It’s Not a Coincidence, It’s a God-Incidence

Thursday, May 11th, 2017     by Debra DuPree Williams     Start the Conversation


Indian Rocks Beach, Path from our Home There

  by Debra DuPree Williams
 @DDuPreeWilliams


I quote Jeremiah 29:11 and Proverbs 3:6, to my children all the time. If they remember nothing else of their mother, I know they’ll remember these two verses. Both of these scriptures speak of putting your faith and trust in God and following the paths He has set forth for your life.

Childhood Dreams
I never dreamed of the places I’ve been or the relationships I’ve formed over the past four years. I’m talking about in the writing world. When I was in the seventh grade in Andalusia, Alabama, I began writing a novel. Every night before I turned off my lights, time was spent putting another chapter into my idea of The Great American Novel. Let me tell you, it was pitiful. But a friend waited daily to read what I had written the previous night. Thank you, Anne Evers Mount Brown. I don’t know what happened to that great achievement.

Fast forward over fifty years to 2014. My husband and I were living in Florida while we waited for the completion of our home in Asheville, North Carolina. I had pulled out my writing notebooks and began adding to the poems and children’s stories I’d written in years past. But I also began making notes about a young woman, Charlotte, who was interested in one of my great loves, genealogy.

You may have read about this in a previous blog, but since it ties in so well with what happened today, I felt it was worth repeating. In a phone conversation with my sister one day she told me to go look at the webpage of one of her favorite authors. I didn’t know authors had web pages. That is how ignorant I was of the writing world. But I did go view that page. By the way, that author was Lauraine Snelling.

I was browsing around her page and I came to a link to the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference being held that next weekend out in California. What? California? Next weekend? There was no way I could do that. But I kept scrolling and she had a link to other Christian writing conferences, one of which was Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference which was being held in Asheville, North Carolina.

Maybe I could do that. But when was it being held? I had no idea. A click on the link took me to the web-page for the conference. Wonder of wonders, it was scheduled for the very week my husband and I had to be in Asheville for the electrical walk-through of our home. Coincidence? I say not. To me this was a huge God-Incidence. He wanted me at that conference.

Blue Ridge Mountains from the Blue Ridge Parkway, NC

Heading For 
The Hills

We packed our things and headed for the hills. (Those of you who know Asheville know it’s really mountains, but hills sounded better.) I got to the conference and knew absolutely no one. It was a bit overwhelming at first, but they gave us great handouts and information so we could choose classes wisely, and make appointments with publishers, editors, and agents. I was way out of my league. These people were BIG-time Christian authors. I just wanted to know if I even WAS an author. But I made appointments with the two teachers of the track I had chosen, children’s literature. They were Sally Apokedak and Michelle Medlock Adams. When each of them had encouraging words to say, I’m not embarrassed to tell you that I was in tears. This was life-altering, believe me.

This May will be my fourth year in a row to attend BRMCWC. In that time, I’ve switched to writing cozy mysteries. This past October,  my work-in-progress won several awards at the Autumn in the Mountains Novelist Retreat, also held in Asheville.

In the meantime, life goes on and I’ve been learning my way around the social media aspects of the writing life. This blog is a part of that. Now, let me tell you that all this techie stuff is hard for this lady. I’m not the generation for whom all of this comes easily. I’m blessed to have the best teacher out there, so I’m learning new things every week.

Just today I was making a meme. A couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what that was, let alone create one. But now I can do it with ease. This meme is going to be posted on May 17th, and if you see it on Facebook or Twitter, you will know why that date. It has to do with Sir Francis Drake and a quote by him. I’ve written a blog about a song set to those lyrics. See my blog, Finish What You Start: The True Glory.  Here is the link to that blog. http://debradupreewilliams.blogspot.com/2017/04/finish-what-you-start-true-glory.html
Sunset at Indian Rocks Beach, 2015

Sunsets and God’s Hand

The background for the meme is a photo I took at Indian Rocks Beach. It shows one of the beautiful sunsets we enjoyed on a daily basis during the three years we lived there. There is a main road which leads down to Indian Rocks Beach where we lived. That road is named Walsingham.

In researching the quote by Sir Francis Drake, I learned that his quote, which is on the meme I created, was written in 1587, off the coast of Portugal. It was sent to . . . Francis Walsingham. Now to me, this is just another God-incidence.

Many of the ideas which are now a part of my work in progress were fleshed out while we lived at Indian Rocks Beach. All of this is to say that God has had His hand in the direction my life has gone, since before I was born. The Bible tell us in Jeremiah 1:5 that He knew us before we were born. He knew the paths I would take. The novel written back in seventh grade, the poems written for my children, the picture books written for my grand babies, all were leading me to the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference. Coincidence? Not a chance. God has had His hand all over this. I am truly blessed.

What God-incidences have you experienced? Tell us about one or two in the space below. 

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