Fabulous Friday Feature-Deb Raney

Today I welcome 

Deb Raney,

a dynamic lady who knows how to make you feel important. She is kind, laughs, and ever so much fun to be with. 

Enter to win Deb's October 2013 release,

Silver Bells

Scroll to the end of the post to see how to enter.

I met Deb at the 2013 ACFW conference. Of course I knew what a famous author she was before I walked up to her desk for my meeting. I initially felt like the ugly duckling walking into the chambers of a great queen. It took her two seconds to help me feel like her Christian sister. And she did this while critiquing my work! Now that is amazing. I immediately wanted to hear more from her and am excited to read her books. This is a lady you want to meet. I asked Deb to tell us how God led her on her writing journey. Here is what she said:

God Has Proven Himself Faithful Again and Again

Since I was big enough to hold a pencil and scratch out a few wobbly marks, writing was how I expressed myself. 

I distinctly remember the summer I was 10 or 11 years old and reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series. As I read, it suddenly hit me that Laura Ingalls was a little Kansas farm girl just like I was! When I made the connection that I, too, could grow up to be a writer like this other little Kansas farm girl, a dream was born. 

I don't believe I connected that dream as a calling from the Lord until I actually started writing seriously when I was 38 years old. And then, the reason I recognized it as a gift from God was because of the very specific way my ability to write was instrumental in answering a deep prayer of my heart.

I suffered from asthma as a child. Growing up on a farm, I longed to be outdoors playing in the hay loft or riding the combine or tractor with my dad. Instead, because wheat dust and hay were what set off my asthma, I spent most of my time indoors simply trying to breathe. 

But while I was indoors, my mother read to me and I learned to love word! Literature, books, reading, and writing all became an important part of my life. I’m not sure I would have become an author had it not been for the suffering I went through with asthma. I think this is why Romans 8: 28 is my favorite scripture in the Bible. I know God can take even our trials and ultimately use them wholly for our good––and for His glory.

The thing that has surprised me the most about the journey God has taken me on in my writing life is the way God has positioned me in just the right places with just the right people all through my life to ultimately culminate in a finished novel. 

I had several high school and college English instructors who very strongly affirmed and encouraged my gift for creative writing. I was placed in a special advanced English class in high school and many of the projects we did in that class were wonderful exercises in stretching my creativity, not to mention encouraging my self-confidence in that area. 

Although I considered myself a Christian at this point and if asked, would probably have acknowledged God as the source of my talent, I think I was too much of the typical self-absorbed teenager to wholly understand what that really meant.

Had I recognized, in my twenties, that my gift for writing was from God, I don't think I would have been so content to simply stay home and enjoy my children's growing up years. I might have missed or overlooked the equally important gift God gave me for being a good mother.

But God was working, leading me toward this calling as a writer even when I didn’t recognize His hand on my life. Early in our marriage, long before I began to write seriously, Ken and I worked in a nursing home with many Alzheimer's patients and their families. I had no way of knowing that I would someday write a novel on that very topic, but God knew that and put me in a place where I was living the research I would need some twenty years down the road.

With every year that passes, I learn to trust God more with my life, with my family, and with my career because He has proven himself faithful again and again. 

DEBORAH RANEY's first novel, A Vow to Cherish, inspired the World Wide Pictures film of the same title and launched her writing career after 20 happy years as a stay-at-home mom. Since then, her books have won numerous awards including the RITA, National Readers Choice Award, HOLT Medallion, the Carol Award, and have twice been Christy Award finalists. Deb's 23rd novel, The Face of the Earth, released from Howard/Simon & Schuster in May and her new Christmas novel, Silver Bells, just came out from Guideposts. She is currently working on a five-book series for Abingdon Press Fiction. Deb enjoys teaching at writers' conferences across the country. She and her husband, Ken Raney, recently traded small-town life in Kansas ––the setting of many of Deb's novels––for life in the (relatively) big city of Wichita where they enjoy gardening, antiquing, movies and traveling to visit four children and a growing brood of grandchildren who all live much too far away. Visit Deb on the Web at www.deborahraney.com.

To enter the contest for an autographed copy of 

Deb Raney's book: "Silver Bells":

leave a comment (and email address)

and become a follower of this site if you aren't already.

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Winner announced on my facebook page.

Thank you, Deb, for Joining us This Weekend!

Friend, I love hearing how God demonstrates His love for us. Looking back on your youth, can you see how God worked in your life, even before you had a relationship with Him?

Christmas is my all time favorite holiday. What holiday is your favorite? Tell something you especially like about the holiday.