Fullfillment In the Whirlwind

Good morning/afternoon/evening! Whatever time you are reading this I am glad you stopped by. I am so honored to be asked to write a little something for you. I hope to encourage you today to be flexible enough to allow God to interrupt your plans by telling you my story of how I ended up on this site in the first place.

My name is Venus. (really) I am a single mom to two very strong willed children. While they are my daily challenges, they are also my daily blessings. 2008 has been a whirlwind year for me. For the last year and a half I feel God has really been inspiring me with ideas of things I want to do for his kingdom. Well, for a year of this year and a half I felt just plain stuck. I had this vision of what I wanted to do and I wanted to do it right then. With no finances and no idea how or where to begin this wonderful venture, I began to feel frustrated and lost. I began to think maybe this "crazy" idea was just that, a crazy idea.

June 2008: I attended my monthly Faith At Work luncheon. Once a month Christian women get together to hear speakers teach us how to bring our faith to the workplace. That month our guest speaker was Diane Cunningham, life purpose coach. Exactly what I needed at just the right time! But of course, does God do it any other way? That day I won a door prize directly related to the ideas I had been having and I just had to share with her. I told her how stuck I was and she suggested we talk. Before we had our phone session I had started a blog. I was just craving to connect with other Christian women to grow in my faith since so many of my friends are not believers. YET. I had sent her a link and asked her to check it out. http://todayschristianmom.blogspot.com/

She did, and she liked it! When we got to speak one on one she told me I was a writer and suggested I check out a site she was involved with Take Root and Write. She said it was fairly new and they were looking for writers. Well, this had nothing to do with my vision, in fact it was not even in the same category and I have never considered myself to be a writer, or at least a good one, but since I had just stumbled on the site the day before and now here she was mentioning it, I felt God's hand in it.

I contacted the site's creator and had her look at my new blog. Granted I was doing all this not really knowing what I would do if she actually asked me to write for her. Guess what. She did! She asked me to write a column about being a single Christian mom. The introduction to my bi-weekly column was published on 8/8/08. I had heard somewhere that 8 was the number of new beginnings and I thought, " how appropriate".

http://www.takerootandwrite.com/columns_single_moms/index.html

I have to say this has been the most challenging thing I have done in a long time. At first I thought I really had nothing to contribute or anything encouraging to say to other women who are in my situation, have been at one time, or are about to be. I was really nervous about the whole thing until I started getting emails from women telling me they understood exactly where I was coming from!

I am now part of this wonderful on-line ministry I do not think I would have found had God not guided me to it. Each and every one of the women involved has been such a blessing to me words just cannot express. While writing was not the original tool I had planned to use to reach women and bring them closer to Christ, it has still been just as effective. And it has been an even bigger blessing to me and I feel it is just the first step in God's purpose for my life. I am so glad he has a plan for me because if He didn't I might still be just sitting on my own plans. He has a plan for you too if you will allow him to guide you.

In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.
Proverbs 16:9 NIV