Some days are filled with kisses from heaven. Those times you can catch the heartbeat of God, feel the breath of His approval, sense the longing of His gentle correction. At our Catlett Christmas, I got a very vivid reminder that this dream of writing is a gift straight from His heart that He has cultivated for almost 20 years.Almost twenty years ago I was 14 and in love with books. I inhaled books at the rate of one a day, and for a long time I had the spiral bound notebook to prove it! That school year I wrote letters to a stack of Christian writers. It was part of a school "assignment" -- the beauty of homeschooling, anything can become school :-) -- the goal, to see what being an author was really like. I contacted EVERYONE I could think of at the time. Christian fiction was much smaller, so the list isn't long: Frank Peretti, June Masters Bacher, Judith Pella, Madeline L'Engle, Janette Oke, and Michael Phillips. I had absolutely no fear then.
Each of these authors responded, and those letters languished in a window seat until Christmas. My mom discovered them when cleaning out a room and put them in an album for me, reminding me of the roots of this writing dream.
But the absolutely COOLEST part of the gift was that my sister tracked down an author that I corresponded with multiple times: Sandy Dengler. I'm embarrassed to say that she even read some of those early teenage writings and encouraged me to keep at it. She saw a spark of something or was just an amazingly kind woman. But because of Janna's call, I now have a letter from Sandy from just a couple months ago congratulating me on the release of my first book. From that I was able to reconnect with her via email today. I can't wait to send her a copy of Canteen Dreams.Through it all God reminded me that while this latest foray into the dream of writing started with Colleen and her incredible encouragement and guidance, He also used people years ago to tell me that this dream could come true. And now it has!
He is so good!!!
2 comments:
I was glad to be a part of making your Christmas happy and remind you of just how faithful God has been all these years!
Janna
PS - you really owe Matt a thanks, because just when I was ready to give up trying to find the elusive Sandy Dengler - he told me to try one more time and that is when I made contact :-)
Girls--You should write this up for Christian Communicator magazine. I don't have the guidelines on this computer, but Lin Johnson, the editor, likes short articles and only accepts email. What a great story!
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