Months before I began writing Cries of Innocence, I
was faced with many facets of evil and deception. For a relatively calm and
gentle person, I can tell you that this was disconcerting to me.
For many years, God has led me into a ministry of
mentoring and teaching His Word. During this time, I’ve dealt with issues of
addiction, abuse, neglect, brokenness, and unforgivenes, scars that ran deep in
God’s children. Scripture tells us that God uses His spiritual warriors in many
ways, and He’s certainly had me on testing ground, preparing me for even more
challenging circumstances.
God used our thirty years of moving all over the
country to teach me. Every location brought new areas of ministry, mostly
working with children. Children have been the gem of my life. Whether it was
ministering to my own children or other people’s children or in a classroom or church
setting or as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for abused, neglected, and
abandoned children, children have been foremost in my life.
While working with children, God offered me the
opportunity to work with their parents, especially their mothers. I’ve been
police escorted into more homes than I care to remember. At this point in my
life, I began to think that evil reigned. So many had no hope. So many lived
lives standing on a time bomb, knowing it could explode any minute. I’ve been
in hospital rooms and listened to horror tales of physical abuse. I’ve held
hands of teens who had tried to commit suicide. I’ve wandered halls of court
rooms and wondered where justice had fled.
Did I ever think I’d write a book about all that
ugliness? No. And that’s because I could not see a happy ending to any of it.
Then in 2014 on a trip across the United States, my husband and I witnessed a
girl being attacked, openly and without recourse. At the time, I had just seen
Christine Caine at a faith-based women’s conference, and she had talked about
human trafficking, a ministry she is strongly engaged in. When I saw that man
beat that girl, uncaring if anyone witnessed it, I knew in my heart this
incident went beyond a man-woman disagreement. His dialect was European, and
hers were screams of fright.
I’ve been told many times there is no evil. Oh how
foolish! Evil is rampant, and we allow it to continue. We tie acceptable names
to it and wear it like it was a disfigurement that is tolerated.
My life up to this point birthed Cries of Innocence.
I began having dreams, and I don’t dream much, about
the protagonist in the book, Bren Parrot. I could see her. I began to know her
heart. I also began to know her fear and hopelessness. When I began writing her
story, it was to purge it from my subconscious. Then more and more of her story
began to surface, and I would pen that. Before I knew it I was staring at 203
pages. And I thought it was over, but within weeks of publishing Cries of
Innocence, the characters began throbbing in my head again.
For the past few months, God has been leading me to
tell the rest of Bren’s story. And over this time, I realized there would be
two more books that will come out of Bren’s life.
Cries of Grace will be about Bren and Joseph. It
will be a Christian Fictional Romance. I am almost finished, but the last part,
Part III, is going to be fun to write, but it will push me to make it something
you will never want to forget. (I can’t believe I just said that. The pressure
is on.)
Cries of Mercy will be . . . well, . . . God is
still working on that one, only sharing images of what new and complex life
issues Bren and Joseph will encounter. Evil does not rest. It stalks. It waits.
And then . . .
When the next book in the Cries series comes out, I
hope you will be eager to read it. I’m praying God’s fingerprints will be all
over it. For He is why I write. My Savior is why I put myself on the line,
writing about His children who realize, “Not for a moment will You forsake me.”
Please listen to Meredith Andrews song, “Not For A
Moment” to hear Bren’s heart announcing, “After all I’ve been through, You
never forsake me.”
Link to You tube video: Meredith Andrews “Not for the
Moment”
God bless you always,
