About Brenda LaVelle

I have been a Christian since Jesus called me to the altar in 1996.  I live in Dalton, Georgia with my Chorkie, Jitterbug, and my three cats, Sylvester, Pearl, and Spike.  I attend Christ Community Church and am a full-time caretaker for my 88 year-old landlady whom I have rented from for the past 22 years.  I feel that Jesus has called me to serve Him by being His hands and feet to people in need.I used to write poems about death and dying in my younger, suicidal years.  They just always mysteriously “came” to me.  Then the poems stopped for many years.  I got into recovery from alcohol and drug addiction in 1986 and have been clean and sober ever since.  At that time I went on a ten-year quest for “God.”  He found me in that pew on a Sunday morning just before my forty-third birthday.  I gave my life to Jesus that morning and started a relationship with Him.  I had journaled off and on for most of my life and I started journaling with God.   I seem to communicate best on paper. In 2000 I had a complete nervous breakdown and had to quit work and go on disability.  That was a great blow to me and I asked God, “Why?”  Soon He let me understand that the reason for that was so that I could work on my relationship with Him.  I had the time now to study my Bible, get involved in my church, help other people, but mostly spend more time with Him.I started going to bed early so I could get up between four and five in the morning to go right to God in my journal and spend an hour or more there with Him.  Then I would spend another hour or more in prayer and meditation.  I have quite a few meditation books I am fond of, my favorites being My Utmost For His Highest and Streams in the Desert.To me, my relationship with God is the most precious thing in my life, and the early morning hours are the first fruit of my day that I want to give to Him.  He gives me His best and I want to give Him my best and my first.  He is my First, Second, and Third; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  May it always remain so!My relationship with God has just grown and grown over these past eight years and although I have encountered many trials, He has been faithful and true and taught me many valuable lessons.  Last year about this time, after a very traumatic period in my life, I asked God in my journaling to let me start writing again, this time for His honor and glory.  Almost immediately, within a day or two, during my journaling, poems just started flowing onto the pages of my journal, about and for God.I call my poems “Poems From God,” because it is like His is literally “giving” them to me!  I do some editing and refining sometimes and some actual thinking about what is coming next, but the Holy Spirit is just pouring these words into my hand and onto the paper.  GOD IS AWESOME!  My prayer is that you will see Him in and through my words.  He has given me my trademark phrase:  Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!With love in ChristBrenda LaVelle