High hopes of a creepy author stalker

I've only ever been a creepy author-stalker twice in my life.  Once in 2006 when I read the book Living Simply by Joanne Heim and today when I just emailed Bob Goff author of Love Does.  In the first case, my stalking really paid off because I ended up with an amazing new friend and mentor in Joanne - because as God would arrange, she lived about 7 minutes from me and she actually took me up on an offer to meet for coffee!

In both cases the books radically changed my view of my life.  Joanne's book gave me a new vision of motherhood and Christ-following and our friendship/mentorship has been one of the most influencing relationships of my life.  Bob Goff's book Love Does has given me a new vision of walking out my faith and has had such sweeping impact on our life this year, that I just had to turn stalker today and email him.

If you haven't read Love Does, you should, better yet, get the audio book and listen to it with your family.  Our family listened to this book a little over a year ago and as I look back on the year since then I see how different out life is today.  The book is a collection of stories from Bob's life.  They are funny and astonishing and challenging.  The thread that weaves them together is that Bob says yes.  Yes to whatever God brings his way.  He gets his hands dirty in life and amazing things happen.  I walked away from the book realizing that God can't use me if I say no to everything.  No, I am busy.  No, that is hard.  No, that will cost me something.  No, my plate is full.  Well friends, you know what?  If cost Christ a lot to come save us.  It was dirty and it hurt (more than we can imagine).  But Jesus loves us, so he said yes - to us!

So for a year we've said yes to the inconvenient, the hard, the time consuming and the seemingly small.

Pete said yes to Bob's idea of taking your 10 year old on an adventure of their choosing - even when Sarah picked horseback riding every day for a week.  - It changed their relationship forever.

I said yes to God's nudging me to host a 5th grade mother/daughter bible study.  On average 12-15 moms and daughters came every week!  My couch got a huge hole in in.  God's Word was exalted!

The school called and asked us to host a Chinese student for a year - we said yes.  Then they told us it was actually for four years.  We said yes anyway!  Daisy has been with us for six months now.  She has heard the Gospel preached! She reads the bible in Chinese and English.

Sarah (age 11) read a book about a boy who started a fundraiser to help children orphaned by AIDS.  God nudged her to do the same - and she said YES!  Check out her event at www.hoopsofhoperaleigh.com.  Yesterday we got an email from the local Today show asking to do a segment on her.  Hello!  Go God!

There are also small moments, too many to count, when we have decided to be "Love Doing" when we could have just sat on the couch and been comfortable.  Last week I brought muffins to a new mom.  It was four days after her baby had been born and I was her FIRST visitor from the church!  Hello friends, we need a lot more "Love Doing."  (It's in the bible - "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. DO WHAT IT SAYS. James 1:22)

So today I was a stalker and emailed this man Bob, and said thank you for encouraging us to be doers of the Word and not hearers only.  I'll let you know if he writes me back.  I think I'll invite him to coffee!