Just the facts:
- After high school, attended and graduated from Bethany Bible Institute (Hepburn Sask., now called Bethany College - Mennonite Brethren)
- Graduate of UBC, Vancouver, B.C., earning a B.Ed.
- Five years of public school teaching - elementary grades.
- Graduate of the Institute of Children's Literature course "Writing for Children and Teens."
- Graduate of the Institute of Children's Literature course "Beyond the Basics."
- Attended Christian and Missionary Alliance Churches in both Saskatoon, Sask. and Surrey, B.C. for a total of 25 years.
- Currently attend Christian Life Assembly (PAOC) in Langley, B.C.
- A wife, mother of two adult children, grandmother of five.
- Freelance writer since 1997 with over 100 articles, book reviews, stories, devotionals, poems, and activities published in print and online.
- My first novel, Destiny's Hands (fiction based on Bible events and characters), was released in June 2012.
Other writing destinations:
Here I post reviews of books I've read recently. From time to time I also blog about the writing life, and my experiences and thoughts on living in BC and Canada.
This blog is still up but not recycled after 2017. One year of daily devotions for children (ages 8-12). Kids following these devotions will read the major Bible stories (in chronological order) with at least one reading from every book in the Bible. These were republished 2015 - 2017.
Original poetry on varied topics (not all faith/religious). Updated randomly.
I'd be delighted if you came by 'Liked' this page, and doubly delighted if you left a comment too!
Download my poetry chapbook Calendar for FREE! It's a book of poems I first published in paperback 2004, updated in 2014 and it's available at Smashwords as an ebook.
Photography:
- Follow me in Instagram where I post photos of Bible journaling projects as well as nature and responses to photo challenges.
My rambling story:
Please let me hear breathing. Please let someone still be here. Those were the thoughts of my seven-year-old self when I’d wake up at night. For I was scared, since I had not yet asked Jesus into my heart, that if He came back in that “twinkling of an eye” like the Bible said, I’d be left behind. It was the fear of being left behind more than anything that prompted me to come to my Mom one day when I was about eight and ask her to pray with me to ask Jesus into my life.
I had always gone to church and been a pretty good girl, so life didn’t change much after that – although I certainly slept better. I got baptized at fourteen, joined the church we attended, after high school went to Bible school for several years, and pretty much lived up to everyone’s expectations – until I left my Saskatchewan home and moved to Vancouver.
Turning my back on the beliefs and lifestyle I had been immersed in since childhood was not something that happened overnight. In fact I can’t isolate an event or moment when it began. It was, instead, a gradual slide from obedience and faith to compromise and then skepticism as I needed to rationalize my actions and did that by poking holes in what I had always believed.
I continued on in this state through university until graduation and into my first teaching job in northern British Columbia. After two years of teaching, a couple of friends and I decided to travel Europe. We quit our jobs and with Eurail passes in hand, embarked on the “Europe cure.”
It was in month three of that jaunt – October of 1974 – that I decided to take a side trip to L’Abri. I had read about this Swiss home of Francis and Edith Schaeffer years earlier in a book by Edith. I’m not exactly sure what I expected to get from this visit. In a way I was surprised that I even had the urge to seek the place out. For there had been little sign of spiritual life in me for years now. But there was something – a restlessness, a holding back, an inability to fully enter into the godless outlook of my friends – that made me feel marked. It was as if my Christian experience had spoiled me for really enjoying my backslidden state. Perhaps I made this trip as a somewhat grudging assent to what seemed inevitable. I think I viewed it as a way of saying to God, here’s your chance to win me back.
When I got there, I was toured around with other visitors. At lunchtime we were invited to join in a meal. Neither Dr. Schaeffer nor his wife were home. We did sit around and talk to some people for a while. But nothing happened – inside me I mean. Despite the whole effort of making the trip up the mountain, I didn’t feel any closer to God. When daylight began to fade I made my way back to the road and the bus stop.
On my trip back to town I mulled over what had and hadn’t happened. Partly I was relieved that there had been no Damascus Road experience. I wouldn’t have to change anything or go through awkward explanations to my friends. But I was also a tiny bit disappointed – and worried. Was this spiritual numbness I was feeling here to stay? A verse I’d memorized in childhood came to me: “No one can come to me unless the Father ... draws him” (John 6:44). Had God decided not to draw me any more? Had He written me off?
We finished our trip and I arrived back in Canada mid-December. The bone chilling Saskatchewan temperatures mirrored the chill in my spirit. My grand adventure was over. I felt like I shouldn’t go back to B.C. because my Dad was ill with bone cancer. Jobless and broke, I moved back into my old bedroom on the farm. Completely cut off from friends and the life I’d made for myself, without even the freedom of using my car, which was up on blocks in the snowed-in quonset, I had lots of time to think.
Did I really like the direction my life had taken, I asked myself. As I looked at the last years from the vantage point of this place, where even the air made me feel dirty by the way its purity brought out the foulness of my cigarette smoke-permeated clothes, I saw how far I’d strayed. Again I sensed God beckoning to me and knew that this was the time to respond. If I resisted now, there might not be another time.
Still I resented the thought of giving up my independence and my right to determine my own future. Could I really trust God with my life? He'd probably want me to be a single missionary or an old-maid school teacher.
Yet, in the five years I’d done my own thing, had I done any better? I certainly wasn’t happy. Was I prepared to take on the responsibility for the rest of my life as well?
Finally after several weeks of this, one evening I’d had enough. I knelt on the cold floor of my old bedroom and prayed, “God, I’ve been a fool. Can You take me back? Please? I want to be Your girl again.”
Of course He did. And I’ve never strayed like that again. As for my treatment at His hands – I could have suffered way more consequences for my prodigal years. But instead, God has heaped my life with goodness and mercy. He is wonderful. I wouldn’t want to be anyone else’s girl!
...and then I started writing
The world of words has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. As a kid, whenever Mom needed me for a job, it was an almost sure thing she’d find me between the covers of a book.
During high school I earned my first publishing credits in The Western Producer - “Young Co-operator’s Page.” I decided then that someday I would like to be a writer.
Though I wrote very little for public consumption in the years that followed - through Bible School, university, teaching, miscellaneous jobs, marriage, the arrival of two children, homemaking and running my home-based medical transcription business - I continued to write privately, journal upon journal. It was my way of processing life and book-marking God’s dealings with me.
In 1995, one year from a landmark birthday, I realized that unless I put some muscle into developing writing skills, my childhood fantasy of working as a writer would remain just that. By the year’s end I had enrolled in a correspondence course and in March 1997 sold my first children’s story to Keys for Kids.
Since that time I have written and published over 100 articles in periodicals, Sunday School papers and online. Several pieces have been included in book collections including devotions in the One Year Book of Devotions for Boys and One Year Book of Devotions for Girls, Books 1 and 2 (Tyndale Kids), a poem, story and essay in Celebrating the Season 2001 (Essence Publishing), and a story in Follow the Dream - Daystar Reader 6 (Philippine Publishing House). I have also published two books of poetry, Calendar (2004, SparrowSong Press ) and Family Reunion (2007, Utmost Christian Writers).
Besides writing I enjoy reading, photography, nature walks, and bird watching.
 |
| Nesting time |
