As a young girl, my one big dream was to become a wife and a mother and have a home of my own. And my dream came true! But surprisingly, it wasn’t enough.
As a naturally creative person, I longed for ways to express myself so I poured myself into my home beautiful and cozy – through cooking, decorating, and gardening. But even that didn’t fully satisfy the longing in me.
Then one day I picked up a paintbrush – and everything changed, at least for a while. I became a working artist with a home studio. I could still put my family first and have them around me. Life was perfect – well almost.
And then, just in time for one of life’s great losses – the death of my father – I became a Christian. Just like that God revealed himself to me. The story of Jesus came alive through the pages of my bible and I knew it was true.
When God called me back to the classroom to teach at our local Christian school, my life became fulfilling in a different way. Once again, God honoured my desire to keep my family close and I was able to take them to school with me every day. I even got to teach my own children for two years. And since we did bible study every day, I got to share God’s word with them every day. And I got to teach art, what a bonus that was.
Was life perfect then? Far from it. God has allowed me to experience chronic pain, divorce, depression, and a lot of other life heartaches and disappointments, many of which you have faced too.
But through it all, God was with me. After I retired from teaching and later from my career as an artist, my creative passions didn’t fade. I started speaking about my faith, writing a blog, and then a novel and now a devotional book. Life is good and full of new projects and new dreams. God was enough. God is enough. I can do nothing without him but “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” (Phillippians 4:13)
