Deanna Doss Shrodes

The winner of this week's book giveaway is Terri Von Wood of Sarasota, Florida! Congratulations, Terri!  The book Tired of Being Sick and Tired by Dr. Michael Berglund will be in your mailbox very soon, so be looking. Thanks to all who commented this past week here on the blog and on facebook when the blog published there.  And thanks to Charisma House for providing the book. On Monday we will feature a new book giveaway here on the blog.  It will be a fiction book, and once again each time you comment your name will be entered in the drawing.  For those who may be wondering how the drawing works, after Thursday at midnight, I type all of the names into this site , (as many times as each person has commented) and then click fruit machine or typewriter which randomly selects the winner. Next week is a brand new opportunity to win!

I said I'm giving something away...for FREE. All you have to do is leave a comment on any post this week including this one  in order to have your name in the drawing which happens at midnight on Thursday.  I will announce the winner Friday morning. Every blog has "lurkers".  I have hundreds on this site!  The majority of people who read here everyday don't comment, you just keep coming back, reading and either silently going, "wow, she's profound," or, "Gosh, that woman is a train wreck.  It's like a bad accident we can't help but watch."  I know you either love me or hate me.  Either way you're thinking one of those two things because if you didn't care either way you'd never click here every day and spend your valuable time reading what I write. I see you, Birmingham!  I see you, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Lakeland, and Beverly Hills!  I see you Brazil, Pompano Beach, Canada, Canton, Columbus, Belgium and all you others w...

It's hard to believe that yesterday was the one year anniversary of my friend's death.  She was a friend to many of my friends in the ministry who read this blog.  They all join me in grieving this tragic loss.  Deborah was a pastor's wife - and a minister in her own right, a powerful woman of God, and she was tragically murdered.  If you are a new reader to my blog you can go back and read about it here and here. I still open my phone and see her texts and private tweets and can't bear to delete them.  One morning I was getting ready for church and picked up my phone to check a text that had just come in.  My finger slipped on my phone and went back to some old ones by accident and up came her name and text.  For a brief second my heart skipped a beat.  I thought, "What?! Could it be?  Someone made a mistake..they were wrong, she's not gone !"  My mind raced wondering how in the world she was texting then I realized it was an old me...

I usually don't blog anything big on a Saturday.  The reason being, most of my readers aren't here.  They are out weeding their yards, like I often am on Saturdays.  They are doing laundry, attending ball games, baby showers, shopping, or watching TLC.  Rarely are they just sitting around reading blogs on Saturdays.   My stats tell me loud and clear each week that the majority of my readers depart by Friday afternoons and come back in droves Monday morning. For a season I started just posting a photo I took or a video of a song that was meaningful to me on Saturdays and saved the "important stuff" for later when people were actually around to read it.  But today I don't care.  Here I am.  With something big...at least to me. I've been disobedient to God on something.  Some of you might think I chose Saturday to bring out the fact that I've been a naughty Christian , since fewer readers are here...ha ha!  No, not really, the timi...

The following is a letter (names/locations changed)  from a young adult pastor's son that came to my inbox  in response to Tuesday's blog post .  I'm sharing it with his permission, taking identifying details out.  This note is one of many that arrived, from PK's, PW's, and Pastors, all sharing their experiences and just wanting somebody to listen.  I got letters from pastor's kids who had been physically and emotionally abused by church members, PW's sharing about their emotionally scarred PK's who want nothing to do with the church and are currently prodigals, others who just wanted somebody to pray who has been in their shoes.  My heart goes out... Dear Pastor Deanna: I just read your PK post, and then the one you linked with your son Dustin's essay. I started getting really emotional.  It was like everything came flooding back from the church my parents pastored when we lived in Detroit, and some of the (much rarer) psychotic experiences in ...

""And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God.  Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field."  ~ Deuteronomy 28:2,3 Yesterday my blessings bubbled over.   First, I love my work -- and yesterday I did plenty of it.  I don't "have" to work -- I GET to work!!!   After working at the church office til' 6 pm, our pastor friends Keith and Joy met us at the church and took a tour of our facilities to see all that was done for the launch of Celebratio n.   They were so excited for us about all God is doing.  Then we went from there to dinner with them and over some fabulous Japanese food, caught up on each other's lives.  They are such a support to Larry and I, and we treasure their love and  friendship. I came home from our evening out and found a package waiting for me.   It came all the wa...

So  Wednesday I wrote about what keywords people were Googling and then ending up here at deannashrodes.com as a result of and it was rather interesting , at least I thought it was.  I have often mentioned about those of you regularly reading out there from "Seattle to Singapore".  Yesterday happened to be a day nobody was reading from either place, which is rare!   But I decided to track where our visitors were from yesterday.  I thought I would share where folks were reading from yesterday and I, for one, never cease to be amazed .  Thank you for coming here.  I realize you can read whatever you want and there are a million things grabbing for your time and attention but some of you still come here. The vast majority of you never say anything, you just read.  And that's cool.  I'm perfectly fine (and honored) by those of you who silently check out what I have to say.  By the way, this list does not include those who a...

So, on the heels of yesterday's Google search whereby I searched, "Deanna wants "  for humorous value, I thought I'd go to my stat counter and pull up the data on the keywords or phrases that people have searched in the past week to find my blog.  ARE YOU READY?   Seriously.. are you people ready for this?   Get ready to crack up. From Seattle to Singapore -- this, my peeps -- is how you find me when you forget that I'm right here at DeannaShrodes.com.  Or, search engines direct you here to the blog when you are looking for a blog post on the following subjects.   The following are the actual keywords, phrases and sentences people searched with to arrive here in the past seven days: God  Jesus Amazing artist Deanna Doss Deanna Doss-Shrodes Madea (Yep, she's right up there with Deanna Doss Shrodes, LOL) What does it take to be a person after God's own heart? Use your resources You are blessed The Steelers Sex (You kn...

For anyone who doesn't know about my other two blogs and may have interest, I just wanted to post the addy's so you can find them. http://www.psalmofdeanna.blogspot.com/ is a series of short conversations between God and I that I occasionally post. It's a totally different verbal flavor than you will find here on this blog and you might want to take a peek occasionally. http://equaltime4women.blogspot.com/ is a blog that I co-founded and co-write with Pastor Tara Sloan. This blog focuses on issues of biblical equality. We sometimes have guest bloggers too who are just fantastic...people like Pastor Leanne Weber , who everyone should get to know! For those who may have visited the Equal Time blog before - please note that THE ADDRESS HAS BEEN CHANGED IN RECENT DAYS...so if you had it listed on your blogroll under the old address or you have it bookmarked...you will need to do it again. These other two blogs are not ones that I faithfully post to everyday, however when I ...

I've been wanting to thank someone for doing something real special for me and now's the time! A blog reader, Nancy Seelow from Williamsburg, Missouri sent me an amazing card in the mail last week. Nancy is a regular reader but is like many of you reading this right now who are "silent readers". You are among thos e who never comment here on the blog but nevertheless you are here everyday from San Francisco to Singapore. I have no idea why some of you keep reading but others of you tell me privately why you do and drop into my email box every once in a while and others of you actually into my regular mailbox, with a phone call, or in the case of two people -- in person! Last week I received this card from Nancy. I was blown away when I opened it. She obviously purchased this card from the store however she "remade" it very creatively to personalize it just for me. The front of the original card design said, "Go for it! Shout out loud!" but she made...

For the first time in my blogging history, I've gotten some anonymous hate mail the past few weeks. According to blog stats, it's coming from one poster, or possibly two related posters. Being that they were anonymous, Larry did not want me to let them go through and post them. He feels that anonymous posts are extremely cowardly and like verbal drive by shootings, not to be dignified with the privilege of being posted or answered. However, I've never been afraid to stand up for what I believe , to anyone . I consider myself a pretty resilient woman. So I let the comments go through and stood up in an appropriate manner to my anonymous accusers. I'm sorry now that I did that. My husband was right.  The hateful comments have gotten out of hand.  Someone (or possibly a few of you) has their panties in a bunch (pardon the pun) that I've written openly about sexuality and what the Bible says about it.  I have comment moderation and I will not be allowing an...

Today's blessing that I would like to bring to you is a friend, Pastor Lisa Alexander, co-pastor of Zion Tabernacle Church, Houston, Texas. Together with her husband, Pastor Elgin Alexander, she pastors this new and exploding church plant. AMAZING things are happening at their church. I get so excited when I hear the reports about it. I met Lisa through my pastoring partners ministry and she has become a true blessing to me. I appreciate her wisdom, her encouragement, her zeal. Pastor Lisa is a great writer and I enjoy reading her blogs , her Myspace , and also just the things she writes to me personally. She is my accountability partner now with exercise. I have appreciated Pastor Lisa for quite a while now but she's especially on my mind today because she called me. How can you put a value on a person who says, "I'm praying for you"? The answer is, you can't. Although Pastor Lisa and I are long distance friends, there is no distance in prayer. The...