After becoming a wife and mother, I started writing these crazy family letters about life with our two young sons, letters that usually began with crying or some kind of melt-down. My own! Mom would always call and say, “You need to write a book!” I’d look across the kitchen table at those two little boys sitting with bowls of artificial flavorings, dyes, and preservatives and reply, “Mom, I can’t get a grocery list put together.” Not a real inspirational or motivational time.

After she died, Dad reminded me that Mom had wanted me to write a book. Our sons were young adults and beginning to ask their own questions about Mom meeting Dad. Let’s just say I was not in the PLU library studying at the time. Before getting too focused on the tee-hee moments, I wanted to tell our story in the context of a wonderful marriage, a very blessed family. I wanted my boys to know how the fruit of God’s Spirit had been a part of each one of us.

And you know what? I wrote a book. And then I wrote a second book. And then came a third book.

In writing I saw how my delightfully ordinary life was tightly bound to God’s extraordinary love and faithfulness.

In writing I connected antics and vulnerabilities to bigger, more important lessons in life.

In writing I saw how God’s been in the details—always has been, always will be.

He’s been there for you, too. We all have stories to tell. We all have stories that connect to bigger, more important lessons in life. My inspirational goal is to have you embrace your own delightfully ordinary place in God’s story, to see the connections to His extraordinary love and faithfulness. My motivational goal is convince you to get your story and those connections down in print. I’d love for you to say, “If she can do it, I can do it, too.”