Tuesday, May 3, 2016

My Grace Journey

Hi everyone!

Today, I am doing something a little different in the blog. Instead of the regular devotional, I want to say "hi" and introduce myself.
This is me -- in our yard! 

My name is Sharilee and I have been blogging in some form for the last seven years. My first blog (which I still have) started out as 100togo (a weight loss blog) and has morphed into a nature/reflection blog called Life in the Woods. that focuses on lessons through nature.

I also have a collection of articles at Hubpages and a little site on journaling. My goal is to write e-books and print books to encourage others.

During the day, I am a grade six teacher at a First Nations school. I have been teaching on and off since 1999, and plan to leave the classroom at the end of this year, to pursue writing and business full-time. I started the Grace Daily Blog to help get myself more into regular reading of God's word.

It seems like most of the readers have been coming through the Facebook page. Welcome! It's so nice to have you here. I would love to meet you, and I am hoping you will comment to let me know that you are reading. I would love to hear a little bit about you. Where are you from? What stage of life are you at?

A little bit more about me. I am married to a man I call my gorgeous husband. We have three cats, a few plants (I just started my first garden) and a big yard in the forest. This is the second marriage for both of us. Neither one of us believed in divorce, but were left by our former spouses years before we met.. When we met, both of us had been hurt badly by our past, and God has used each other to help bind us up again.

I guess the reason I call this blog, "Grace Daily" is that by God's grace, that I am here today. And it's by his grace that I was able to know true love in a marriage.

I grew up in a Baptist Church with Christian parents, and asked Jesus into my heart when I was six years old, led by Mom, who was a real lover of Jesus. I feel grateful that God showed me himself so early in life, and I know it helped get me through the next years. In my childhood, we had abuse in our home. There was a lot of yelling and some physical violence.  At school, I was bullied a lot. The worst bully was a church kid.

My Mom and me at my graduation
So, by the age of 14, I was a bit skeptical of churches. I had to attend but when I left home at 18 to get away from the craziness, it took me a while to get back to church. Then I ended up meeting and marrying a man whom I thought would bring me back to the LORD. He was a church-goer and we did go to church together. Two years later, after a lot of yelling, and physical threats, he was out the door, and I was left alone again, this time with a "Mrs." attached to my name, at the tender age of 22.

I was now a divorced Christian: a big taboo in the circles where I hung out. It certainly wasn't my ideal plan. It wasn't what I wanted, but God did use this situation and many others to get me to know what it really meant to follow Him. My divorce brought me to a place where I felt determined to follow the LORD, no matter what.

Like I said, I started this blog to help keep me focused on reading God's word. If the LORD uses this to help bring others closer to  Him, that's awesome!

So, please tell me a bit about yourself. What has been a bit of your faith journey? What are you looking for, from this blog? I look forward to "meeting" you.


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