I came from an abusive home.  So did my husband.  We were like lost survivors, hanging onto each other as if our lives depended on it.  To continue surviving, we had to divorce ourselves from our parents and learn new ways of behaving and living.  We would never have made our brokenness work, but we have a strong faith in our Lord who kept us together and taught us how to be healthier people.  As a result, I wanted to help others learn to be healthy too.  We were parents, then foster parents, then ran a halfway house for street people.  With friends we started a security business that failed, lost our home, then the business, and lived in tents in the mountains (in the snow) for six months. Why the mountains?  We had a choice.  People always have more choices than they realize.  Ours were (1) move to Denver where the job opportunities were better, and live in separate shelters until we found work.  They didn't have family shelters then.  Dennis and I would have been separated, and the kids would have been taken away.  or (2) move to the mountains.  We were expert winter campers, so we could teach the kids how to survive outside in the winter too.   I remember saying with a satisfied sigh, "I think I could live out here."  That was why we chose the second option.  To this day I can't be in the mountains without breathing that crisp, pine-scented air, and thanking God for all He has done.  But we havn't been camping since.  I think we got the camping bug out of your system that year We have retired to the mountains.  Our home is small, but it fits our needs, and the crisp, pine-scented air still reminds me of God's providence. And I can still light a one-match fire, still clean and cook any game or fish, and still remember sitting on that rock that caught the first rays of sun as it came down the mountain.  

Graduated High School in 1965.
Graduated Colorado Christian University in 2000.
Graduated Denver Seminary with an M.Div in Pastoral Counseling in 2005.
Have published 7 books to date and am working on 2 more.