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 it wasn’t enough.
As a naturally creative person, I needed to express myself so I threw myself into my home, cooking, decorating, and gardening. But that wasn’t enough either.
When I finally picked up a paintbrush 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 me to face one of life’s great losses, the death of my father, I became a Christian. Just like that God revealed himself to me and the story of Jesus rang true through the pages of my bible.
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. When I retired from teaching and then from my career as an artist, my creative passions did not stop. 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)
