The Writing Sisters

Does your life matter? Are you making a difference? Can you bring your children to faith? Can God really speak into our lives through scripture? We love wrestling with questions and we love a good conversation.  And if any of these questions bring up curiosity in you it would be fun to sit down for a cup of coffee and tea together and talk. Since we can’t – the next best thing for us is to write!

Those questions became the heart of our book The Shepherd’s Song. In the book a woman writes out Psalm 23 for her son who has drifted away from faith in college. That afternoon she is in a car accident and as she fights for her life in the ambulance she prays that God would make her life count. Stories unfold as that copy of the Psalm travels from person to person.

Writing about the 23rd Psalm was a powerful experience.  We both remember this Psalm from childhood, in the King James version.  In our minds He still leadeth and restoreth us!  The Psalm was special from childhood but writing about the psalm took us deeper into the verses.

During the year that we wrote the book we were researching sheep and looking for the meaning behind the words.  Over the course of the year God used that scripture powerfully in our own lives.  Both of us walked through the valley of the shadow of death as our father moved in and out of the hospital.  Both of our husbands had surgery as we learned to trust God to provide for us. We both had our first grandchildren. J Yes, our cups overflowed with joy!

The book was a blessing to write and is a blessing to share. It seems to bring hope to people in a way that we didn’t imagine. It has been read aloud in several women’s prisons and has been given as a gift to many women struggling with illness and loss. It has traveled around the world, translated into German and Bulgarian, and has been used by God to bring people to Him including an atheist in India. 

 When you feel called to write it can seem like an impossible dream. When you feel called to write for God it can seem even more impossible until you realize that He does the work, we just show up and write.

 
Thanks, Carol, for having us on your blog today.  We love the chance to connect with readers. If you are reading this today we’d love to hear what you think.  Leave a comment.  We’ll be here today to talk.

 
The Writing Sisters, Betsy Duffey and Laurie Myers were born into a writing family, and began critiquing manuscripts at an early age for their mother, Newbery winner Betsy Byars.  They went on to become authors of more than thirty-five children’s novels. Their first book for adults, The Shepherd’s Song,  is being released in paperback  April 2015.

You can connect with Laurie and Betsy on their monthly newsletter where they send out updates and their popular free devotional books. Contact them at WritingSisters.com  and find them on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest.

Grab your copy of  The Shepherd’s Song here.

 Back Copy:

 Follow the incredible journey of one piece of paper—a copy of Psalm 23—as it travels around the world, linking lives and hearts with its simple but beautiful message.

 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures…

 Shortly before a tragic car accident, Kate McConnell wrote down the powerful words of Psalm 23 on a piece of paper for her wayward son. Just before she loses consciousness, Kate wonders if she’s done enough with her life and prays, “Please, let my life count.”

Unbeknownst to Kate, her handwritten copy of Psalm 23 soon begins a remarkable journey around the world. From a lonely dry cleaning employee to a soldier wounded in Iraq, to a young Kurdish girl fleeing her country, to a Kenyan runner in the Rome Invitational marathon, this humble message forever changes the lives of twelve very different people. Eventually, Kate’s paper makes it back to its starting place, and she discovers the unexpected ways that God changes lives, even through the smallest gestures.

 With beautiful prose evocative of master storyteller Andy Andrews’s The Butterfly Effect, this story will touch your heart and remind you of the ways God works through us to reach beyond what we can imagine.