At some point in life, most of us have asked ourselves one or all of these questions:
Who am I?
Why am I here?
What is my purpose?
When do I do what is required of me?
How do I go about that task?
Did you recognize the age-old five for writing? I laughed when I saw my newest license plate. It begins with “WWH,” and I thought, how appropriate for a writer. At the beginning of a new writing project, I also return to the reminder that if He calls, He equips. So I get on with the task at hand.
First of all, I didn’t evolve, I was created by the breath of God. He chose and bought me with a price, the death of His Son Jesus. The line from Victory in Jesus says, “He sought me and bought me with His redeeming love.”
God engineered in me specific and unique skills or talents, along with an individual blueprint, to obey and glorify Him through whatever work I carry out. There is no doubt in my mind that I was called to encourage through what I write. What a journey that calling has been.
As a new believer, I wrote a testimony as to how special my name is. The words were rejected by a wise editor. It took years of growth to understand why. I am not special. My name is not special. I am unique, but that only reveals how sovereign God is. He knew my name before I was born, but He gets credit because He is God. I did nothing to earn that name any more than I “earned” salvation in Christ.
A.W. Tozer once wrote, “A real Christian is an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love to the One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible and knows that which passes knowledge.”
I don’t mind being viewed as an eccentric writer or an odd duck. I know Who planned my life. I know Who died to give me life. 1 John 1:1 says That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.
Our world appears to be a hopeless mess. But God’s got it. We have hope because the Bible tells us to hope in Christ. We are called for a purpose. Cling to God for the answers of life.
Christmas House
Pepper Rainwater has just bought the first real home she’s ever had, and she’s decorating and celebrating Christmas with everything she has. The neighbor’s miniature donkeys and meeting Foxx interrupt her life. Can she turn from all she’d been taught and trust strangers? A startling discovery after his father’s death forces Foxx Haven to face an unknown past. His life has been a lie. He’s distracted from work for the first time— by his heritage and his new neighbor. Can he fight his attraction to an unbeliever and discover his new life chapter at the same time? Miniature donkeys and learning about Christ have a profound impact on Pepper. But God has a mighty work to bring her hurting soul and Foxx’s new perspective into alignment. Can hope override hurting souls and enable a happily-ever-after?
Author Erin Stevenson shares about life while she was writing A Dream for Christmas.
When I was asked to write a devotional about my 2022 Christmas book, A Dream of Christmas, this page sat blank for a long time. I wrote the book about a year ago when I was in a different place in life. The past several months have brought some major changes, and in my recent personal time with God, I’m discovering that I’m too driven, too focused on planning out all the details, and too lacking in trust. He has allowed some pretty significant boulders to land in my path. I’m praying for wisdom on whether and how much to change course. Above everything, I want His will.
In A Dream of Christmas, the main female character, Charity, is in much the same boat. She made some mistakes in her past, but once she became a mother, her laser focus became doing whatever was best for her children—which is why she took the bold, risky decision to go on the run with them. But she continually second-guesses herself. She’s a relatively new believer, learning how to seek God’s will and how to recognize when He’s working in her life.
All my books, while different, center on a few common themes: the love between a man and a woman as God intended it, the family as He designed it (including blended families), forgiveness, second chances, and grappling with life’s problems according to scriptural guidelines.
If you’re by nature a planner, I invite you to sit back, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and just rest. Our world is filled with noise 24/7. You’ll hear God’s voice in the silence. Trust that He will take care of the details of your life. He’s promised it in His Word (Matthew 6:29-34).
When Finn Donovan answers a late-night knock at the door, there stands Charity Sullivan, the only woman he’s ever loved. He hasn’t seen her since the night nearly seventeen years ago when they shared a magical kiss after a months-long friendship.
But Charity isn’t alone, and her last name is no longer Sullivan. Her four children are with her, and she’s looking for a place to hide. Her marriage just ended, and her former father-in-law, a powerful, dangerous underworld boss, will stop at nothing to keep her from leaving with his grandchildren.
As Finn and Charity’s friendship rekindles, Finn’s protective instincts go on high alert. He’s never stopped loving her, but as an upright, God-fearing man, doesn’t want to take advantage of her vulnerability. Charity is drawn to Finn. She dreams of a future for them, but unanswered questions from the past stand between them.
When Charity receives a phone call telling her that her former father-in-law has discovered her whereabouts, she decides to go on the run again. But Finn isn’t having any of it. He has a Christmas dream of his own, and it won’t come true without Charity and her children.
Author Carol James visits today and shares a bit about her newest release and its connection to an earthquake.
“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,’’ says the Lord, who has compassion on you.
Isaiah 54:10
Mountains symbolize strength and constancy. But what happens in your life when the constants are destroyed?
Georgia’s known for peanuts, peaches, and humidity. Not earthquakes. Yet, the Atlanta area sits along the Brevard Fault Zone. I still remember being awakened in the predawn hours one morning by the shaking of my bed and the clanging of the handles on the armoire in our bedroom. After a few seconds, silence returned, and in the fog of sleep, I wondered if what I felt and heard was real or simply a dream.
The following morning, Atlanta news confirmed it. Overnight, we’d had an earthquake.
Our little rumble was nothing compared to the major earthquakes experienced in other areas of the world. No buildings fell. No mountains crumbled. But the minor shaking and confusion it caused were disconcerting.
Several years ago, our church suffered an emotional earthquake. A group had gone on an international mission trip (as numerous teams of volunteers did many times a year) to share the gospel. During that trip, one of the team members was killed in a tragic accident. This loss tore through our church, threatening to crumble our faith and peace. Our pastor reminded us, much more eloquently than I can, that serving the Lord can be dangerous on many levels. And while we’re not guaranteed safety, we are guaranteed God’s love and peace.
Isaiah 54:10 reminds us of that. No matter what tragedy befalls us, or what part of our world is shaken and crumbles to dust, God’s love and peace are constant and steadfast. Nothing—absolutely nothing—can overcome them. And not only that, but our Father, in His compassion, feels and shares our pain. He assures us that, during the times in our lives when tragedy befalls us and everything around us seems to be crumbling away, two things remain: God’s unfailing love and His covenant of peace.
In Choosing Christmas, both Angela Taylor and Adam Thornton have had their lives shaken to their cores. They struggle to overcome the physical and emotional scars of past tragedy and loss. Believing his choices are responsible for his father’s death, Adam battles both guilt and physical pain. Angela struggles with forgiving a mother who deserted her as a child. And the only way they know to do that is by choosing to draw strength from the gift of God’s unfailing love and peace in Christ Jesus.
Heartbroken over the unfair loss of a position in the school where she teaches, Angela Taylor is determined to find an AP position.
Adam Thornton has struggled for years to overcome the physical and emotional effects of a devastating accident that occurred when he was a teenager. A successful real estate attorney and part-time handyman, Adam uses his gifts and talents to serve others.
When Angela is hired as an AP at the school where Adam’s mother is the principal, Angela and Adam find they share a past… an unexpected connection. And they must choose whether to surrender to the pain of that past or find hope for the future in the spirit of Christmas.
As a Floridian, I am Christmas challenged. I see the Hallmark stories with the cold weather and snow at Christmas Eve, and as one who has never experienced snow, I somehow felt that my Christmases didn’t measure up.
But, hey, I have had Christmases where the upside-down thermostat strip on my AC/heater would cut off the contraption when it dropped below forty degrees. Even with those occasions being rare in Florida, I have spent nights when the temps dropped into the teens wrapped in a full-winter coat to sleep. Oh, and alligators. I’ve seen alligators on lawns, basking in the sunshine to stay warm in the winter chill.
Attention-Grabbing Alligators
Now that I have your attention, I can tell you that, while a perk, the setting of the swamp town of Mullet Harbor in All I Want for Christmas was simply a perk for me. I had another reason for writing this story.
Abigail Brewster is my favorite type of character: unassuming and under-estimated, a David hidden by the misconceptions of others. Her meekness is mistaken for weakness, but take a stance against the people she loves, the town she holds dear, or the God she loves more than anything, and her light shines.
Sheriff Remy Arneaux is the boy, now a man—and a handsome Cajun at that—that Abigail, or Abby, as Remy calls her, has always loved.
In their relationship and the pitfalls that they face, Abigail presents herself as the pre-married Proverbs 31 woman, the one who has set her sights on the man she loves and intends to present herself chaste before him. She’s not perfect, and she has to backtrack sometimes, because, after all, Abigail Brewsters in today’s society are very real.
All I Want for Christmas is meant to shine a light on their attributes and their failures, to show others that their efforts will never be fruitless when they place their trust in God, and well, those quirky folks of Mullet Harbor made the pathway to Abigail getting her man a hilarious adventure. And you won’t want to miss the antics of Abercrombie: the alligator on the lawn.
Fay Lamb is the only daughter of a rebel genius father and a hard-working, tow-the-line mom. She is not only a fifth-generation Floridian, she has lived her life in Titusville, where her grandmother was born in 1899.
Since an early age, storytelling has been Fay’s greatest desire. She seeks to create memorable characters that touch her readers’ hearts. She says of her writing, “If I can’t laugh or cry at the words written on the pages of my manuscript, the story is not ready for the reader.” Fay writes in various genres, including romance, romantic suspense, and contemporary fiction.
If you’d like to catch up with Fay, visit her at her website, on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter. Also, Fay has become a “novel” gardener, and she shares her adventure in her newsletter, Tales from the Azalea Garden. You can sign up for her newsletter, here.
There are times we choose a gift that we adore but find our loved ones less than enthusiastic upon receiving it. Do we treat God’s gifts the same way?
Well, the most amazing gift I received, the one that boosted my childhood faith and sent four-year-old Kristen dancing about with joy, was somewhat terrifying for my parents. You see, I had been praying for a pony every single night for a year. My parents couldn’t afford a pony. We had no place to put a pony. But their small concerns did not stop my fervent heavenly petitions.
As my fourth birthday neared, the unthinkable occurred. Remember my prayers, so many prayers. Against their wishes, someone randomly gifted my folks with an angry circus pony! Thus, Shortcake entered our lives. She bucked, she kicked, she bit, she reared up on her hind legs and tried to scrape you off her back on fences and tree branches. She galloped off and hid behind terrifying cows. She was a pony and therefore, she was perfect!
When I was searching for a personality for Shelby, my heroine in Chicken Crossing, I decided that just like that wild gift-giver with an extra pony on their hands, my heroine should definitely spend her time gifting unexpected pets to others. Allergic to dogs? No problem. Shelby comes to the rescue with a pair of bald rats!
Clearly, I had way too much fun with that story, but as Shelby learned to trust the Lord’s help and let go of the idea of being the one to rescue everyone around her, I was reminded that the very best gifts are the ones that echo in your heart forever. Sometimes, the best gifts are even the ones that we look upon with suspicion and a fair bit of trepidation.
Yes, that angry circus pony was amazing, but I have received something even more fabulous and much more dangerous. No, this gift never bites or climbs the fence. Although, accepting it does bring its own kind of pain along with the greatest joy.
When God decided to come to us, His gift was met with suspicion, confusion, and fear.
Just like the characters in Chicken Crossing when faced with a gift of bald rats; just like my parents when that biting, kicking, beautiful pony was thrust into their lives; the people in Israel were pretty concerned when their Messiah showed up. He was different than they expected. More dangerous. Demanded different things of them than they were willing to give. I am the bread of life? The greatest of you will be the servant of all? Love your enemies? Yes, there was miraculous healing. Healing of both the body and the heart, but it happened on the Sabbath and for lepers, whores, and tax collectors. What was God thinking? What kind of gift had He sent and how did it fit into an orderly religious world?
But just like my parents built a lean-to in the back yard for that pony and the bald rats and pet chickens in Chicken Crossing eventually found a home, making room for God’s gift is worth the trouble. Now, I’m not saying to accept every gift-chicken that shows up at your doorstep. But when it is God knocking, absolutely rush to the door and usher Him into your world. He knows you inside and out. He has the very best gifts and through the power of His spirit, will steer you in life and love and sacrifice so that you can give the very best gifts to others. Just like God brought my parents to mind when that stranger from so long ago found themselves with an extra pony on their hands. Yes, the God we serve is that powerful and that good. This Christmas, may we all honour God as we lavish gifts upon each other. But if your gift is a chicken, unexpected puppy, or bald rat; I suggest a great deal of prayer before you give. May your gifting reflect your Lord and always honour Him.
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What is Chicken Crossing all about? I’m glad you asked …
Why did the chicken cross the road?
The machinations of poultry are difficult to decipher. Add an infuriating youth pastor, a terrifying crash at highway speeds, and trap-building kids too bored for their own good and you have something a little more serious than a knock-knock joke.
After the local librarian foolishly agrees to haul a trailer full of chickens over the pass, an unexpected crash sends fifteen beloved hens scattering into the wilderness. Shelby and the exasperating Jack must locate, capture, and return the chickens to his nephew before the talent show at the boy’s new school on Monday. The problem: chickens are incredibly difficult to catch. Especially when dispersed throughout the wild. When they take refuge in a coop occupied by twenty identical hens and guarded by multiple NO TRESPASSING signs and a pair of bored mountain children who have been watching way too much TV, tensions rise and feathers fly. Can Shelby thwart an alarming collection of unlikely traps and find the chickens before they are devoured? Imagination and ingenuity go so very wrong in this epic clash of inventive child verses accidental chicken thief.
Wondering what Dandelion Floofums was up to during Shelby and Jack’s insane quest? Find out here!
Kristen joy Wilks
Kristen Joy Wilks is an author, camp photographer, and mom of three teenage boys. She writes about what she loves: the quiet of the forest, the ill-considered schemes of unstoppable children, and the love of loyal pets who will never leave your side … as long as you pack bacon! Follow Kristen on Instagram, Facebook, or try one of her chicken-themed books for free by signing up for her newsletter at kristenjoywilks.com.
