My husband and I have been married for 41 years. We have two grown children—a son and a daughter—and will soon welcome our sixth grandchild.
 

Interestingly, God moved us to an island in South Carolina called Johns Island. It wasn’t something we planned, but He placed us here. The island is named for the apostle John, with streets like Revelation Ave and Trumpets Ave.
 

I never realized the significance until after my book was published and I began piecing everything together. My grandson, who was born the month the book was published, is named John after the apostle, and his due date was 3/16. My son and his wife had no idea what I was writing at the time.
 

My life has been filled with amazing miracles—too many to even record—though I do write many of them down. These are just a few neat things surrounding this book, and there are so many more. I didn’t notice any of it until after the book was published.
 

We live near Kiawah Island at the far end of Johns Island. Our daughter and her husband live near one bridge by a miracle, and our son moved near the other bridge—so we all live in a circle on the same road. None of this was planned.
 

We started a home church a few years ago and meet every week. Our son-in-law’s parents join us, as does our daughter-in-law’s mom. It’s the highlight of our week, and no one wants to miss it. The growth has been amazing. Because the little ones buzz in and out during our gatherings, they have Bible knowledge far beyond their years. They participate, sing, laugh, and pray with us.
 

We have a very lively, funny family, filled with laughter and joy. We have a golf course in our daughter’s backyard where we all meet. After dinner, the guys golf, and we study and break bread. God is holy and beautiful beyond imagination—and very, very funny. I know that firsthand.
 

My daughter, daughter-in-law, and her mom take the grandchildren to the beach almost every week in the spring, summer, and fall. We body surf and sometimes grab a burger at The Station afterward.
 

We spend our weeks helping with the grandchildren, who range in age from 9 years to 8 months, with another due any day. Our daughter homeschools and runs a small sewing business, while our son works in business operations at Boeing.
 

My husband is a builder, and we build and sell homes—so we move from house to house every few years, always on the island. I run a slipcover business, going to people’s homes to cut slipcovers for their chairs and then bringing them back when they’re finished. I started that 30 years ago. It was God’s idea. I had a teaching degree but couldn’t find a job. While praying for a way to help with income, God said, “Make slipcovers.” I had only made them for myself and never considered turning it into a business. But with a couple of calls, I was in business the next day.
 

Over the years, so many supernatural things have happened. The latest: a customer I made slipcovers for decades ago called me after 20 years. When I delivered the chair, she told me that the first time she met me she was in a dark place—she had turned away from God. On my invoice, I had written a simple message: “The Lord Jesus bless you!” She read it, was convicted of her falling away, gave her life to Jesus, and now she and her husband lead a youth ministry at their local church. I had no idea. So many stories like that.

My dad was a master diver in the Navy, so we lived all over—always near the coast. That’s why I’m a beach person, and so are my kids.
 

I didn’t grow up in the church. My parents loved their children very much, but God was never part of our family life. My dad grew up on a farm in Ohio and in the Lutheran church, but he wasn’t a believer—he wasn’t against God, just not interested. They were fun-loving, party-people like many military families—no God, just fun and carefree living. Not bad, but no faith.
 

My mom was a Jehovah’s Witness, which is why I know so much about them. But she was crazy about my dad, and he told her never to indoctrinate us. She honored that. So my understanding of God was simply that He existed and that everyone went to heaven if they were good. I’d never heard the gospel, never been in a church, or heard a sermon. But somehow I always knew Jesus was God. I just didn’t care or follow Him.

Life was good until my mom died when I was 25. I had no God to run to, and I crashed in despair. My sister, who had become a believer but had never said anything about it, sent me a Bible. Even before I read it, I had this certainty in my heart that God was real and the Bible was the living Word of God. I’d never doubted it.

So I read the Bible from beginning to end and was saved at Isaiah 53. My husband and kids followed.

We were in a false church—my husband grew up in the United Methodist Church—and I kept hearing things that went against the Word. God miraculously led me to check out Calvary Chapel in Charleston. We had a purpose there for a time, and then God sent us on a journey to other churches in the area. We ultimately ended up meeting at home when He moved us to Johns Island. Our kids have their own churches where they’ve met wonderful believers and built strong connections in Jesus.

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Our fellowship each week is with family, where we praise God, lift each other up, eat, laugh, and dig into the Word.

Shortly before my dad went home to be with the Lord, he got saved! He started joining our meetings, and one day on the porch, he said he’d like to be baptized. My husband and I baptized him in his bathtub. God is so humorous. At that point, Dad was nearly blind, had worn a urostomy bag for 35 years from bladder cancer, couldn’t walk well—and he was a big man! But my husband and I managed to get it done. We saw him transformed before he died. God truly brought him into the kingdom.

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I have so many stories of God’s supernatural ways.

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If anything, I am a total departure from religion. I never knew religion and spot it as false immediately. I know one thing: Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I know He is coming very soon. I hear the alarm.

A somber, serious tone doesn’t reflect my experience of God. I know Him to be thrilling, jaw-droppingly wondrous. He is to be feared. But He is also so glorious every minute of every day that I can’t take my eyes off Him.

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That’s what I want to communicate—however rugged, unpolished, or rough it comes. That’s been my walk. Being lost without Him, in friendship with the world, is deadly serious. I communicate that. God has given me an urgency for both extremes: He is deadly serious and should make us tremble, but when we do, we see that He is altogether lovely and leaves us undone in His presence for His tenderness, kindness, and overwhelming love for His own—for those who will come to Him.

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My desire for everyone is to leave dead religion and worldliness and fall into the depths of Christ.

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That is life. Everything else is death. That’s my message.

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My walk has followed no pattern, no prescription, no organization of men, no predictability. But it has been ablaze with the power of Jesus and is mind-numbingly fascinating and fulfilling. He is all in all. And after 30-some years, my cry is Paul’s: “Oh, that I might know Him!”