This part of my story began about ten years ago. My husband was ill (and dying). I was stressed out, tired of trying to find help only to be hurt more than helped. We had given up on church. I didn't know anymore where to even try to find help or answers anymore. I felt very alone and discouraged.

One thing that helped me somewhat was my practice of journaling. It was a way of getting things outside myself to at least get somewhat of a better perspective. Something I had been including in my journaling was writing out questions and concerns to the Lord.

So one day in the midst of all that was going on I decided to ask something really big of God. I told Him that I didn't think He meant for me to be a lone-ranger Christian, that I believed we are meant to be part of His body, but that I had exhausted everything I could think of where church was concerned and I just couldn't see myself going back any time soon.

So I asked Him to become my Everything. Just EVERYTHING I needed. I'm not sure I really even understood what I was asking - I just knew I needed help and He was the only One I felt I could come to.

And He took me up on that!

In more ways than I could even have imagined!

I can say without a shadow of doubt, that my relationship with Him now is absolutely the best relationship I have ever had with anyone - or will have! Why? Because …

He taught me how to have a real relationship with the real Him.

The Secret Key to that relationship has been learning how to hear the Lord's voice for myself.

As I look back on that now, it seems so simple and so obvious, but in spite of growing up in a Christian home, going to Bible School, and being very involved in church for most of my life, no one had ever told me I could hear His voice, or how to. It had just never been an option I was aware of.

Oh, maybe once in a long while if I was being really, really "spiritual", He might actually do something that I would know was Him. But being able to hear His voice as simply and easily as talking to a friend at any time - I had no idea such a thing was possible.

It began for me in my journaling when I was talking TO Him. I began to get a sense that He was talking back to me. Well, that was a bit unnerving! I wasn't sure what to make of it. But I had asked Him for help, so I choose to trust Him. And I began writing what I felt God was saying to me - what I was hearing in my mind.

I did it cautiously. The last thing I felt I needed with all the stress I was already dealing with would be to go off the rails spiritually.

So I wrote down what I felt I was hearing in the moment, and then would carefully check it afterwards to see if in any way it went against what I knew of His Word in Scripture. And I wasn't finding anything that gave me reason to doubt. If anything, there was a peace about it.

Sometime after starting this process of journaling with the Lord, I came across an online course about hearing God's voice. To my surprise what was being taught was what God had already been teaching me. That was very encouraging and confirming.

But to be even more on the safe side, I contacted them and asked if they could put me in touch with someone who really knew how to hear God's voice, so they could check my journaling. They did - a pastor's wife about an hour from where I live. I met with her, gave her my journal, and she came back after reading it to say that, Yes, I was definitely hearing from God - that much of what I was writing about was also what God had been teaching her.

Well, that did it. I went all in on the journaling with Him and have done it daily ever since. It's not just hearing God when I journal either. I can talk WITH Him any time through the day, but that journaling time with Him every morning is the most special time of my day.

I will be sharing on the Blog and in the Course things that God has taught me. To mention just a few here…