- Can you provide an abbreviated overview of the story of your book?
Sure! Everybody deals with fear, right? When we were little, we turned on the light to make the darkness go away. And now that we are older, we seek God and His wise counsel to ‘shed some light’ on the ‘darkness’ of hard situations in our life. In the story Please Turn on the Light! a fearful young girl, named Rachel, learns through playing a fun game with her mom that God cares to chase away her fears and has empowered her with His always-on, internal ‘Night-Light!’ This gives her courage in the darkness and confidence to boldly face her fear! The story actually provides a Biblical template for a lifelong pattern of thinking that is followed by bold living, for children and adults alike.
I included a ‘steps of faith’ journal in the back of the book, as well as all of the foundational Scripture references.
- What inspired you to write this book?
The more I think about how to answer this question, the more I’m convinced that it’s God Who has inspired me to write this book. –He has been at work in me to bring this about. (I Cor. 12:4-11, Eph. 2:10 & Phil. 2:13) So writing this book has been an act of worship. He’s taking me on an adventure and I don’t want to miss out.
…God has used a conglomeration of inspirations to ‘water the seed’ that He had planted. He first watered the seed through my Mom when I was young. She would excitedly share God’s love with me and my sister in the mundane. We’d be driving down the road and she’d say, “Look at those trees! –God made those trees! Isn’t He an amazing Creator!?” She introduced Jesus to me and I accepted Him as my Savior. Then, when I became a Mom, I was exhausted, but I wanted to do the best I could to pass on to my children God’s great love for them in Jesus too. I found that I was doing exactly what my Mom did “Hey kids! Look at those trees!…” And I absolutely loved it when God would give me just the right book to read to Grace and Caleb that would capture their attention, teach them about His love for them from a unique angel, and rejuvenate my own weary soul in the process!
As my daughter grew, so did the depth of our conversations about God! And many of them have been at bedtime, like in the story. However, through those late nights, God has not only allowed me the privilege of answering her questions in creative ways but also the privilege of seeing Him work in her heart to ‘turn on the light’ so that she could see greater depths of His personal love and care for her. I’ve gotten to witness her making connections that only God could make and doing things that only He could empower her to do!
Finally, ‘the seed’ became a rough draft one Saturday morning about 6 or 7 years ago, when God put this story on my mind. I was serving as an Assistant Children’s Supervisor with Bible Study Fellowship International and so I had a mindset geared toward trying to take complex truths and boil them down to a child’s level. Or, as I heard Dr. David Jeremiah say in a sermon one time, “The best teacher takes the cookies off of the top shelf and brings them down to the bottom shelf!” –I love that! So, I immediately got up and wrote the story down. But I didn’t know what to do with it. Years passed, and it wasn’t until my recent illness that God made it clear that life is short and I am to get busy joining Him in the journey of getting it published even as weak as I was.
- What other experiences and life lessons prepared you to write this particular story?
A couple years ago, right on the heels of a very stressful time in our family’s life, I was bitten by our cat. It was a bizarre situation! The cat is very “Garfield-like,” shall we say. And when he came through his cat door, it got stuck around his waist. In trying to set him free, he bit me on the thumb, and, in doing so, he broke my bone. After many hospital visits, multiple surgeries, nuclear medical testing, weeks upon weeks of strong medications, and at some point dealing with the flu and walking pneumonia in the middle of it all, my body started to shut down and I ended up being bed ridden and couch ridden for about 8 ½ months. It was one of, if not the, darkest times of my life! I was not only physically debilitated, but I was also spiritually discouraged, to say the least! –Just one year prior, I had been given the opportunity to teach my daughter’s 7th grade Bible New Testament survey class at our kid’s Christian school. –I was ‘flying high’ with joy in this work, with and for, Him! I was heavily leaning into God, like never before, to hear His whispers and feel His nudges on how He wanted me to teach His truths and applications to the students. He was giving me all these fun, creative ideas! I was loving it! As ‘high’ as He allowed me to go, God had now allowed me to be brought me that low. Tables were turned, I was now the pupil. He had all of my attention. I was humbled. Faced with the brevity of life. In those long, dark, sleepless, sorrow-filled days, He was giving me the opportunity to really believe what He said in His Word and to apply everything I had just taught the year prior. It felt like God took me down to ‘nothing’ to show me that Jesus is my everything!
…It seems that life’s refining circumstances are like a screw…with every repeated twist, drive and turn of them, we are faced with Jesus’ question to Peter “Are you going to go away too?” And Peter’s answer was, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” I ended up echoing Peter’s answer and valuing Jesus’ worth. –I decidedly clung to God’s firm and permanent grip on me in Christ. Praise God for His ability, His faithfulness! –It’s definitely not our own!
Without knowing if God was going to heal me here, or in heaven, He gave me peace, strength, and power in Jesus through the Holy Spirit to face my fears as He strengthened me. It’s an understatement to say that I’m grateful for God’s mercy and grace to heal me and allow me to bring glory to His name through this book and through whatever else He calls me to write or do in life!
(…One more little thing, it just dawned on me. It’s interesting to think in regards to the screw analogy, a screw’s job is to hold two things together, securely. –May all of our trials ultimately hold us tighter to Jesus and cause us to look forward more and more to our real home with Him in heaven!)
- How did your time at Cedarville help prepare you to become a published author?
Looking back God used my time at Cedarville to strengthen my faith in Him. When I entered, Jesus was my Savior and my Authority. But I was looking to get to know Him more intimately. I loved chapel and thoroughly enjoyed my Bible classes! I tried to apply the things that the professors were teaching. One Bible professor, in particular, would always say that we should ask God for big and specific things. So I started to. And by the time I graduated, my relationship with Him included not only my salvation and my authority but also my communicative Friend and Provider.
Early on in my Freshman year, I actually came to a crisis of faith. Satan had thrown an arrow of doubt and I wasn’t really sure if God’s Word was made up like other pieces of literature. So one Friday evening, instead of going on a date with my now husband, I went to the library and looked up books on faith. And to my surprise mostly children’s books showed up! I sheepishly took them back to my dorm and asked God to guide me through this doubt. He lovingly did, and He used children’s books! Faith as a child, right!?
- Any upcoming writing projects?
Yes. It seems that God has given me some more little meaningful stories to write! I’m excited!
- What do you hope readers take away from Please Turn on the Light?
God doesn’t want us to be afraid of the dark, or what’s in the dark. He went to great lengths so that we wouldn’t be. He sent Jesus as our Light Who is more powerful than the darkness around us! In whatever we might be afraid of…the Holy Spirit shines the Light of Jesus in and through us to give us courage in the ‘darkness’ so that we can confidently face that fear by leaning into the surpassing greatness of His power toward those who believe in Jesus!