Jill Eileen Smith - When Life Doesnt Match Your Dreams: Hope for Today from 12 Women of the Bible

I fell in love with the Bible when I was sixteen. Growing up in a Christian home, Id been exposed to my mom and dad reading the Scriptures each day, and I tried to follow in their footsteps. But the Bible didnt really come alive for me until I read a biblical novel Two from Galilee by Marjorie Holmes. When I closed the pages of that book, I thought, These people were real!

Thus started my journey into Bible study and reading every biblical novel I could find. But somewhere along the way, I discovered that what I wanted to read wasnt out there, so in the next phase of my journey I began to write the biblical novel I wanted to readone about the life of King David.

The journey to writing well enough for publication took twenty years due to raising a family and the many other interruptions of life. But in 2009 my dream of publication came to fruition when Revell published Michal , book 1 in the Wives of King David series. Since then Revell has graciously worked with me to publish ten full-length novels and four novellas, with more to come. You could say I have seen my dreams come true.

So why would a biblical novelist want to write a nonfiction book on women of the Old Testament who didnt always see their dreams come true? Why pursue trust in God when life doesnt go the way wed hoped, when it feels more like Hes failed us?

The answer is that our journeys dont end with one goal reached. Life is full of twists and turns, and the roads we travel dont always lead to where we intended to go. Sometimes we are faced with choices we never wanted to make, or things are pushed upon us we didnt expect. Those are the moments our faith is most tested, and we have to decide whether we are going to believe that God has abandoned us or that He has never left our side and He has our best interests at heart.

I believe, from my years of studying the Scriptures for the novels I write, that these women of the Old Testament can teach us much about lifes journey. They may have lived thousands of years before us, but the truth is, the human heart doesnt change with the passage of time. Only God can do such a miraculous work as changing a heart.

We are all at different places in lifes journey, but if you are like me, youve hit a few bumps in the road, felt some of the joys dissipate and the hurts accentuate. When we cant see the dreams anymore, when life is more trial than triumph, thats when we can let our faith either come to a grinding halt or grow stronger.

I hope you will journey with me into the lives of these women and perhaps see trusting God from a new perspective, from the way they might have seen Him. If you have read my biblical novels, some of these women will be familiar to you, but you will get a different glimpse of them in these pages. I hope in the end that you and I together can grow stronger in our faith and know that God keeps His promises. He doesnt leave us or forsake us (Deut. 31:6; Heb. 13:5). And He is worthy of our trust, even in our darkest hours.

In His Grace,
Jill Eileen Smith