Embracing the Journey

Authoring and publishing a book was not on my radar regarding personal goals or anything I desired to do. I enjoyed writing as a young girl, but writing fell by the wayside as other things gained prominence during my teenage years.

In hindsight, putting aside some of my writing content was good. In those days, I enjoyed horror stories and
endeavored to write stories imitating some of my favorite thriller authors. Who inspired those writings if God didn’t give us a spirit of fear?

So, after about age 13, I stopped writing. But in 2021, almost 30 years later, the embers of
writing I thought fizzled out began to reignite. I didn’t realize at the time, but I understood later
that when I repented from writing the stories the devil wanted me to write and destroyed all
evidence of the sin, God would release me to write His stories.
But the process was not easy. The road to writing my first book was riddled with doubt, fear, and
thoughts of inadequacy.

Did I hear from the LORD to write this book? So, I asked God for confirmation. I believed
He answered, and I was going strong for a little while. Then came those thoughts again: Are you
sure God wants you to do this, or are you just thinking this up in your mind? So, again, I
asked God for confirmation. It was my personal “Gideon moment” (Judges 6:36-40). I
believed God answered again.

But how God answered was not how I wanted Him to answer. He answered through people,
when I wanted the heavens to open and to hear God’s voice say to me personally, Joy, this
is God, write the book!

However, that didn’t happen. So, after the second confirmation, I decided to have no more doubt. I’m
moving forward, and if for some reason I heard wrong, God would stop me. So I wrote, praying
all along the way, asking God to stop me at any point if I was out of His will.

The process was long, primarily because I didn’t know what I was doing. How hard can it be to
write a book, right? Though it’s not hard, there is a process to writing a book, especially a
picture book, for it to flow more smoothly with less backtracking. I was so eager to get
started that I should have done more research and sought advice from others who had
completed this process. Follow the right process in whatever you do, no matter
how time-consuming you may think it is. Either spend the time going through the process on the
front end or don’t go through the process and spend time on the back end to complete the
missed steps.

It has been an exciting journey with the LORD. The peaks and valleys. The tears and the joy.
The hurdles and the victories. I wouldn’t trade it for the world! I learned things about myself and
During this process, I believe God helped me trust Him more. He is for me, not against me, and if I am doing what He has called me to do, all things work together for good to them, and they love God, who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).