She Asked: How Did You Get Here?

This post was written in response to my friend Helen’s questions to me.  She writes at Living My Given Life.  She asked me:

Can you send me a short testimony about you?
Will you tell me how you came to know Christ?
Can you please explain why you wrote this ebook?

Here is what I wrote to her:

My mom always talked in scripture to me. Little snippets, here and there, of the Word. And those seeds went down, deep into my heart. I don’t remember a time when Jesus was not my friend.

But growing up in a military family was not smooth and easy. Daddy was tough. Money was tight. We were sojourners, on the move, always the outsiders. We clung together and fell apart.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, I lost the sense that God was on my side. So I served myself and I felt alone. I made choices that made my life harder. My rebellious heart ran wild even under the cover of the good grades and the outgoing personality of a “nice girl”.

Looking back, my worldview was upside down. I didn’t know who God was or who I was to Him. Every difficult part of my life confused my understanding of Him more.

My marriage was the most painful piece of the puzzle. But “as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Prov 27:17). This sharpening finally forced me to cultivate the seeds of scripture that had been sown so deeply in my heart, so many years ago. I became a student of God’s Word.  There was purpose in my pain.

By far, motherhood was the best thing for me. In trying to teach my kids about the Lord…I experienced Him (the Living Water, the Bread of Life, the Redeemer). I learned that though the Father’s standards are high, He stoops down to lift us up.

I have always loved words. So much so, that I majored in English in college. But I didn’t start really writing much till I began my blog a few years ago.

I was hoping to reach other women who were too tired after work to go to Bible study, because I knew how that felt. I wrote for the moms whose kids were eaten up with separation anxiety, because that was what kept me from Christian fellowship, for a time. And I wrote for women who looked in the mirror and didn’t like what they saw, because that was me, too.

But in writing about The Word, all those little words came together to tell me big truths. And blog posts weren’t always long enough to share the message well. Some of my life lessons have come together in my first eBook, Prodigal Confessions: 10 Principles That Lead Us Back to the Father.

Prodigal Confessions is about how God uses everything, everything, to make us make us new. Nothing is wasted – not our sin, not our mistakes, not our pain. The Gospel is that Jesus has brought life out of death, this includes us, and we are redeemed for a purpose: we are reconciled to Him to become Ambassadors of Reconciliation for Him.