God Grows a Writer by Bobbi Junior

“Is it a sin to hate yourself?”

At thirteen years of age, these words began my first journal. I couldn’t know this statement would lead me on the path to become a writer. As a young girl, all I knew, or thought I knew, was that I had no worth. I came to the page profoundly alone, yet crying out to the one I instinctively knew was listening.

For me, journalling deflated an agony of heart that often threatened to push me over the edge. I would never have called myself a writer. Journalling was simply a way to cope. The act of putting pen to paper diminished the power of my misery enough to keep me alive one day longer.

I hid my journal carefully, although no one sought to read it. My pain wasn’t as invisible as I believed, though. God saw it. God read it. God cared.

I couldn’t know back then that the Lord was honing my craft. Such private, uncensored, expression gave me freedom to write my story unhampered by literary constraints. Day by day, tear by tear, pain designed my words, my style. 

With God my only audience, I became a writer.

In my twenties I wrote a series of children’s stories that were published in the Edmonton Journal. Confidence began to grow until they hired a new editor who critiqued my next submission. I didn’t know that critique meant I should now revise. With no writer to turn to for advice, I simply stopped.

In my forties, my stable life tipped. This time I knew Jesus was my willing audience. Once again I journalled voraciously as I dragged and fought my way through the ensuing tumultuous decade.

Eventually life settled, but with a significant change. Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.” The desire Jesus gave me was to write, but with a new purpose. I attended a Women’s Words writers week which showed me I was on the right track. Then, and to this day I don’t remember how, I came to attend the 2012 InScribe Fall Conference.

The rest, to use a timeworn cliche, is history.

Writing saved my life as a teen, and again as an adult. 

Writing about what I was saved from, saved for, is now my calling. 

God is good.

Bobbi’s book,The Reluctant Caregiver, was published in 2014. Since then, Bobbi has been invited to speak on caregiving, dementia, and the needs of seniors in a number of venues. She’s excited to see where God will take her in the coming years. Download a chapter at bobbijunior.com.