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I'm excited to be part of the myCCM community! I'm a wife, mom, homeschooler, and author. My first published book, "More Christian than African-American: One Woman's Journey to her True Spiritual Self," was released in 1999. When I left my career as an attorney that same year, I thought I'd be whipping out one book after another on the heels of the first, but God had other plans. My two kids were toddlers and God wanted me to learn my true priorities. I bowed easily to His plan...not! I was often frustrated because I'd try to write anyway but never had the time and the ideas never panned out. (God is amazing, isn't He? He'll have His way, like it or not.)

When we moved from Dallas to St. Louis, the kids were registered for school and I thought, "Aha! Now I'll have time to write!" I found out God had a humorous side. It was at that time that He put homeschooling everywhere in my path until my heart longed to do it. But guess what that meant? As I took on that task, I found--once again--that I had little time to write. God had me where He wanted me. One day in tears I laid the desire to write on the altar. "If I never write another book," I prayed in my heart, "so be it. I'd rather tend to my first ministry of home." I didn't try to write for more than a year.

One day, though, God moved me to sit down at my computer, and a fictional story came to life in my mind. It took more than three years to write, often in brief periods of morning, but finally it was completed. That story was published in March of 2008, and I can't help but give God the glory!

The novel is called, "Heavenly Places," and features a main character who has low self-worth, thanks to her mother. She's a fairly new Christian who doesn't study her Bible, so she doesn't know who she is in Christ. When her sister coaxes her into a women's home Bible study, she begins a journey that will change her life forever. The story actually takes the reader through a study of Ephesians, as this woman's eyes are opened to the truth.

My prayer is that believers of all walks of life will be ministered to through this message of the power of God's Word. Read an excerpt at my website, www.kimberlycashtate.com or on Amazon.

I didn't grow up in a Christian home. The only time I attended church growing up was when we attended the Catholic church that was affiliated with my Catholic school in Maryland. But God was working even then. Because of the Bible stories I learned as a youth in Catholic school, I was awed by Jesus and never doubted that He was the Son of God and Savior of the world. What was missing was the salvation piece. Although I saw Him as a Savior, I didn't know that I was in need of being saved! And I didn't know that I could have a personal relationship with Him.

After I graduated from law school, God uprooted me from my lifelong home in the D.C. area, where everything was familiar and diverse, and plopped me down in Madison, Wisconsin, which was, well, the opposite. My fiance had received an offer from the University of Wisconsin as an assistant professor and I had even gotten a great offer to start my legal career, but I hated it. I missed home and complained all the time. Out of desperation, I called out to God--remembering all those stories I'd heard in Catholic school about His ability to perform miracles--and appealed to Him to get me out of there. Crying out to God got me thinking that I should at least be in somebody's church somewhere, sort of a tit-for-tat type of deal to get my prayers answered. Some time later, my husband's barber invited him to church and my life was changed forever. I came to know Jesus as my Lord and Savior. God had had a plan in moving me to Madison all along! He's an awesome God!