Deanna Doss Shrodes

I was was just an elementary school girl when Sue Duffield and her husband Jeff came to my home church to minister at a banquet. I looked like this at the time:  If you're a first time blog reader, just so you know, I'm the one on the left. ;) Sue and Jeff had been married just a short time and were on the road full time, ministering. They looked something like this, as I recall:  I thought they were the coolest people I had ever met in my life. They had just made a new recording (back then they were eight tracks and cassettes) and we got both of them to take home after the banquet. I remember my sister and I wore them out! We would listen and sing along and jump around in our room. (I did a lot more jumping around than she did. I was goofy that way. I sang into the hairbrush, actually pretending to be Sue Duffield.) Over and over I sang  her song, "Bread Upon the Water."     "Good measure pressed down, shaken together running o-----ver...soon i...

"You don't write because you want to say something; You write because you have something to say."                                           ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald So, you have something to say. Are you saying it? If not, why? What makes you afraid about saying it? Identifying what makes you afraid is really important. When you identify your fears you can deal with them, and move on with the call to share what God has placed in your heart. Sometimes fears are realistic, other times not. Whether or not, God never intended fear to stop us because fear is not of Him. Just because fear is not of Him doesn't mean that some things we feared may never happen as we fulfill the call. Sometimes we will face giants and mountains but God never intended a giant or a mountain to stop us....

Years ago when I was first starting out in the ministry an older minister took me aside and sternly said these exact words: "Deanna, if you're ever going to be successful in the ministry you're going to have to learn to suppress yourself." I knew what the word suppress meant but just to get a fuller picture I went home and looked it up in the dictionary.   Sup·press     [ s uh - pres ]   verb (used with object) 1. to put an end to the activities of (a person, body of persons, etc.): to suppress the Communist party. 2. to do away with by or as by authority; abolish; stop (a practice, custom, etc.). 3. to keep in or repress (a feeling, smile, groan, etc.). 4. to withhold from disclosure or publication (truth, evidence, a book, names, etc.). 5. to stop or arrest (a flow) After this comment was made I quickly decided to suppress anything that person ever said to me again by stopping it ...

When you take a risk and share your heart you run just that, a risk. Sometimes when you share your heart you lose everything. Who knows but that such an unsettling event might be the catalyst that moves us to make the mark we are called to make on the world? Yesterday a friend in ministry said to me, "Deanna, you are a voice, not an echo." That put some things in perspective for me.  I'm really excited right now about a few things I've written that are getting ready to be published that for me are revolutionary. One is an article that I was requested to write and it's very edgy. It's pushing the limits for sure. Perhaps even disconcerting, but a message that is desperately needed. I can hardly wait to see it in print but more than that I can hardly wait to see what changes it may bring about in some people's lives. The other is the current book I'm working on. With every day I become more impassioned about the message. Yesterday I shared with ...

When it comes to our art, we have a choice when we wake up each day. Create vanilla or create a new flavor. Create based on what we've seen before, or create outside the lines. Create within the parameters of normal or risk being called abnormal. Create what soothes people  or risk creating what might make them uncomfortable. Create what the establishment expects you to keep churning out or create what just might change the world.