I got a message from WordPress today.

The reason I have been able to continue to write blogs is that I have loyal followers who encourage me. Thanks to all of you because you have my back and give me the “atta, girl” that I need to keep on keeping on. I know that you have other things to do than read my blog, so I am sincerely appreciative of your time. May God bless you and may His glory shine on each of you today!

I was nominated for this honor by Dee@Sealed in Christ and thank her for this award. Be sure to visit her site and give it a like! She is truly a gifted writer and will encourage you in your walk with Christ.

Dee’s Questions for her nominees are as follows:

1. Tell us something interesting about yourself that will make our jaws drop.

I am the wife of one man for 46 years, in a totally monogamous relationship, and (drum roll, please), I was a virgin when we got married!

2. Do you collect?

Yes, I collect books and magnets. I especially like butterfly magnets!

3. Your favorite quote?

There are so many quotations that I like that it is hard to choose, but I will select from the Bible, Jeremiah 29:11: “‘For I know the plans I have for you.’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'”

4. Have you ever punched someone in the face?

Well, no, but I have been punched in the face by two students who were fighting and I stupidly stepped between them, intending to stop the fight. Well, I did stop it, once I took the punch!

5. Which place in the world would you like to visit?

Israel and Australia

6. What makes you forget about everything around you?

A really good worship song

7. Your favorite season and why?

I like spring the best because of all of the new life everywhere.

8. Are you introvert or extrovert?

I am a definite introvert, but I married an extrovert.

9. Why in the 21st century with all the technology do we still have people who die because of lack of food and water?

Sinfulness of man

10. Have you ever donated something to someone who has less?

Many times

11. Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend, wife/husband?

Yes! For 46 years, I have been married to the man that I met just before my senior year in college. We have three beautiful children and nine living grandchildren. I am blessed!

My nominees are:

My Way Home Life

Big Sky Buckeye

Lydia Potter

Becoming His Tapestry

Bible Blogger Girl

Justin W. Reeve

La Petit Muse

The Manifold Wisdom of God

Train Today to Reap Tomorrow

Mws R

The Lost Coin Blog

My questions for my nominees:

1. If you are a Christian, tell your testimony of meeting the Lord as you Savior.

2. What is the most important thing that you possess?

3. Who is the most influential person in your life?

4. What is your favorite bird or flower?

5. What motivates you to get up every morning?

6. What is your favorite kind of music to listen to?

7. How did you meet your best friend?

8. Are you a more logical person or more artistic?

9. What do you do to relax?

10. If you could change one thing about your life, what would it be and why?

11. If you could take a walk anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?

Note to my nominees: Don’t feel pressured to participate, but if you choose to do so, have fun with it!

This book was mostly a surprise to me from beginning to end. I liked getting to know the sisters, Nicky and Chloe, and Nicky’s son Ethan. Nicky was living in Cleveland at the beginning of the book while Chloe was the editor-in-chief of a magazine in NYC. The really strange thing is that Chloe is married to Nicky’s former husband and the pair live with Ethan since Adam has custody of his son. The novel includes secrets, abuse and murder and is an excellent read for fans of mystery and suspense as well as family drama. The ending was a big surprise since I had expected something totally different. I did enjoy it and recommend it highly for fans of Alafair Burke and other authors in the suspense genre.

Disclaimer

Disclosure of Material Connection: I checked this book out from my local library using the Overdrive App. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions expressed are my own.

This book is available now from your local bookseller.

Sometimes we all get discouraged and feel weak in our faith. This has been one of those weeks with lots of trials and tests, some of which I honestly have failed. Nevertheless, I keep plugging along. But God spoke to me this morning that He does not want me living a life of just getting by. I am to live victoriously!

I realized that I have been trying to do things in my own strength and that is never going to be sufficient . God is our strength, but we have to let go and let Him handle things. Therein lies the challenge for me…just letting go.

No matter what is happening in my life, God is in control. His strength never fails. Unlike me, his muscles don’t get tired and tremble. He is strong enough to carry me through the trials and tests. So, I should have NO FEAR. I came through the horrors of my surgery and the long recovery period with God walking right beside me. Then, these latest trials popped up and somehow I forgot the power of God in my life. How did that happen? My independent streak took over and I decided, like a toddler, that I could handle things “by myself.” But I can’t really…I need God to comfort me and hold me and give me His strength and wisdom. Don’t we all?

A mountain is not something that is physically in your path, or not always at least. Usually a mountain for me is anything that seems that I cannot get around it to the other side so that I can continue to walk a joyful journey with the Lord. But God has told me that I can just tell the mountain to move, and because I have the Lord behind me and before me and besides me, the mountain will move. Most mountains in my life don’t turn out to be so big after all, once I tell them to get out of my way. So today, I am speaking to my mountain of discouragement to move, to get out of my path! Do you have a mountain in your life that you need to speak to?

Now that I have spoken to my mountain, God has told me to be still and reflect on His goodness, on His greatness and His nature that allows me to speak to mountains and to have peace in my heart. So, now I have come full circle. I am back to my original Scripture verse. God is and always has been my refuge and strength. I hope that He is yours, too! Blessings for a wonderful day and a journey into all that God has for you!

When we were very young, we were trained by our parents to do certain things. For example, we all once wore diapers but our parents trained us to use the toilet. We learned independence from the proper training and learned how to make choices, hopefully the right and Godly ones.

Some are very blessed and were raised in a God-fearing home. I was not so blessed, although my mom did take us to church at least once a year. Other Sundays, if I attended church, I went with a neighbor who invited me. I learned some things in Sunday school and church, but it wasn’t a priority to me. I was being trained, you see, not to value the things of God. Then, when I went to college, I didn’t attend chapel or church at all, or at least, not that I can recall. Again, I was an adult by then and was making my own choices, but they were based on what I had learned as a child. It wasn’t until I was out on my own, in my own place, that a bold neighbor cultivated a friendship with me and led me to salvation. Then, and only then, did I begin to get my priorities straight. From that day in February, 1973, I changed what was important in my life. I attended church regularly, started reading my Bible and found a good Bible-believing church to attend. Married in 1973, we had our first child in 1974 and then began the hard work of training our own child. I’m not referring to toilet training…no, something so important that I consider it a solemn responsibility of all parents. We are to train children on the correct path to God. I’m sure that if you know anything about animals, you know that they can be trained. I have trained my cat to sit and to beg for treats. Training took discipline on my part since I had to patiently show her what I expected each time I held a treat out. Now, I just say sit or point and she does. Training a child also takes discipline…daily showing them the way of the Lord and not accepting the sinful nature that always comes forth in all children. When we disciplined our children, we prayed with them afterwards and talked to them about what they had done that was wrong. We used a paddle (horrors, right? Corporal punishment that is not acceptable today!) when they showed willful disobedience to something that we had told them they could or could not do. We believed that if they chose not to obey us when they could hear our voices and knew our expectations, how could we ever expect them to obey and follow God? But there came a day in their lives when they were adults and were making their own choices. They may still come to me for advice, but their decisions are their own and have been for almost two decades now.

Each of us has a sinful nature that we have to deal with on a daily basis, making choices that may have eternal consequences for ourselves and others. I cannot do good on my own…I need the Lord’s help on a daily basis. That is what I tried to teach our children…that God will help us make the right choices if we just cry out to Him. To say that I am dismayed with the way that our society is going is a gross understatement. Sin is rampant and sometimes not even recognized as sin anymore since it has become so acceptable. But that doesn’t negate the parental responsibility to train the children in the right way. So many parents have decided not to parent. They want to be friends with their children and forget the whole discipline thing. The lack of discipline shows in our society…murders, rapes, general lawlessness everywhere. When I was teaching high school, it was common for a student to get into trouble and during the conference that I held with the parents, it was frequent for the parents to make excuses and not to hold the child accountable for the wrongdoing. That happened so often that I just got accustomed to it; but I’m here to tell you that it wasn’t always that way. For the first two decades that I taught, most parents held their child accountable for whatever rule they had broken and expected them to suffer consequences for it. Nowadays, in my opinion, parents are not holding their children accountable so the first consequences the child may suffer may be in the justice system. Sad, isn’t it? Likewise, I have seen many parents not hold their children to the Godly standard of one man, one wife for life! Thus has entered into our society the harmful practice of “sleeping around” until you find the right mate. What?!? Was that in God’s Word and I missed it? No, God means for us to have an honorable relationship with one person. People are not like a car that you can test drive and then take it back when it’s not exactly what you expected. People have hearts that get attached and get hurt, and God knew that. I think that He established the way a relationship should be. You meet someone that you are interested in, you get to know one another better, you date, you get serious about each other, you get engaged and then you get married. In today’s society, though, it seems that relationships are like a local Wal-Mart. You buy something, use it for a few days and take it back, never mind the damage that was done to the item when you were using it for your benefit. It has become so acceptable in our society for young people to live together that now couples are having children together and are not married; they just don’t want to make that commitment. Well, I am a firm believer that commitment was established by the Lord and marriage is a picture on earth of what our relationship with God is supposed to be like. We are not supposed to jump from one god to another trying them out; there is One God and He is a jealous God who created us and desires a relationship with us. So, even though our tendency is to be sinful and make wrong choices, it is the responsibility of the parent to train a child to make right choices, to know that relationships with the opposite sex are meant to be Godly and pure. It’s part of the training we are supposed to do when the children are young. By the time they are making their own choices, it is our fervent hope and prayer that they are making the right choices, the ones that would please God.

Sin knocks at our door, no matter where we are in life. But we don’t have to answer the door. We can choose instead to make the choices that we learned when we were younger because we were trained. I did not begin my Biblical training until I was in my 20’s, but I was still trained. Are you trained? Did you train your children? Are you still training them? Are you teaching them to rule over sin or does sin rules their lives because they never learned the valuable lesson of following God, no matter the cost? I hope and pray that you are training them to make righteous choices, ones that they will not be ashamed of when they stand before our Holy God. One day, you will have to let them go to make their own choices, but, like me, you can continue to pray for them that their choices will be the right ones and to express your opinion in a respectful way when it is not. Blessings for a day made up of right choices and love!

Although this book started out as promising, I have to say that it was just not my cup of tea. Along with the foul language and the tired old plot of hiding a homosexual affair, the characters all had such flaws that none of them was likable. Corey Halpern is a “have not” living in the wealthy enclave of the east end where his mother works as a maid for the super wealthy Sheffield family. Corey is bored and rebellious and breaks into the local mansions as a prank. Unfortunately for him, just before the summer season begins, he decides to break into the Sheffield mansion and there witnesses the horrible and accidental death of Leo’s partner Henry. Leo, a scion of a family and CEO of a company, could have easily called his lawyers and the story would have ended there. But, predictably, Leo decides to cover up Henry’s death and therein lies the conflict of the plot. The characters in this pseudo-thriller are desperately seeking happiness; Leo and Henry in their relationship and in drugs and alcohol; Gina, Corey’s mom, in alcohol and a destructive relationship; Tiffany, the Sheffield’s daughter, seems to lack any love or parenting and seeks solace in drinking, also. None of the characters has particularly redeeming characteristics since none seems able to really help themselves seek solutions to what they deem as their life’s problems. There was a lot of action but it all seemed to go too fast without much background information. This was meant to be an intense story with a great deal of social commentary, but for me it just never reached a level of satisfaction that would cause me to watch for this author’s novels in the future. The theme seemed to be one of total debauchery and a desire to forget your station in life, no matter what it was. Fans of thrillers might enjoy this book because it is a fast read.

Disclaimer

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255, “Guides Concerning the Use of Testimonials and Endorsements in Advertising.”

My friends, since I am part of the blog tour for this book, I am fulfilling my commitment to review it on my blog. But I cannot honestly recommend it. I might possibly give it 2.5 stars, but that would be a stretch. This book was not my cup of tea because it lacked a real story and morals. It is available now if you would like to try it for yourself.

Wow! Just wow! Wendy Walker has proven once again that she knows how to hook her readers and bring them in to shore. Rosie and Laura are sisters, but they are very different. Rosie is married with a husband and child and a very stable lifestyle. Laura, on the other hand, has just moved in with Rosie and family, and she seems to have a multitude of problems, not the least of which is maintaining a relationship. Unfortunately, the one thing that Laura really wants in her life is love, but it is more than a little elusive for her. When the book begins, Laura is getting ready for a blind date with a man that she “met” on a dating site.. When Laura doesn’t come back from her date, the real suspense of the book begins. The novel is told from the viewpoints of the sisters, and from the time of the night before Laura’s date and the day after. It also includes vignettes with Laura talking to a therapist, so we know that she has problems that are revealed slowly throughout the book. This is a wild ride of a psychological suspense! Several times I thought I had things figured out, only to be proven wrong. That’s the way I like my suspense novels…with enough secrets to keep me guessing until the shocking conclusion. This is a creepy but realistic novel about relationships and damages that may never go away. I highly recommend this book for anyone who enjoys psychological thrillers because this is one of the best I have ever read!

Disclaimer

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from St. Martin’s Press via Netgalley. I was not required to write a positive review. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 “Guides Concerning the Use of Testimonials and Endorsements in Advertising.”

This is available TODAY at your local bookseller!