The writing of this book came about in the hopes of passing on the lessons I learned from God, to my daughters. And then my list of people kept growing. It grew to family members, friends, co-workers and others as I saw more and more people needed help each day. It became my mission in this life to help them, too. I’ve always known I wanted to help others from the time I was very little. I just didn’t know how I was supposed to go about doing that. Then it occurred to me that if I shared these lessons, maybe someone else would benefit from my experiences. And if I help only one other person, it will still all be worth it. One is better than none you know! I now know that one of the ways I am supposed to help others is to write this book and by doing this not only have I suddenly become a writer; I have also become a teacher. I’m not the kind of traditional teacher that my mother, grandmother, aunt, and great-aunt had maybe hoped I would be, following in the footsteps of other members of my family. But I’m sure they understand now, that God had in mind a different kind of teacher for me to be. Whoa! A teacher? A teacher! I remember once when I was a teenager saying a most emphatic “NO!” to my mother at her suggesting I become a teacher. Oh what a funny world we live in. You’ve heard the saying “What goes around comes around?” I pushed away being a teacher only to have it come back to me. It makes me laugh to see it come around full circle. My mother was so wise and at the time I didn’t even know it. Well, you want to know what I teach? For starters, I give instruction on whatever God wants me to. In this book, I demonstrate to you how to grow spiritually and by the way that is something God wants me to explain. God has helped me every step of the way in writing this book so I in turn can help you and as many people as I can. And I am also counting on God for the distribution of this book, because my husband says we can’t keep making copies for everyone. The stories on the following pages are all lessons taught by God. Too often we depend on just the past to learn about God, when God is right here with us now. We rely upon translations that are hundreds or thousands of years old. Now don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful we have so many artifacts from the past, informing us about God and Jesus. But God is not extinct. And that is how many of us act, like God is out of reach or out of touch. God is real and very much in the present, also. When I was in third grade I painted a picture of a butterfly. A special group was visiting our class that day with one person who was an authority on the arts. This authoritarian informed me that the antennae on my butterfly were thick and that meant I lived in a fantasy world. I didn’t want to hurt this man’s feelings, but his observation was incorrect. The fact that I was only eight did not deter me from setting the record straight. Immediately, I turned around and enlightened this expert, informing him that the antennae were thick because I couldn’t find a small enough paintbrush to make them thin and I just like butterflies. He assumed he knew what my painting meant, but he never bothered to ask me first, even though I had painted the picture and I was sitting right there beside him. God is the one teaching us the lessons. God is the author, the artist, the creator. What do you think God really means? Don’t you think it might be a good idea to check with our creator and see if our interpretations are correct? And just an added little tidbit here, did you know the butterfly is a symbol for the transformation of the soul, which is just another way of saying spiritual journey? You see, one of the most important things I learned from the lessons God taught me is that it’s not all about getting to heaven (which is contradictory to what some people believe), especially since we are all going to go home (Heaven) anyway. It’s about helping others, the journey before we get to Heaven, our spiritual journey, and the lessons we learn along the way. As we learn each of these lessons, we advance spiritually higher and higher, closer and closer to God. Being with God is our ultimate destination!