Three Hundred Sixty-five Days

Three hundred sixty-five days.  Eight thousand seven hundred sixty hours.  Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes.  Thirty-one million five hundred thirty-six thousand seconds. One year.  No matter how you add it up, they all equal one year.  One year has changed my life.

This time last year I was consumed with planning, preparing, and executing the most fabulous Dora birthday party ever.  I wasn’t writing.  I didn’t have a blog.  To tell you the truth, I had never even read a blog.  But God was working on me.  He was preparing my heart.  Give up the junk novels, he told me.  Sadly and slowly, I got rid of all of my trashy romance novels.  (Ouch! That hurt ‘cause, friends, I loved me some juicy reading.)  Replace those novels with spiritual books, he said.  I began reading Jill Briscoe’s book here am I, Lord…send somebody else!

Jill said some things in her book that echoed the words of my own grandmother.  Ask the Lord to use you. For years, my grandmother has said Use Me, Lord every morning when she gets out of bed.  She is ninety-three.  Sounded easy enough, so I tried it.  Sometime last March I uttered those three words to our Lord and truly meant it – Use me, Lord.

And He did.  I had no idea that He would use my love for words and writing to glorify Him.  But He has.  I began writing devotions and saving them on my computer – just for the sake of writing. I decided that if I was serious about writing then I needed as much practice as possible, so I started a blog.  Four days later, I was asked to join Faith Lifts, a devotional website for moms, and write devotions every other week.  With God’s guidance, I launched into unfamiliar territory.  Use me, Lord. 

Sometimes I hear from people my words have touched.  One friend read a blog at her family Christmas gathering.  Two Sunday School classes at my parent’s church used a blog to help teach the parable of Matthew 25 in their class.  One sweet friend I’ve never met shared how a devotion helped her marriage.  Use me, Lord.

God blew my socks off most recently when I won Lysa Terkeurst’s writing contest.  I will be published in the May ’08 issue of the P31 magazine.  Being published has been a life-long dream, and God has given me the desire of my heart.  Use me, Lord.

My passion is helping other women find out what God’s plan is for their lives.  I have written the message God has given me into a book called Woven.  Now I wait for Him to show me which way to step next, all the while asking Him to Use me.  

One year.  A lot has gone on in one year.  God can do some incredible things in one year. Three hundred sixty-five days.  Eight thousand seven hundred sixty hours.  Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes.  Thirty-one million five hundred thirty-six thousand seconds.  I wonder what the next year will bring? How ’bout you?