I met my wonderful husband in 1983, on a blind date. Neither of us knew Jesus then, but He knew us. He knew we needed Him, and He knew we needed each other. He brought us together, two love-wounded souls, and challenged us to dare and love again. Throughout our first year of marriage, Christ wooed us to Himself, and just before our first anniversary, we both accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. For the past 26 years, we have walked through life together, experiencing both blessings and trials. For every blessing, we give thanks, and through each trial, we are learning to rejoice... in God's faithfulness, in His provision, in His grace and mercy, in the lessons He is teaching us... learning to rejoice in the process of growing up.

 

When my husband and I married, I got an instant family. Hubby came with a three-year-old son. That little guy may have started out a stepson, but he soon became a son of my heart. The past two-and-a-half decades have afforded us many opportunities for growth, and I am proud to be a mom to this special young man. He married a lovely young woman, and they have added three beautiful grandbabies to our family - twin boys and a little girl.

Once married, we added three more to our little family, another son and two daughters. Our second son took us on an incredible journey as he struggled with addiction in his teen years. When he graduated from Teen Challenge in December 2007, the keynote speaker said this: "Before it was incredible, it was impossible." There were many times when we thought we'd never see our boy walking with the Lord, but God did the impossible. This young man is an inspiration to our whole family, and he is a picture of what God can do with a life fully surrendered to Him.

In the spring of 1995, over a decade ago, God placed a desire in my heart and a call on my life to share Him through the written word. He made it clear to me that the time was not yet ripe, that there was more life to live before I could fully walk in that calling. I continued to cut my “writing teeth” with our annual family Christmas letter, the Hardaway Herald.

Meanwhile, hubby and I also obeyed another call on our life, the call to homeschool. When we first started homeschooling, we weren't sure we could do it. It looked like an impossible task, to home educate through high school. We now have three graduates, homeschooled through high school, currently attending college. In May of 2009, we graduated our youngest daughter from high school. That event marked the end of our homeschooling career, and we can testify that God was faithful to see us through each and every step of the way.

In 2004, a friend told me about FaithWriters. For Christmas that same year, hubby gave me a laptop and said “Go for it,” and I joined that incredible community of writers. For the first eight months of 2005, FaithWriters helped me grow and develop in my skill as a writer. Still, I knew I was not yet ready to write the book God was fashioning in my heart. The story was to be about our family’s journey with Him, but the journey was still unfolding.

Hurricane Katrina hit close to home on August 29, 2005, and she eclipsed everything else in our life for the next eight months. At that point, our family was deep in a crisis of another kind--the realization that our son had a drug problem. We spent the next year traveling back and forth to Teen Challenge, where our son was delivered from drug addiction and surrendered his life to Christ.

 
In the summer of 2007, God whispered to me that the book’s time had come. It took me three years to complete our memoirs, the story of God's faithfulness to our family, His glory as He birthed it in our midst. During the process of writing, life’s mountaintops and deserts continued to unfold around me, and I learned to squeeze time for writing around the surprises of each new day. The title of our tale is Worth Every Tear, and our whole family supported me in my efforts as its author. We decided together that I should write the book under my given name, while using fictitious names within the text, to protect the family's privacy.

It is our desire to glorify God by sharing the mercy and grace He has extended to us in our lives. We are an ordinary family who loves Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and it is our hope that others find in Him the same freedom, peace, and joy that we have found.

Remember: "Before it was incredible, it was impossible." 

Matthew 19:26 tells us that "with God all things are possible."

I have watched Him take my life—my family, my struggles, my shortcomings—and do incredible things. If you are interested in reading our story, you can take a sneak peek at the Prologue and Chapter One by clicking HERE.

Blessings,
Cheri