high school

Hey all,

Happy New Year!! I hope 2015 is full of blessings for you all!

So what have I been up too… Well on the 23rd of December we finally got my book on Amazon. God is amazing and with His divine help, guidance and bringing all the right people along the book is a reality.

So here’s all the information for those of you who are interested in reading my story.

Now you can get the background story, and how her relationship with God, our Saviour, endured and was ultimately fortified in her book, Missing You, Finding Hope in Hardship.

For those of you who know Suz and knew Mark and her during the ten years of cancer and illness, this is the behind-the-scenes peek at what you possibly never knew was going on.

Suz has used her personal journal to write her story, Missing You. In which her prayer is that you will discover that God can be trusted to care for and protect you in your greatest battles and everyday.

MISSING YOU – Finding Hope in Hardship

Suz and Mark Holmes had been married ten happy years and had four little daughters when at 30 Mark was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor.

Suz dodges no bullets in telling the story of the family’s next ten challenging years, holding tight on a traumatic roller coaster ride towards widowhood.

As one of the founding team for Houston-based Christian MXTV, and the subject of several faith-based TV documentaries, Suz and Mark’s story has already inspired many facing grief and loss.

In Missing You, like her soulmate Job, Suz looks her God full in the face and with rare honesty demands answers. She allows us to eavesdrop on an intimate exchange where pride and face-saving have no place.

What emerges is a redemptive story that denies Cancer the Last Word.

You can buy Missing You here

For those of you who do not have a Kindle, you can download an App for you device FREE here, follow the instructions on Amazon and you’ll be up and reading in no time.

Me aged 15

I was never the cool kid on the block, or the cool kid at school, or the cool kid anywhere for that matter. Truth be told, I’m not sure I really cared.

When I was at school (back in the olden days of the 1980s) life consisted of a lot of groups. We had the Rastafarian group – these obviously were the kids who loved Bob Marley. Then there were ‘the black jersey boys’, who actually consisted of girls and boys who all wore the exact same black jersey. I’m not going to lie: I had one and I loved it. There were of course the kids who unfortunately were classed in the nerd category, most of them really nice kids. Then there were the girls, who really liked the boys (these same girls acquired names not suitable for this blog). There were definitely the pretty people both boys and girls; these were the ones who everyone else in school had a crush on. Then there were the rest of us… just your average kid, doing averagely well, trying to make their place in a big school but just managing to make their place in their small group. From what I gather from my teenagers, not much has changed in the high school groups except the names of the categories themselves. School is still full of a whole bunch of teenagers trying to find their place in high school.

But not much has changed in my life either. I’m still just your average person, living in your average home, doing an average job and trying to make my way in this world. But the difference in my life, and in any Christian’s life, is that we have the God of the universe beside us helping us on this journey of life.

So, although I am just average – I don’t serve an average God. I serve the Creator of the universe; I serve the omniscient God (meaning He’s all knowing) and the omnipresent God (meaning He’s everywhere). I serve the God who loves me (and you) so much He came Himself to earth as the man Jesus to offer his own life as a sacrifice for our wrongs, so we could be made clean and pure. Through this act of love we are now able to have a relationship with Him because only by being pure can we enter His presence.

And because I serve God and believe His word, the Bible, He has taken this average kiwi girl and given her one incredible life. A life filled with abundance.

Jesus says in the book of John chapter 10 verse 10:

The thief (satan) comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows). (Amplified Bible)

Mark, Suz, Misha & Bonnie. Dresden, Germany.

Now it has not all been good, but it has been incredible. When Mark and I were missionaries we got to experience different countries and cultures, meet people from many nations, and live in the United States – it was all amazing!! Of course, having our four daughters has been abundance in the good sense too. But even in the darkest days of my coping with Mark’s illness, the incredible God did not leave me and taught me an abundance of lessons which, in hindsight, are amazing – but while I journeyed them they were a lifeline to survival.

I have discovered that God wants to talk to this average girl every day. He wants to encourage me. He wants to push me to do better, to think bigger, to try new things with Him beside me, to extend myself in doing things I would never have dreamed of doing – things that totally take me out of my comfort zone. The reason Jesus wants to do this in my life is because He sees my potential. He sees what I am capable of through Him and with Him. Every single person on this planet is NOT AVERAGE. We have been created for a purpose. We have a destiny to fulfill – but the only way each of us is truly going to fulfill that purpose is with the God who created us guiding us on our life journey.

I don’t want to live one day wasted. I want to live every day with the almighty God spurring me on to things I could never dream or imagine, because that is what He has promised!

Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us,

to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.

Ephesians 3:20 (New Living Translation)