Yea Though I Walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death

Chapter 1

Write a Book

Chris Thomas

Throughout the years I have heard people say that God spoke to them. I wondered what exactly did they hear. I know that God speaks to us through the Bible. God speaks to us through preachers. Sometimes He uses people that we know and some we don’t know. But how does from God’s voice to my ears work? Why don’t I ever hear Him speaking to me? What does God’s voice sound like? When God speaks to a person, does he hear a quiet whisper in his ear? I imagined His voice sounding like a deep, powerful mighty roar. Remember the movie The Ten Commandments starring Charlton Heston? Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments from God. The deep, powerful voice of God was rather scary, if you ask me. His voice definitely scared Charlton Heston. I found out that God’s voice is not at all that I had imagined.

In March, 2007, I was going through a huge loss in my life. Emotionally I fell into a very deep, dark black pit. I would remain there for almost two years. It was when I was in that pit that God spoke to me. He said three words: “Write a book.” No, I didn’t hear the scary roar of a voice I had imagined. It was more like a thought I knew was not mine. There is absolutely no way, not a chance that I would ever have the desire to write a book. Three words, “Write a book,” would come and go for more than six years.

Isaiah 30:21 Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

I have had a lot of losses in my life, but to write a book about them was never a thought of mine. I would tell God, “I hate to write. I don’t even like writing my name. I don’t like my handwriting or the way I print.” Since I’m computer illiterate, I knew that I would have to rely on my handwriting that sometimes I can’t read myself. Verbalizing my thoughts can be difficult. Putting my thoughts on paper would be almost impossible. I fought those three words with every excuse I could muster.

Through the years there were times I would not hear those dreaded words. “Oh good,” I would think. “God has forgotten. I’m off the hook.” No, He hadn’t forgotten. God took a different approach. He used my daughter. Tammy was at work and called me during her lunch hour. She had her own issues, and she had a lot on her mind. Earlier that morning I had watched a preacher on television, and I decided to tell Tammy some of the lessons I had learned. Before I could give her my words of wisdom, she said, “Write a book.” The first thought I had was, “Are you kidding me? Oh, you’re using my daughter now, aren’t you, God?” I started to give Tammy the same excuses that I had been giving God. My daughter told me to stop focusing on myself. Well, well, well, wasn’t that interesting? Those were the exact words the preacher had spoken. “Yes, God,” I replied to Tammy. One of the last words of wisdom my daughter said to me was, “Before you start, pray, and turn off the TV.” How did she know that I had the television on? I had the volume turned down so low that even I couldn’t hear it.

Once I heard a preacher say, if God tells you to do something but you think it is too difficult for you to do, just do it. “God has never told me to do anything I thought was too difficult for me,” I told myself. I believe when God heard my answer, He looked over at Jesus and said, “Did Chris just say what I think she said? I have been telling her for years to write a book. Do you see the book? I don’t see the book.” OK, so I was wrong. Oh, clueless me.

Another preacher asked if there were anything in the world that you could change, what would that be? I hate cruelty to animals and cruelty that one person inflicts on another, but that wasn’t what came to my mind. “Hunger,” I thought. What we see on television with a small child, alive but lifeless, being held by his or her distraught mother is heartbreaking. Flies landing on a child’s helpless little face are too difficult for us to look at. But the reality is that we don’t have to go farther than the city we live in to find hunger. I remember thinking that writing this book would not solve hunger. I was thinking only of physical hunger. God spoke to me and said, “There is more than one kind of hunger.”

I wrote this book because God waited patiently for me to obey Him. Not only did God tell me to write this book, He gave me the title that I was to put on the front of it.

I sincerely hope that writing about what I have gone through in my life will help someone in his or her own dark pit see the light at the end of their tunnel and hunger to find it.