“Broken pieces coming together…even though you may not feel like it.” That was part of the prophetic word spoken over me by “Mamma Anita” when I joined Shady Grove Church at the end of First Principles in May 1999. I was single and indeed very broken. I had given my heart to Jesus the summer before and my husband, Vance, had started courting me a few months before. Fast forward to the night I begged him to have nothing to do with me before we were engaged. I warned him I was broken. And there were others that warned him I was broken and begged us to call off the wedding. But God bless that man. He saw something in me that I never could have. His response to my begging? “I don’t love you for who you are or for who you see yourself as. I love you for who the Holy Spirit is making you to be.”  His stubbornness, which drives me crazy at times, is the foundation for the journey each of my children have led me on. “To Train Up A Mom” is written for Randal and Alathia and the generations what will rise up after them to walk in the precepts and ways of God.