Walk Worthy Press: Plenty Good Room by Cheri Paris Edwards

Author Testimony

Brought up by my mother and stepfather I grew up the second oldest of four girls and one boy in a middle-class family. I was raised a Christian and eventually confirmed into a multi-racial Episcopal Church in the small Midwestern town I lived in. While I didn't fail academically, I became an underachiever in junior high school, never really working to my full potential.

After high school I successfully completed some community college courses and then transferred to a four-year institution but I did not finish. I came back to the area, worked and attended college again, still didn't finish, spending much of these years searching for affirmation through a ‘loving' relationship. Instead, I repeated the pattern that I'd experienced…though I'd felt abandoned by the lack of contact with my biological father as a child, I became the parent of a son whose father abandoned me.

I knew God, but only from a distance, since I'd never formed a relationship with Him on my own. One day when my son was about three, a neighbor told me "God loved me" and though it wasn't the first time someone had said that to me….I actually heard her. I had little money and even less food and too ashamed to tell my family of my plight, I'd been crying when she stopped by. To my surprise, she walked us to the grocery store, and allowed me to choose my own groceries, which she paid for. Stunned, yet grateful for her selfless actions I felt a desire to know God for myself and I began to study my Bible on my own. Not long afterward, I married in an attempt to ‘legitimize' my life and child and when my ‘too-quickly entered' marriage dissolved I began to study even more earnestly.

But, even as I was gaining this new-found Biblical knowledge, I continued to believe that I would find the ‘completeness' I longed for through a relationship with a man. But, another son and one short-lived marriage later, I was again on my own. With a new job as a Community Outreach worker in a local middle school, it was my job to convince these too-often wayward young folks to stay in class and/or come to school. It wasn't long before I discovered that these youth were the very sort of young people who had made my own middle-school years so difficult. They were the fighters, the disrespectful ones…they were the troubled kids.

But, as is often God's way, it is through my relationships with these young people and their parents that I finally began to gain a real sense of myself. In the young women especially, I saw me, wanting to be liked, loved…some trying hard to be a part of the group and others lingering on the outskirts, still desiring love. I realized that it was during my own adolescence that I first learned to underachieve academically, striving instead to be accepted by my peers. While I never outspokenly pushed to ‘fit in', I silently kept to myself all the qualities I had that I thought would make me stand out in the crowd. I never was a fighter and so perhaps at times, I had been too afraid to let my ‘light' shine, so to speak…a coward of sorts. In the mothers I met, I often saw myself too; and I identified with their struggles, frustrations and their joys and failures.

Especially touched by the youth I'd met during this time living in foster care, I took in two young women myself during this time, but I could keep neither. They were emotionally fragile and afraid to attach and really so was I. At that point in my life, they required more than I could offer on my own while working in another town miles away.

My older son and I had been struggling as well during this period and he moved out to go to Job Corps during this two-year period.

Through these upheavals, my salvation was that I'd begun to pursue a deeper relationship with God. During quiet meditation twice daily, I began ‘to exhale'; for the first time in many, many years. Through the use of breathing exercises, prayer time and most importantly, silence; I began to reflect on my life. In these quiet moments I heard God's Word to me. And, finally, at almost 43 years old, I began to feel an inner peace within myself…at last I began to feel some self-love.

Approximately one year after I began having this meditative time, I quit smoking…cold turkey, after twenty-five years. After years of neglecting myself, I gained the courage to visit a doctor for old ailments I'd ignored and that became a tumultuous time. Minor surgery became major…as a result of unchecked fibroids, my uterus was ten times the normal size and the doctor was forced to remove it! Next, I sought long-overdue treatment for a lump growing in my neck and when medication did not work to shrink it, I returned to a new doctor to schedule surgery after a routine preparatory cat scan. Instead, I received a glumly delivered diagnosis of suspected cancer (lung, lymph node and/or thyroid) and embarked on months of testing with specialists. Subsequently, the growth in my neck was removed as well as part of my thyroid.

Through over a dozen office visits, procedures and tests, I walked two miles almost EVERY morning at 4:30 a.m., using my ability to move with ease physically, to help convince myself that I was okay. Truthfully, until then I'd never asked God for much, accepting all that occurred in my life as His will and really not believing I deserved His help. In fact, for much of my life, I'd grown accustomed to expecting the worst, and sure enough that's what usually happened. But, this time, scared and feeling though my life was passing me by without me ever having participated fully, I asked God to please let me live. I promised Him if he let me live, I would give life 100% this time, pushing aside my worries about what anyone had to say about me…I would give life my all! And, ‘no cancer' is what I heard after each test…no cancer!

Though early on I seemed to hear a small voice telling me ‘all was well', it was months into the testing, that I dared to become truly positive and this is when I wrote Plenty Good Room. By then, I'd begun to believe I would live…but still reasoned that if I was to die, I would leave some mark of myself behind through producing the book. I wrote the first draft in about 8 weeks; spending time writing each evening when I finished the two jobs at the school, I worked daily. The original title was "LoveWalkin'", and with Denise's help we changed it to "Plenty Good Room". I am grateful to her for thinking of it because I love the new name, since there is ‘Plenty of Good Room' in God's house for all! The story is still one of that celebrates the power of the love journey by reminding us how important it is to walk in love as defined by God in His word. It is God's will that we reflect His love in how we treat others and ourselves. No matter what disappointments and hurts we experience, we can always learn to love, even when we've been hurt, by putting our trust Him.

Though the book's plot was conceived right before I went through the ‘cancer' trial, months later when I finally began to write the novel, it was cathartic for me. The characters seemed to create themselves once I sat down at the computer, and I hope they reflect with honor the type of life-experiences they represent. I often shed tears as I wrote, as many of my own frustrations and concerns are interwoven in the story. I also laughed a lot at the humorous interactions between the characters, and I hope readers enjoy these light-hearted exchanges as well.

Through a series of coincidences the manuscript landed back in Denise Stinson's lap after she had initially rejected it. This in itself is amazing since I felt that God had drawn me to her from the first moment I saw her name on the internet! The second time she read it, I'd worked on for several months, trying to make the story tighter. I'd submitted a sample to a Christian web site, called the Writer's Edge. Denise happened to spot the title about a week later on their monthly print-out, called and asked for the manuscript again, and this time she liked it!

I am so humbled that God has brought me this far in my life, because each day as I move through the world, I see myself in others still struggling. The young woman pushing a stroller down the street with the baby or standing at the bus stop waiting with her child in her arms…..that's me. The person who had to learn the hard way to stand on her own ….that's me too. And, the woman who still wrestles with insecurities and anxieties….well, that's me too. But, I wouldn't give up a day of my experiences, because it is all of the hardships, some the result of my own poor decisions and choices, that brought me closer to God

God has let me see through my own experiences that my problems are small in comparison to what others may be going through. Every second of the day there is suffering…there are diagnoses of cancer or other debilitating diseases, there are young people who are abused or neglected, and there are people who live in homelessness, as well as so many other difficulties and challenges being faced. I am a witness that when we focus less on our own problems, when we remember to pray for others whose struggles are greater, and give of ourselves to those who need our help…it can help heal our own aching hearts.

I know that my story is not all that unique and the only difference between myself and another woman with a similar experience has been the merciful grace of God. I still mis-step and God is still working on me, but I've finally learned to lean on Him and not another. In doing so, I am closer to becoming the woman I believe He wants me to be than I've been in my entire adult life. I've found that God's love is consistent and my relationship with Him is the one I can count on. In return, I've learned to love Him enough to try to live in obedience to His word and my life has become more blessed because of it! I am convinced that if I, with all my past mistakes, can be in this particular position, still alive and healthy after all I've been through it is only because of the power of God and His grace.

I hope in my writing to inspire those who might be experiencing difficulty by reminding them through my stories that every life has meaning to God and many times the problems we face will pass with time if we remain strong and focus on the Lord's promises. I am grateful and humbled that He allowed me to be a vessel for His word in this manner and it is my hope that the book brings glory and honor to Him and His grace and power!

Cheri Paris Edwards

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