Your Winter Is Over

Today's post is a little unusual, so bear with me. If you get to a point that you feel it's not for you, you are most welcome to go make some tea and carry on with your life, or move on to the next blog. I won't be offended in the slightest. Promise.

I decided to move our Allamanda from one side of the garden to the other. We'll be building a garage sometime and that bed will be abandoned. (You can read the tragic saga of our ensuite garage here.) I love my Allamanda with its bright happy trumpets, I couldn't bear the thought of giving up on it. We planted it way back when we first moved in, so it's pretty much part of the family. You know, that part that lives in the garden and doesn't come in for meals. Surely every family has one? Many years of happy growth means it was broadly spread on top and underneath the soil. I needed to move this rather large plant by myself, and the only way to do it, was to chop back the top and the roots quite harshly.  

I know what all the books say about transplanting - take all the roots with, dig a square 1m x 1m and so on. I'm a girl. I can only do so much and, in faith, I did. For weeks, seven to be precise - not that I'm counting - there was every indication that I had committed vicious planticide. The severely hacked branches looked good for only one thing - firewood. BUT! At the beginning of this week, I went over to have a look... and it was sprouting! Vibrant green life peeping through the seemingly dead wood. I won't lie. I nearly hugged my little plant.

Why am I telling you this? You see, that first day when I started hacking my plant in preparation for the move, I felt God whisper to me that this action was significant. I'm learning to listen when He whispers, He often says the most important things in a whisper. This is what I believe He was saying...

You may feel as if your life has been severely chopped back. Things have been stripped away from you, top and bottom. You've been in a place of fruitlessness with no sign of any life or progress.

That season is over. You have been moved to a different place - not one doomed for destruction and abandonment, but a place of growth and fruitfulness. A place of LIFE. For a time there was no visible evidence of His working inside of you, in your life - but now its bursting through the seams in glorious technicolor!

No more dry, dead bark.

Now green shoots and bright flowers.

Welcome to Spring!

Dianne J. Wilson writes novels from her hometown in East London, South Africa, where she lives with her husband and three daughters. She has just signed a three book contract for a YA series, Spirit Walker, with Pelican / Watershed.

Finding Mia is available from Amazon, Pelican / Harbourlight, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores.

Shackles is available as a free ebook from Amazon& Smashwords.

Find her on Facebook, Twitter and her sporadic blog Doodles.

Abused But Not Forgotten by God

Thelma Wells has written many books to encourage women. Yet this courageous woman began life with the name on her birth certificate reading simply: Baby Girl Morris.

Her mother was a severely deformed teenager with no husband and no place to go, since her own abusive mother insisted that she take the baby and leave the house. So when the baby was born, her unwed teenage mother found work as a maid cleaning while living with her baby daughter in servants’ quarters. Eventually, the baby went to live with her great-grandparents, who called her Thelma Louise Smith and loved her dearly. They took little Thelma to church, where she learned to love the hymns and praise songs.

On those occasions when Thelma was taken to her grandparents’ home, her grandmother abused her, just as she had tormented Thelma’s mother. She was locked in a dark, smelly, insect-infested closet until just before her grandfather came home when her grandmother would bring her out of the closet, clean her up, and act as if all was well. 

In spite of her deep fear, little Thelma spent her time in the closet singing every hymn and praise song she could remember. She would sing herself to sleep in that closet, and the Lord received this little girl’s innocent praise and rewarded it with an abundant life of joy, protecting her from feelings of anger or bitterness.

She earned her Bachelor’s degree at the University of North Texas and eventually received a Master’s of Ministry from Master’s International School of Divinity in Evansville, Indiana. In 2002 she became the school’s first black female professor. In 1980 Thelma became the first black woman in the South to organize her own international speaking and consulting corporation. She has authored several books, including God Is Not Through With Me Yet, an inspiring examination of her own life experiences in which she encourages readers to “sing in the closets of their lives.” 

She serves as the president of The Daughters of Zion Leadership Mentoring Program, an organization she founded in 2000 (another first for a black woman). Through this ministry, “Mama T,” as she is affectionately called, has mentored over 100 spiritual daughters. Visit Thelma’s website to see her books at www.thelmawells.com

 Rita Stella Galieh is enjoying the challenges and rewards of Independent Publishing.

 The 2nd edition of her Victoriana Trilogy has seen her dream realized. As an art student at her convict built college, she wondered about its history.

Research revealed the famous actress, Sarah Bernhardt had visited there. One of the jailors joked about the local cat, meaning of course, the cruel cat 'o nine tails.

The Bloody Code was an all encompassing method of punishment for any offense deemed illegal. Often people were sent to the gallows or faced transportation to England's brutal  prisons in The Southern hemisphere.  Tracing the life of one innocent woman, on whom she based her story, became the background to this novel.

See www.ritastellapress.com  for information on both print & ebooks

Have you ever researched certain things that caught your interest and found a story taking shape? Or do you begin with an idea and then do research?