Thank You Father: For Your Gifts

Have you ever thought about what led you into a certain career? Or whether you've wished you'd taken a different route?

My longing, as a teenager, was to become an actress, but my parents thought otherwise. My father wanted me to go to university, an aspiration my mother shot down, telling me that 'men don't make passes at girl's who wear glasses.' In other words, academia, for women, was not appealing. A secretarial course was thus the only way forward.

I wrote, previously, about how the wisdom of my best friend, Stephanie Cole, led me to become an author. Looking back, though, I see that there were a number of steps prior to that. First was the fact that, deemed a 'naughty attention seeking child' (unknown at the time, I had been born with a painful disease) I escaped to the loft and began a love of reading. Writing plays, in which my cousins and I acted, followed. And finally, my mother's demands paid off.

My first job, when I finished college, was as secretary to novelist, Paul Gallico, author of The Snow Goose and The Poseidon Adventure, among many others. Taking dictation daily, and transferring it into typed drafts, I learned the rudiments of writing. Years later, novelist Hugh Rae, whom I met at a writers' event, became a firm friend and editor of the books I began to write.

A fistful of events like this can be no coincidence to my mind. It had to be the Lord's doing. I may not be an intellectual, but He knew that His support through the trauma of my life – a disastrous marriage, followed by the drug-addiction, and ultimate death, of one of my daughters – was a light to be shone into the lives of others. Giving me the aim to comfort others with the comfort I have received,* God gifted me with the means to do just that.

This, I know, because of the many letters and reviews I received from all over the world, plus the fact that one book, The Last Mountain: Living With AIDS, commissioned by Hodder & Stoughton, became a No. 4 Bestseller, and another, Time To Shine, was a No. 1 on Amazon. Which is why, to this day, I thank Him for His gifts to me, and the way in which He brought the right people into my life at the right time. God is good.

*2 Corinthians 1:4

If you have a story to tell, do let me know, and I'd love to put it up on my website.