Live It Up

I grew up on a cotton farm near Marshville, North Carolina, in a loving, Christian family. The farm did not offer me the adventuresome life I had always yearned for, and I cried out to God to get me off the farm. He answered my prayer beyond imagination. In 1981, I helped JM Family Enterprises – Southeast Toyota Distributors, start their own finance company, World Omni Financial Corporation, manually. After that was up and running, I headed up JM Family’s Travel & Incentive Division; and then started an auditing department for World Omni Financial Corporation. Throughout my 40-year career in finance, I experienced what many would say was a huge success, including several promotions, good salaries and traveling to many exciting and exotic places throughout the world. However, that success and other things of this world, led me down a path that was quite contrary to God’s plan for my life. After retiring on January 1, 1998, I was forced to face the truth about my broken marriage of 42 years, with a sociopath. I came to realize that I was one of many compartments of his life. I felt that I was one of the drawers in large chest, labeled “Shirley”, where he could pull me out, use me, and then close the drawer with coldness that was chilling to the bone. Over a period of five years, I was able to forgive my husband and move forward with my life. God used one swing of a golf club, with a lot of physical and emotional pain, to get all of me! In 2003, I attended a woman’s conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was at that conference that I became passionate in my walk with Jesus and I’ve been on fire ever since. The harvest of our spiritual journey is: • Much longer than we thought • Much harder than we thought • Much more rewarding than we ever imagined …forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13b-14).