What was your first intention when you began writing what seems to have initially been a journal or diary?
Perhaps the first unconditional act I'd performed in my life occurred late one evening in the summer of 1999. A distraught neighbor woman approached me wanting to talk to me about something. She asked me if she could come over later that evening after her waitress shift. While I felt awkward by her request, I agreed and was saddened by her sorrowful tone. I admit to being somewhat ambivalent about the meeting being that this single mother was quite attractive, not to mention vulnerable. The particulars of the event are noteworthy because what was new in my life was that I was genuinely concerned about the person. While I waited the woman's arrival that never came, I instead was moved to write names of the chapters in the form of an outline. the outlined flowed onto the lined paper without any idea of the subject matter. In the days to follow, the daily personal journal would start under each of the previously chronicled chapter headings.

Could you identify the exact moment when you realized you had to turn yourself around before you could turn your life around? In a small gymnasium in the spring of 1998, I attended a worship service of an upstart local Christian Church. Wearing faded jeans, worn tennis shoes and a dirty red coat I hid my lifeless face in shame as I could no longer hold the trappings of my self-righteousness together. Hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ preached, I let go of the weight my life had become handing over my brokenness to the Lord.

Has writing this story heightened your recognition of yourself in others you encounter? The process of writing this story was a journaling of daily encounters that became a reflection of my own life. The Lord has given me a joy to deal with my own life being revealed through the feelings and words of other people. Accordingly, I have gained empathy for other people.

When that occurs, what is your first impulse or reaction? Best only described as grace, my impulse or reaction is with compassion and mercy to share and empathize to encounter other people. The Lord has prepared my heart to receive His Word into my life to the extent that my brokenness can handle. At time, I would and still do run shortly and angrily from the truth the encounters reveal. Over and over I run smack into god's merciful arms kicking and screaming as He comforts my sorrow.

Did you ever wrestle with your faith while your life was in its downward spiral? There was a period of about four months after that first worship service when I responded to God in my life that I struggled to take back from Him my faith. I had a form of "Christian" pride or arrogance of sorts. I boasted on how better I felt and started to fall into a trap of spiritual pride until the self-righteous and controlling spirit was ripped out of my hands while incarcerated for three days for domestic violence. Only after being released from that jail did I begin to submit Christ Jesus as Lord of my life. During those four months I was full of myself, now I at times do wrestle cautiously with the faith He has given me having been reminded of how the Shepard chastens the flock.

It seems that there are lot of people who agree with and talk about the need to be on the "other side", but few actually go through the process. Why do you think you were able to? God carried me kicking and screaming through the entire process and has brought me to a doorway in my life that only I could choose to step through. Trusting in something other than myself for the first time, I trusted the Lord for His protection and took a leap of faith into His absolute truth. Only by God's grace was I free to accept the forgiveness I do desired.

Since completing this book, have you begun a sequel? If so, what is its message? If not, why? Since completing this book, I have written an outline and further study of the alignment of avocation and occupation at work in God's restoration and reconciliation of man's heart. The work will be a continued journaling of how by His mercy the Lord is at work restoring joy and peace to relationship.