The day is finally here! I am so excited to share A Passionate Hope, Hannah’s Story with you! To those of you who have already pre-ordered the book, you should be receiving it soon. I truly hope you enjoy the story!
Next Tuesday, February 13, 2018 at 7:00 EST, we will be having a FaceBook Launch Party! Please visit my FaceBook Page for more information. The party will be held there. Prizes will be given throughout the hour.
This past Sunday I had my first book signing for A Passionate Hope, and thoroughly enjoyed meeting so many wonderful people. Thank you to all who came out or stopped to talk to me. Thank you to the woman who bought every single one of my books! I hope you enjoy each one.
Most importantly – more than sales or book signings – is my prayer for what this story can teach us. In writing this last book in the Daughters of the Promised Land series, I did a lot of walking in Hannah’s sandals. It wasn’t hard for me to put myself in her place, for parts of the story were things I could easily imagine or had experienced in a different way.
All writers take from their personal lives and as they say, “bleed on the page.” If we don’t, then we will never connect with our characters or our readers. While I have not lived in Hannah’s time or experienced the stigma she faced as a barren woman, which would have been devastating in her day, I have felt the emotional struggles she faced on several levels.
Which of us has not had relationship strife? Enter Peninnah, the critical sister-wife rival. I’m so grateful I don’t live in a time where polygamy is acceptable, but relationships are part of our lives. We don’t walk through this journey with pollyanna perfection or always idyllic associations with every person we meet, befriend, or are related to. So yeah, I could feel some of Hannah’s pain there. And even some of Peninnah’s. We play different roles in our lives and sometimes we might be a Hannah, and in others we might act like a Peninnah.
What I loved most about Hannah as I studied her story was her love for God. And her deep devotion to prayer. Hannah walked a long time with the stigma of barrenness, and I can bet she prayed a lot of prayers for God to open her womb. But if you read her story in 1 Samuel 1, you will see that it took desperation and surrender for her prayers to be heard and answered. Does that mean God doesn’t hear us without desperation and surrender? No. I believe the Scriptures are pretty clear that God hears us when we come to Him with faith and humility. But sometimes that faith and humility is tested and some answers come in ways that we didn’t expect, and require things of us we didn’t realize.
But the main point – because prayer is worth a post all its own – is that Hannah loved the Lord and she trusted Him in the midst of her trials and she prayed in faith because she knew He cared.
I hope when you come to the end of A Passionate Hope, that you will know God cares for you too. He loves each one of us so deeply! And He is the God of all hope. May Hannah’s passionate hope in God become ours as well.
~Selah
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