February 25^th, 2022, I published my first novel titled Cursed by Cobrador. So why is it “out of print” now? Simple: God told me to.

Revival weekend at Abundant Life. Pastor Chad Glover is preaching a powerful message on forgiveness when he drops this bomb line, “Forgiveness is a decision to release the person…” We were sitting up in the nose bleeds of the Lee’s Summit campus, and it was in this moment that Pastor Chad said this line that I heard God call me from across the auditorium. The way He called my name, I knew He had a mission for me. I turned to His voice, and I said, “No, no, no. Not this one, Father.” And God said, “In order to fully forgive him, you have to release him from who he was.”

In case y’all didn’t know, I was in captivity with my ex-husband for ten years before I was freed by God. I was married to abuse and neglect, fear and submission. At the seven-year mark, I separated myself and my kids from my husband and spent the next four years rebuilding my life. Got a job, earned a car, published my book, legally divorced my husband, and got a place of my own. God lifted me out of the valley of the shadow of death into this current paradise. So what do us Christians always want to do when God moves in our lives? We want to glorify Him, magnify His praise; we want to tell our story.

Hence Cursed by Cobrador: the story of how God saved me from my ex-husband. In the book, I portrayed my ex-husband through the main villain, Salvador. All the drug use, the anger, the abuse, every evil thing he done was written into this character’s identity.

And that day on Revival weekend, God said to me, “As long as that book is published, you’re preserving [ex-husband] as the villain he was, you’re not fully forgiving him.”

In response I said, “So, you want me to take down the four years of work I’ve just spent to publish this book? The thousands of dollars I’ve spent on my cover art, my marketing, and my editing…You mean all of that was for nothing?”

I know God’s character better than that. The book being published wasn’t for nothing. I gained the experience and publication knowledge. But you know what I lost? The sacrifices I had to make to make this dream come true?

Naturally my next question to God was, “You mean he gets to hurt me one more time?”

God replied, “You’re hurting my son by holding him captive to who he was.”

And that devastated me to think that I was trapping my ex-husband spiritually like he had trapped me physically. No one deserved that captivity.

At the end of the church service, after I’d completed my conversation with God, Pastor Chad opened up the altar for prayer, so I went down. I collapsed to my knees at the foot of the Cross and said, “God, I know what this will cost me. But I’m willing to follow Your command. I’m willing to fully forgive him for all he did to me.”

So, I unpublished the book on Amazon.

The next day while I was at work, a spark of thought struck me in the middle of my shift. I scrambled to get to paper and a pen as God detailed the entire plot for how I was going to rewrite the story to His glory. The tears I cried that day weighed tremendously with gratitude. Because God saw my hurt but refused to leave me there. He didn’t just say, “Give up your book.” He said, “Give up this book, and I’ll give you a better one.”

Cursed by Cobrador is no longer available for purchase. But don’t worry. Here soon, you’ll be able to read the story as God wrote it in my life.

If you want to see the Revival weekend sermon Pastor Chad preached, you can find it here.