I am a positive person by nature. I truly love my life and am so grateful for my blessings. But I don't want you to think that my life is by any means perfect, that I am somehow better than anyone. Because it's not, and I'm not. Like anyone else, I fight my own tough battles daily. I screw up. I make mistakes. I have a temper. Sometimes God is the last thing on my mind. I can be selfish. I can be a jerk.
But that doesn't mean I'm a bad person. It doesn't mean I focus on the negative. It just means that I'm not perfect. That keeps me humble. That keeps me striving to be better than the person I was yesterday. I truly love myself and think that I'm a good person. I believe that God has blessed me beyond what I deserve, and to whom much is given, much more will be expected. God gave me the gift of writing, and I want to share my books, and who I am, with my readers. I want to be the change that I wish to see in the world. And the best way I can do that is by opening my heart.
When you read The Aletheian Journeys--you get to know me.
The truth is that there is a little bit of me in almost all of my characters. There are moments of my life, my relationship with Christ, in almost every page. The truth is that when you're an author... you open your heart for the whole world to read.
I'll be honest--that's a little scary for me. Every time someone tells me they are reading my book, or when I tell someone I'm an author, there's a rush of intense joy and fear at the same time. Being an author takes courage, vulnerability and honesty.
Look, I'm not going to lie. I want my books to sell. I would love to travel the world and do book tours and signings, for Lisa R Mayer to become a household name. But it isn't because I want fame and fortune (Okay, that does sound pretty good), but because I wrote my books to be read.
I wrote my books with you in my mind, heart, and prayers. Everything I do in my writing is for you.
I wrote them because I want you to know Jesus. But I also want you to know that even if you don't know Him or believe in Him, that doesn't somehow make you less. You matter, you have a purpose in life, you have inherent value and are loved unconditionally no matter what you've done. I want you to have hope.
So many people have lost hope. They look at the world, and the things that are going wrong, and think that it will never get better. They think that they are not important, that nobody cares about them or sees them.
But I want you to know that I care.
I want you to read my books and know that, with every page you turn, I'm thinking of you and praying for you. I opened my heart a long time ago, and asked Christ to break my heart for what breaks His, so that the whole world falls in.
Every word I wrote was for you.
