I grew up in southern California. As a family we raced sailboats nearly every weekend and sometimes during the week. When I was a junior in high school, we raced from Los Angeles to Honolulu in a 36-foot-long sailboat. It took us twelve and a half days to get there. There was a very large storm at the start of the race and more than a dozen of the 72 boats that started broke down in the first 24 hours and had to drop out. We arrived in Honolulu at close to midnight and my brother had to be pulled to the top of the mast to release our spinnaker sail because it was stuck and would not come down. That was exciting and the people that were at the finish line had no idea why we were doing that at the end of the race…you cannot stop a sailboat without pulling down most of the sails.
Whether I was on the water, or just living my everyday life, I could sense Jesus pursuing me as a child. I don’t know why…but I was always looking to find Him. I remember sitting in a closet when I was about 10 years old trying to read and understand the King James Bible. I found Jesus and was baptized when I was 25 years old. I met my husband Bob, and we were attending the church his family helped start in East Anaheim. You can hear more of this story on my You Tube Channel Lift Your Life with AWE where I told My Story in a video.
My husband of 47 years is still by my side. We have three daughters, two sons-in-law and seven grandchildren. One thing this shows is the decades of experiences, disasters, and wisdom I can bring to my stories.
I was an accountant for 56 years and an entrepreneur. Now I am retired and creating Bible studies on YouTube, gardening, and enjoying spending time with Bob.
I know God was behind me becoming a writer. When I was a freshman in college, I took a writing class, and the professor did not like anything I wrote. I kept trying and kept getting very poor grades on assignments, but I don’t ever give up. The last assignment was to write something about ourselves. I wrote about the sailboat race to Hawaii. I did not worry over it or edit it, I just wrote it and finally the professor liked my writing and gave me an “A” on that assignment, so I did manage to pass the class barely. I switched schools for the next semester and took a creative writing class. That Professor liked everything I wrote and put some in the library for other students to see as an example of good writing. I still don’t know what actually changed in there.
I did not do much actual writing after that for a long time. I did create a weekly women’s bible study that continued for about 40 weeks on different women of the Bible. Although I did a lot of research for that, I did not write out the actual Bible study. I only created a one-page outline and some questions to think about, and I presented the study verbally.
I started to work on writing a book about business, but the editor I was connected to did not understand business, and the edits coming back were terrible, so I gave up on that.
When Patti Smith started GO! Christian Magazine in 2017 I asked If I could write an article for her, and she said yes. My quarterly column focused on encouraging business owners to follow biblical principles in doing business. We talked about subjects including leading like Jesus, being a servant, and having the right mindset about money. Now that I’m retired, I continue on with my column from a different perspective, but I hope it is still as encouraging and motivating in pointing people to Jesus. I find writing for GO! Magazine very fulfilling, and I am sure I have improved over the years. At first the articles were topics about business from the Bible, but now they will be more for individuals. Thank You, Patti!
