in grade school on my folders and everyone would know they were mine, I even have a heart tattoo. Lamed also stands for YHWH. YHVH in Hebrew. YHWH. Often referred to as the sound or what would be the spelling of a word that breathing or taking a breath sounds like. Borrowed Breath. 

Lamed represents the number 30 but its constituent parts, vav and kaf, yield the number 26. Which is how old I am this year. Shortly after getting back from California God asked me to leave my job. When I was driving home from work I heard God say to me, you are about to work for me. Like the God of all creation is my boss. Amen. He said to me, Haley, you're about to work for me. I am going to teach you things about business, take you places, and show you things you would have never imagined. 

After this, the Song ‘Tell your heart to Beat Again” by Daney Gokey came on. And this is the lyrics that jumped out to me  “Beginning, just let that word wash over you. It's all right now, Love’s healing hands have pulled you through. So get back up, take step one, leave the darkness, feel the sun because your story's far from over and your journey’s just begun. Tell your heart to beat again.

After being in a season of healing these lyrics were speaking to me. It all started making sense, Everything I tried to force on myself and told myself I had to be, the countless things I thought God was telling me to do and wasn’t. The dreams and visions he gave me were finally making sense. The redemption of the BB logo and its meaning. Borrowed Breath being spoken to me. God’s permission and anointing. The conversations, the mission trip, the redemption of myself, the healing. Redemption of not just clothing but hoodies, what I mindlessly started 7 years ago (just realizing this) 7 the number of completion, God had a purpose. 

As I was staring at the full moon last month 10/2025 there was a moment right before I left Arizona that God brought to mind. I was driving to the Grand Canyon and everything started to fade around me and I saw a glowing white cross and heard the voice of Jesus say “glorify me”. 

It just kind of hit me right in that moment, staring at the moon what he meant. When Jesus spoke that to me again tonight, immediately the hoodies popped into my head. I realized that the hoodie I made for my sister, the one that started it all has a cross on the front and the back says “All for His glory”. Just like the glowing white cross I saw and the words I heard from Him, “glorify me”.

So here I am and welcomed to borrowed breath. 

This is not a hoodie, it's a conversation starter with a stranger. It's an invitation to go out into the world, it's a statement of truth in a world filled with lies and confusion, it's magnifying the Lord in a world that can only see smoke. 

I hope you feel it too. The conviction. The same conviction I feel when I wear this hoodie. To represent Jesus. To walk like Him, talk like Him, to act like Him, to react like HIM, to treat others with kindness. It's His name you are barring. We will never be worthy. But like the blood that was poured over us, it's about His grace and His love. If He bore the cross, let us proclaim His name.