When I was young I wanted PROOF that God was real. (40+ yrs later He gave it to me)

When I first got the idea to write a book, it was 2012. I had just come out of the darkest time of my life, and I had discovered the love of God. I had spent 9 months in a string of Bible Studies, and I had learned things I had never known before. The most life-changing being: “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” — Jeremiah 29:11 I didn’t know that the Bible said that God loved me. I didn’t know that there was a grand plan for my life, and that those plans were good. For the first time in my life, I had begun to pray, and I was seeing prayers answered. God was real; and I wanted desperately to tell other women who were hurting like I had been. The book was going to be called “A Million Miles from where I Started” and I worked on it for close to 2 years. However; in my attempts to convey the pain that I had endured, I found myself overwhelmed by emotion, day in and day out. I smoked cigarettes to try to calm my stomach, and stop my tears…. they didn’t work. I vomited, and cried, and poured my heart out every day until I just couldn’t do it anymore… And then, I had an epiphany. The day my 9 year old daughter went looking through my jewelry box, found my great-grandmother’s pearls, and asked a million questions about how they are formed. ~ she announced “Mama. Pearls are like people. Bad things make them prettier on the inside.” It was brilliant. That sentence conveyed the message I had been struggling to articulate for years. My life was “like a pearl”. In that moment, I decided to make modern, pearl jewelry to convey the radical transformation of my life. Yes. I would use the symbolism of the pearl to convey beauty born from struggle without words. <a href="https://medium.com/@sarah_19455/when-i-was-young-i-wanted-proof-that-god-was-real-8e81600e2fe0">Website</a>