You Tube --The Chilean Miners

Author Tiffany Colter & Holding onto Victory

It's my pleasure to feature a new acquaintance, Author Tiffany Colter, who is a multi-faceted Christian woman. Here's Tiffany:

"I am thrilled that Lyn gave me the opportunity to share my family’s testimony. Over the last five years our family has gone through the greatest trials I’ve ever experienced in my life. Beginning in 2004 when we began the process to adopt a special needs child, then to my husband’s cancer diagnosis, job loss and subsequent financial mess [that left us 10 days from foreclosure] we have had to trust God daily for His help and provision.

I was asked to share my testimony in June with my church you can see it here-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXkBbvl-0bc

As I said in this video, when we are going through difficult times it can be hard to see God using it. So many times as I watched our finances fall apart, my husband battle for his life and my own emotions fraying at the ends, I wondered how God could get glory through this.

Who would want to be a Christian when my family was going through so much? I dare say many Christians are experiencing this right now. They want to know why they suffer and how to stop the pain. They see people who skip church prospering while friends in their congregation are losing everything. It is at the moments when we don’t know the answers that we must hold firmer to the promises. We must look inward to find the parts of us that need to be removed and we must thank God for His promise of provision.

If you look in Joshua the Israelites praised God FOR the promise land BEFORE they entered it-not after. We have to praise Him because we believe His word, not because we have everything figured out. True strength comes from confidence in who you are and where you’re going. That confidence only comes from God. Finally, find a way to focus on others. I enjoyed giving to others even when I had nothing. I gave my time. I gave my encouragement.

Today I share tips from those dark days at www.TheBalancedLife.com We began suffering the recession more than 5 years before the rest of the country but that positions us to sympathize with those who hurt and to give practical advice to those who need it. That is what God wants us to do with the tough times-turn them around to be a blessing for others."

Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at www.WritingCareerCoach.com
Common-sense money management is free at www.TheBalancedLife.com
Read Tiffany's award winning manuscript "A Face in the Shadow" at http://tiffanycolter.blogspot.com
She writes a blog for the Christian writer Tuesdays at Writer's Rest. http://writersrest.blogspot.com

Thanks so much for your story, Tiffany. It's obvious that God has given you the strength you needed when you needed it.--Lyn

Sandra Byrd's story, Finding Strength in God

It's Tuesday and today, Sandra Byrd one of my fave authors shares about her story and her latest novel, Bon Appetit.

I’d never thought of myself as a particularly strong girl – I couldn’t pass the presidential fitness award due to my poor showing on the flexed arm-hang – but as I grew into a young woman, and then a woman, my idea of what a strong woman was grew, too. I began to see evidence of strength in my friends, and even in myself, though the form it took in each of us was often very different. In my life, strength began to manifest itself as a willingness to take risk.

Being willing to take a risk, take a chance, means that you’re willing to be and look imperfect, to fall on your face in the pursuit of chasing something new, of understanding that you will never keep a perfect 4.0 in life. Why not? Because you’re constantly trying something you haven’t mastered - but would like to. When I went to college I went on a writing scholarship, but when I got there I panicked. Who gets published, hardly anyone! I thought. And I’ll have a student loan to pay back nevermind bills to pay. I promptly changed my major to something safe and lucrative – business real estate.

I liked real estate. I still do. But I didn’t love it, and hadn’t changed because I wanted to; I changed because I was unwilling to risk failure in writing, and because of good old fashioned fear. But God got me around to where I needed to be anyway. I went to work for a real estate publisher. And then became an editor. One day I’d told God that I really still wanted to write…but the odds! He whispered to me, do you lean on odds or God? I jumped into the water and found that it was fine.

My latest series, French Twist, is for lovers of romance, of food, of life, of France. The books, Let Them Eat Cake, and Bon Appétit are for women who want to take a risk, at any time in their lives, to follow their passion and do what they love. It’s for, and about, a woman who is willing to politely set aside the expectations that others have for her life and figure out how God has created her. I still can’t do the flexed arm hang. But I’m living a very satisfying life.

Please visit me at www.sandrabyrd.com to learn m ore about the books, and to email me about how risk taking (or lack thereof!) has affected your life, too.

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Sandra