It seemed improbable—growing a deep relationship with God who is patient while building a successful business. The business was a home-based one. As it grew, it required more and more of my time.

I hired an assistant. My two children helped with minor office tasks. I signed up for a Bible study and my mother wondered where I found the time.

God Draws Us Close

All the while, God seemed to draw me closer to Him. I felt longings in my heart only He could assuage. I like the word assuage. It sounds a little like swaying, and when I pray, I picture myself in God’s arms being swayed the way we had to jiggle our daughter to sleep, walking in the hallway, bouncing her in our arms. She wanted to be jiggled. And God, it seems, wanted to sway with me.

I resisted of course. Why should I do things His way when I could see so clearly that my way worked just fine? Yeah, right. That longing wasn’t going away and neither was my temper. When the 5:00 p.m. hour began crazing my children into hungry behaviors as I whipped through the house collecting materials for my presentation that evening. The makeup bag went in the car with me to be applied at stops. I was a sweating, frustrated, out-of-control mom/business woman and God was wooing me.

From Diapers to Prison

In God’s Patient Pursuit of My Soul, I pull back the curtain on the inner struggles of building a relationship with God among the everyday moments of diapers and family and the not-so-everyday moments of prison ministry and contemplative meditation. I used to think my business and my walk with Jesus were two separate paths.

As I wrote the story of God’s pursuit, the fact that it was His story of winning my heart and not my story slipped into my consciousness like the dream state before waking when you know the alarm or the baby will beg for your attention any second. I had to rewrite a bunch of times to get it right.

If your thinking allows you to compartmentalize various parts of your life or relationships, if your thoughts include two separate paths for your family/work and the other for God, click here to read what others say about God’s Patient Pursuit of My Soul.

God is Patient

Just as He does in everything, God stayed near and coaxed me closer, gifting me with what I needed. He kept me close to learn His purpose for my life. He dropped crumbs as we walked together

In the hours and days before my peak moment in my career—the summit experience, the camera flashes, the cheering and adulation—I wanted to go hide somewhere. How did I change so? I worked so hard and long to reach this point.

Then one day He stood in my way like the angel before Balaam’s mule.

How in the world do we learn to find God in the midst of the chaos and speed with which our lives spin? Is it possible to live a contemplative life and grow a monstrously successful team of stay-at-home moms and businesswomen?

The lessons from the Master continue as He patiently pursues me. May the stories from my life shine a beam of light on your path as you walk with the same Master who works with you. Learning how He works in others’ lives triggers light in our darkness the way a motion sensor clicks on a light near an entranceway.

Discover God’s Patience

what He did when I forgot my prayers one day;

what is centering prayer and how to have a prayer life with little ones;

ghosts in the chapel;

a foreshadowing of death;

and the lesson I learned about pride and being late.

Writing this book

It took me over a decade to write this book, one of the most difficult things I’ve accomplished in my life. It could be better. We could all be better, but here we are doing the best we can. May grace touch your soul through the pages of God’s Patient Pursuit of My Soul and His peace permeate your heart.

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