Preface -
How Journey into Trust came to be…
Taking the time to write again began in my backyard and on those intentional stops during my bike rides when I’d sit in the sunshine and pull my pen and leather covered notebook out of my lightweight pack. I enjoyed each of those beautiful late summer days in 2022, soaking in the beauty of God’s creation. As it turned out, both the serene views, and all the words God helped me to fill those pages with over the next year-and-a-half were gifts that restored my soul. Writing would enable me to process much more than I ever imagined when I started describing sunshine, birds and fading coneflowers.
A few months later I spent a lot of time researching possible graduate programs and seeking the Lord about what to get a master’s degree in, but as you’ll read in the Purpose & Direction pieces, my wise God stayed very quiet and helped me lay my dream before His feet and just lean into Him.
In the spring of 2023, it became clear why God had been so quiet about me pursuing graduate school. I found a lump in my left breast and soon realized the cheap watch I’d been wearing on my left wrist for the last eight years had a clasp made of lead. When I slept, I often rested that very part of my watch exactly where the lump had developed. It may have been coincidence, but it was all freaking me out and the diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound performed on me in May did not yield good news!
So, through all that tumult of being diagnosed with cancer, I ran into my God’s arms. For as Psalm 46:1 declares, He is “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble”—or as my Bible’s margin puts it, the One who is “abundantly available for help in tight places.” As my path just kept getting narrower and narrower with each new test result, He kept fulfilling that promise to me. With each tight place that I fought having to go through, from the breast MRI contrast I didn’t want in my body, to the body altering surgeries, which I definitely didn’t want(!), I found Psalm 46:1 to be true hour by hour and moment by moment.
Many of the heartfelt pieces in Journey into Trust have come from me pouring out my heart to God and hearing Him when I needed Him most. One such time happened this past October just after pulling off the road to take a call from my breast surgeon. She informed me that one of my lymph nodes had come back positive with 4mm of cancer in it. She made it clear that I would need to do five to six weeks of radiation therapy. This was the same radiation therapy, which just a few weeks before I had declared to my mom I would not do! I couldn’t believe my Grade 1, very small tumor, had spread to my lymph node! So as soon as I got off the phone with her, I cried and I prayed. It was evident that the Lord had allowed my path to narrow once again, and it was clear in my spirit that I would be doing the recommended therapy.
After calling my husband and telling him the news, I got back on the road and continued to pour my heart out to God. It was then that I started noticing the incredible autumn colors lining the backroads I was taking home. As I drove, the thought came to me. What if as the path gets narrower, the colors get brighter?
It was the comforting challenge the Lord knew I needed to hear, and by His sweet mercy, it has happened just as He whispered. As my path has narrowed and taken turns that I never thought I’d be taking, the colors on my walk with Him have become brighter and brighter. His voice has gotten clearer and clearer; Journey into Trust is the result.
Many of the deeply personal devotional pieces like “I See…”, “Yellow Buttercup”, “Steep Me”, “Every Sorrow”, “Lord of the Breakthrough” and several of those in the Overcoming section of Journey into Trust first began as the hardest days of my life. These grew out of home schooling and parenting my two precious kids during the crazy, heart wrenching ups and downs of Lyme disease, toxic mold illness, and more recently Long COVID. These pieces are glimpses of hope that God gave me before the reality of that hope came in the form of better days. They are also lessons learned through time in God’s Word where He taught me how to overcome the lies, the discouragement and the depression that kept me slogging in the Valley of Rephaim for far too long.
As I think you can tell by now, this whole book is a gift from my Heavenly Father. Through writing it, He has helped me find my voice and express my heart through my pen. But more than that, He has helped me turn everyday experiences into ways to weave His Word more thoroughly into my life. I hope the words you read on the pages of this book touch your heart and give you hope on your darkest nights. May it become a traveling companion for you on your own Journey into Trust.
Photo by: Eden Boudreau
Photo by: Jeremy Thomas
Photo by: Dave Hoefler