My mother got a new Bible sometime in the 1970s. It had a dark-green cover with gold words: “The Living Bible, Paraphrased.” On the spine of that Bible, in shiny letters, I remember reading this word: Tyndale.

Mom carried that Bible to Women’s Circle and retreats — and to the United Methodist Church, with its wooden railing and cavernous sanctuary where I worshipped every Sunday as a child. All these years later, I know exactly where to find that one work-worn Bible: at my mom’s bedside.

That Tyndale Bible was Mom’s Bible in the years when I went to kindergarten, learned to ride a bike without training wheels, got my braces, went to Prom, wrote my first news story, got married, and had our first baby. It is still my mother’s Bible, in this year — 2012 — when a Christian publisher took a chance on her daughter, this first-time author.

Oh friends, I’m so excited to tell you this:

This week, I accepted an offer to publish my first book with that very publisher, whose name has graced my mother’s Bible for nearly 40 years: Tyndale.

Yes, I’m about ready to jump with both feet into my own “I’ll Never.”

And isn’t that where we often find God, stepping right into the middle of the place where we humans say we can’t or we won’t?

I’m writing a book.

Because of God.
And for God.

At age 18, I turned away from God.

At age 25, I didn’t think I believed in Him anymore.

And at age 40, this sinner saved by grace is writing a book for Him.

That is just so God.

Check out this video about Tyndale Momentum, with whom I’ve accepted an offer for my first book, which is Christian nonfiction. I’m so thrilled, and grateful, and nervous, and giddy … and all kinds of emotions.

Watch this video, and you’ll see why I am thrilled to work with Tyndale. (Subscribers, you may need to hop over to the blog to see the video by clicking here.)

For we have not received the gifts of God for ourselves only, or for to hide them; but for to bestow them unto the honoring of God and Christ and edifying of the congregation, which is the body of Christ.”

— From William Tyndale’s prologue to the first printed English New Testament (1525)

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