I am truly honored to have been nominated a second time for the Liebster Award.  This time I was nominated by When I’m with You . . . Whitney Ibe Blog.  The author (Whitney) of the Whitney Ibe Blog is upbeat and full of sunshine.  Whitney’s positive outlook is inspiring and I love to read her posts.  If you haven’t checked out her blog, I encourage you to do so soon, because her inward and outward beauty sparkles through in her writing.  Thank you for thinking of me Whitney.

The Liebster Award is an Internet Award given to bloggers by other bloggers.  The German word “liebster” means: dearest, sweetest, kindest, nicest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, welcome, and sweetheart.  The Award is a nice way to recognize and welcome new bloggers, while allowing others to discover them, as well.

The rules of the Liebster Award are as follows:

1) Acknowledge the blog who nominated you for this award.
2) Answer 11 questions the blogger gave you.
3) Give 11 random facts about yourself.
4) Nominate 11 blogs.
5) Notify them.
6) Give them 11 questions to answer

My Answers

What made you start blogging?  I love to read and write.  I’ve always wanted to write books.  I love the Lord above all.   When I was growing up I was taught to share God’s love with others.  The church I attended called the sharing I’m referring to “witnessing”.  I was taught that witnessing was wonderful and that we should share the gospel through our lives and words everywhere we go.  The Bible talks about spreading the gospel.  That is what I did.

Over time witnessing has become politically incorrect.  As a supervisor at work I was told that I had to be careful about what I said because my workplace and I could be sued.  I could lose my home if I mentioned God at work.  I heard others say it wasn’t appropriate to say “Merry Christmas”.  “Happy Holidays” was the correct holiday greeting.  Well, if you have ever had God’s love inside you like I do, you will understand when I say I was about to explode.  The funny thing is, I didn’t have to say anything because God’s love just radiates out of me.  Over time I just became miserable.  So, I sought out another way to spread God’s love, blogging.  It helped me to feel more fulfilled.  I felt a little like Jesus must have felt when he traveled home and his hometown rejected him, because most of my friends and family refused to look at my blog.  I have been told “that was a coincidence, not a miracle,” “you are to legalistic,” and last week “you’re a fanatic”.  This doesn’t bother me too much.  I feel like it’s their loss.  I pray that I will have the opportunity to write and publish books in the future?

If you could visit any country in the world, which would you visit? I love to travel.  If I could go anywhere, I’d visit the Holy Lands first.  Books, Maps, Photography and Internet information is wonderful and I’m thankful, but nothing is quite like seeing and experiencing places first hand.  I want to go to the places we read about in our Bibles.  

What is your favorite food?  Anything my husband cooks is my favorite food!  He’s an amazing chef!  I am especially fond of fish.

What is your favorite sport?  I’m not a big sports fan.  I enjoying watching my college alma mater football team play (Florida State).  I also enjoy watching figure skating, and swimming and diving teams.  During warmer months I swim and I walk year round.

Do you prefer digital or physical books?  Both.  It’s a wonderful convenience to be able to bring hundreds of books on a phone or tablet with you everywhere you go.  It’s awesome.  However, I still like to hold a book in my hands.  I make notes in my Bible, so that I can pass them down.  Likewise, I have a digital and physical planner.  To me it sometimes seems like the digital world is fragile.  I often think of the loss of information in the library of Alexandria.

What is the biggest problem you encounter while writing?  I want my writing to be perfect grammatically, and inspirationally.  The days I feel my writing falls short, seem to be the days I have the most positive comments.

What color are your eyes?  Green.  Most of the time the whites of my eyes are red from Sjogren’s Syndrome, which makes them look even greener.  I’ve had people tell me that my eyes look like they are bleeding sometimes.

Recount a brief childhood story. What happened?  When I was a teenager I worked for the County School Board one summer giving swimming lessons.  Five days a week my parents would drop me off at 6:30 in the morning to catch a bus that would take me and a few other brave teens to Blue Springs.  Blue Springs has ice-cold water in the middle of the day.  When we arrived the sun wasn’t high in the sky yet, and the trees shaded the edges of the swimming area.  So, most days we spent half of the time trying to get wet above the knees.  

The children we were teaching varied in size from kindergarten to I haven’t been able to graduate yet.  So, some of my students were larger in stature than I was.  In the middle of the swimming area was a floating dock about fifty to seventy-five feet from the surrounding three shorelines.  All the experienced swimmers would hang out in the middle.  So, it was my goal to have my students swimming to the dock and back by the end of the summer.  The problem was most of the students couldn’t put their face in the crystal clear water when they started lessons, and the shorelines dropped to about twenty-five feet deep about ten feet away from the shore.

All summer I worked with the students until the last week of lessons had arrived.  I was determined that I would have at least one student swimming to the dock successfully.  However, I only had one who could dog paddle a few feet.  On the last day of lessons I looked up into the eyes of my six-foot tall most successful student and proudly proclaimed  “today you will graduate because you are going to swim to the dock!  Isn’t that great!”  He shook and looked worried.  So I reassured him by saying “don’t worry, I’ll be right beside you and I can save you if you can’t make it.”  I was about five foot three and weighed a little less than a hundred pounds.  My student looked to be about three hundred pounds.  I wasn’t worried at all though.  He could dog paddle now.

We made our way side by side toward the floating dock.  I was glowing with pride.  After all, I had taught this football player to swim.  As soon as we were about waist deep, he began to panic.  So, I told him to just stand up.  That should have been my sign to turn back, but I was convinced he could do it, and I was a “good” swimmer who had mastered life saving techniques.  We continued across.  It wasn’t long before the water was deep and my student knew it.  He was on top of me like I was a floating log.  It’s times like these that you realize the lifeguard’s are also students, who in this case were obviously not paying attention because they would have seen me bobbing up and down with a football player on my back.  I’m guessing he wasn’t as popular as he thought either, because no one was trying to save him.  Finally, I slapped him as hard as I could and said, “get a hold of yourself, the water is only a foot deeper than your height.  If you go down, you can jump up off the bottom.”  I don’t really know why he believed this, because if you looked down, the water was clear enough to see that it was easily twenty feet deep where we were swimming.

So, we kept inching towards the dock, with my student trying to drown me.  I was thinking that I probably needed to ask for assistance to get him back to the shore, if we survived the trip over.  Suddenly, he began to swim with great vigor.  I looked at him and realized he was looking at a beautiful face on the dock.  The girl waved and smiled.  I guess you could say he didn’t want to seem embarrassed, because he pointed at me and said, “hey, I’m teaching this girl how to swim.  I’ll be there in a minute.  She’s having trouble.”  I couldn’t believe my ears.  I started to speak and he said “shut up.  Just get me there and I will find my own way back.”  That day I learned that love will find a way.  He made it to the dock and spent the remainder of the time with this young lady.  Then, he swam back to the shore.  The best part of this story is the two later married and are still married today.

What type of music do you like to listen to?  This is a tough question for me.  I love praise, gospel, hymns, pop, 70’s and 80’s tunes, and classical music.  I like some country music.

Do you collect anything? If so, what is it?  Yes.  I love books.

Where do you see yourself in five years?  I see myself writing books, teaching and comforting others.  In my free time, I will spend time with my family.

My nominees are:

M.K. Aneal

Kristi Anne’s Haven

Charles Earl Harrel

The Beauty of Words

The Godly Chic Diaries

Anna Waldherr

Camie’s Cozy Corner

Brandon J. Adams

Plucking Of My Heartstrings

Wizzymedpower

Inside Cup

Questions For My Nominees:

1.  What inspired you start blogging?
2. If you could visit any country in the world, which would you visit
3. What is your favorite hobby?
4. What is your favorite holiday?
5. Do you prefer digital or physical books?
6. What is the biggest problem you encounter while writing?
7. What color are your eyes?
8. Recount a brief childhood story. What happened?
9. What type of music do you like to listen to?
10. Do you collect anything? If so, what is it?
11. Where do you see yourself in five years?
    Congratulations everyone. Enjoy the rest of your day.