New Book!!!

Many stories for you this week! Tales from our class reunion, the surprise date Ryan planned for me, and the whole subject of this blog post, too!!

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Well, my friends, I have some fun news to share with you today!

It's true!! I have a new writing project just out, and I've been looking forward to sharing it with you!

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Let me give you a bit of a background.

This is not the book I wrote last fall. That one is still seeking its publishing home. Actually, I wrote the content of this book about ten years ago. God and I went on a little journey together, and after it concluded, I felt God pressing me to write about it.

So I did. I wrote it and then I tucked it away on my bookshelf, where it has remained, all safe and secure in a binder, for the last ten years.

I'm glad I wrote about it back then. I'm glad I wrote while the events and lessons were fresh in my mind, because if I hadn't done it then, I wouldn't have been able to accurately remember everything all these many years later.

But words do no good on a shelf. And as absolutely FRIGHTENING as it is to share them right out loud with people I may not know or be able to see, that is what I'm called to do as a writer, so with trembling hands and an equally trembling soul, I offer you this piece of my story.

The reason I chose to take the words out of their bookshelf hiding now is because this fall, I'm speaking at some women's retreats, and my topic is Be Still. In the writing of the material, I felt that I wanted to offer more to these women. More than four sessions that whirl by in a weekend. I wanted to show them how I learned the be still lesson. I wanted to give them words they could hold in their hands and take home with them if they felt they still needed a friend in the journey after the weekend concluded.

This book isn't a how-to. It's a how-I-did. It's a story and a study all in one. It's a story of my weeks of praying in the prayer chapel. It's the study of passages God brought to me to teach me in that season. It offers Scripture passages for you to read on your own {if you want} and even journaling lines if you want to make notes.

The details surrounding my need to be still might not match the details that cause you to spiritually flail. That's okay! No matter what it is that causes rustling in your soul, I think you'll find the heart of my journey similar in ways to the heart of yours.

To share words of a heart-journey is both exciting and terrifying. I have freaked out on more than one occasion, knowing this previously private part of my life was about to be on a published page. I've begged the Lord for His mercy and protection over this story. That somehow, as you read, you would see the true desire of my heart, which is for you to find the same kind of intimacy with Him that I did.

Dear friends, I would love for you to to read Be Still: Learning to Know He is God if you'd like. It is available on Amazon {and if you're local to me, I have copies as well}. You do not have to be a woman or attending the retreats I'm doing to enjoy the book. It was meant to be a companion to those weekends, but it also stands alone.

If you do read it and want to share something the Lord stirs in you, you're welcome to use #bestillbook. But this journey is not even remotely about sharing and hashtags. This journey is about letting the Lord work in you. That is what I have prayed over these pages. That He would remove anything of the details of my story that might get in the way and that He would work somehow in you. If that happens, pulling the manuscript out of a binder and sharing it is all worth it.

Very shortly, I will share with you about the day I got the book for the first time and all the fun I've been having already. But for today, I very humbly offer you this new book of mine. Thanks for sharing the journey with me!