How I Became an Author

I am not a pastor. I am not employed by a church, and I did not graduate from a Bible college. In fact, if you had told me a few years ago that I would be writing a book or beginning a ministry, I would have laughed at you and thought that you were crazy. After all, I’m just an ordinary person. I’m a literacy specialist for the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada. Before that I was a classroom teacher; and for most of my life, I was a hurting person. As God was healing me and teaching me what it means to live an active Christianity, I never thought that I would be writing a book or speaking to others outside of my own church about it; but God had other plans.

In the winter of 2006 he began to plant in my mind the idea that I should write a book about all that he had been teaching me. Immediately I brushed this thought aside. I had no desire to write a book. I wasn’t a writer. In college I hated the thought of even writing a paper. When I finished my Masters Degree in Education my first thought was, “Yahoo, I’ll never have to write another paper again.” I joke now that God definitely does have a sense of humor. He didn’t ask me to write another paper; he just asked me to write a book instead. I didn’t tell anyone about the urging I was feeling from God to write a book. I was too busy trying to convince myself that it wasn’t really God whom I was hearing from.

In January of 2007 a good friend of mine called me up, and to this day I remember exactly what she said to me. “Joyce, God woke me up in the middle of the night and told me to tell you something. He told me to tell you that you should write a book about all of the stuff that he has been teaching you.” I almost fell off of my chair! I thanked her for sharing this word with me, and told her that I would write it down and begin praying about it. I still couldn’t tell her or anyone else what was in my heart. I just hung up the phone in shock. I decided that I should probably begin to take this book writing idea a little more seriously, so I bought a notebook and began to jot down ideas as God gave them to me. Soon this notebook was full, but I still wasn’t totally convinced that one, God would ask me to write a book; and two, that I wanted to write a book. So I told myself that one day – sometime in the future – I would write a book. (I was thinking ten or fifteen years down the road.) God, however, had a different timetable.

One night a couple of months later I found myself wide awake in the middle of the night. For some this might not be anything unusual, but for me, it was not normal at all. I am an eight hour a night sleeper, and I sleep like a log. I have been known to sleep through the setting off of fireworks outside of my window. And if for some reason I do wake up, I am never fully awake, and I soon find myself falling right back to sleep. So needless to say, being wide awake in the middle of the night was very unusual. But not only was I wide awake, all of these words were floating around in my head, and I had an overwhelming urge to write them down. I grabbed a notebook and pen, and sitting on my bed at 2:30 in the morning, I wrote the introduction to my (or as I like to say God’s) book. When I finished, I put my pen down and prayed, “Well, God, I guess I’m writing a book.”

The story doesn’t end there. Knowing nothing about the publishing industry or how one goes about getting a book published, I prayed, and then went online and typed in “book publishing”. What I learned was in many ways depressing. It seemed that the only option for first time authors was self-publishing or vanity presses. I didn’t feel like God was leading me to either of these options, but in order to get one of the mainstream publishers to look at your work, it seemed to me like you either had to be a published author or have a literary agent. Of course, I met neither criterion. Feeling frustrated, I prayed and asked God what he wanted me to do. Right after that, my internet search led me to a Christian Publishing Company called Tate Publishing, who specialized in first time authors.

As soon as I went on their website I felt peace in my heart and knew that they were going to publish my book. Then I discovered that they receive 15,000 manuscripts a year and only publish four percent of them. Satan began to plant doubts in my mind, and I began to wonder if my manuscript had a chance. More than once, Satan planted the lie in my mind that I wasn’t a writer and had no chance of getting my manuscript published. I chose, however, not to listen to the lies, and God was faithful. Five weeks after submitting my manuscript I got a phone call from Tate publishing telling me that they wanted to publish it. God then reminded me that he is faithful, and that anything he calls us to do, he also equips us to do.

I still have a hard time seeing myself as a writer or as someone who has been called to begin a ministry. I am simply a child of God, who like many of you has experienced a lot of hurt, but by the grace of God has experienced a lot of healing. Right now I am simply walking in obedience, doing that which my Heavenly Father has called me to do, and believing that I can be used by him in some small way to make a difference in the lives of believers who are hurting.