Yesterday morning on the way to work Mike and I made this list. In our 42 years of marriage we have been blessed with: supportive parents and other relatives; lasting relationships with friends closer than brothers; some good pastors and teachers; some great family doctors; 6 children (1 in heaven) and 8 grandchildren (1 in heaven); 10 addresses (including 7 purchases, 4 of which doubled as income properties); membership in 4 Christian congregations, and 13 years in ministry leadership positions.

Three years into our marriage God had saved my soul, about nine months later He’d saved Mike’s, and as our five surviving children grew up they also joined God’s family. Between family and ministry we have helped to host six weddings and one wedding reception, and counseled five engaged couples.

God blessed Mike with great career moves at: Jamintel, Jamaica’s first national telecommunications company; NCR in mainframe computer hardware service and service management; T Geddes Grant Jamaica, in office equipment sales and service management from the time of fax introduction to Jamaica; Xerox in Jamaica and Canada, in service and service management. God also blessed Mike with talents and interests that he invested into agricultural, sales and service entrepreneurship in Jamaica and Canada. All that and more, before entering the field of Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) in Canada.

God blessed me with a 30-year career in public and Christian Education in Jamaica and Canada, as well as brief Canadian experience as bank teller, store clerk and ‘unemployed’, before becoming an ATIP Professional. Besides, God blessed me with divine music in my soul for every season, and a creative talent – ‘wordsmithy’ – that has allowed me to share that soul with the world in TGIF: Thank God It’s Friday.

42 years is a long time, so our list yesterday morning was going on… but I lost interest when Mike started recalling the cars 🙂

Buy our colourful full-length story in PDF for only $6 US.

More than any previous year of my life, 2015 was a year of highs and lows. New highs included the publication of my second book, TGIF: Thank God It’s Friday, and spin-offs from Mike’s blessing that he expressed in our prayer time this morning: “I have done more Bible study and learned more in the past two years than in the ten years prior.”

Unprecedented lows of 2015 included the passing of my Mom, Cynthia McKinley Walters, in February – a low for our surviving family but a high for her as she entered into fullness of joy and perfect health, where the “glory of Elohim” shines brighter than the Jamaican sun ever could.

Unprecedented lows also included the tragic death of a young lady whom Mike and I had known all her life. We continue to pray for her family, in Yeshua’s Name claiming Jeremiah 29:11 for them – peace, a future, a hope – God’s redemptive will fulfilled in their lives.

For one unprecedented low, God prepared me well in advance with new insights on the cross of Calvary. He showed me that I should choose to take up my cross and follow Him in a new way, rather than evade the suffering that I sensed would follow. I obeyed in August 2015 and the dust hasn’t settled yet. Clouds of character assassination, lies and innuendos have continued to billow, but the conviction that the Lord led me into this test has kept me steadfast. Yeshua suffered so much more for us when He challenged the doctrines of the chief priests, that this little cross is nothing compared to the one He carried. So I pushed through some of the dust clouds by blogging on The Cross.

Now, for 2016, in Yeshua’s Name I claim the manifestation in my life of not only Jeremiah 29:11 (God’s plans for me fulfilled), but also Genesis 50:20, (what the devil meant for evil leading instead to new accomplishments) and Romans 8:28 (all things working together for good because I love God and am called according to His purpose).