My name is Jacquie Lewis-Kemp and the chapter I wrote for Victorious Living for Women is entitled We Can’t Always Predict How God Will Bless Us.

As women we multitask.  All at the same time we work, manage a household, cook, clean, tutor, and manage a marital partnership—financially, spiritually and emotionally, not to mention manage the in-laws, out-laws and other extended family members.  Multitasking focuses us to handle most if not all of these issues during the course of a regular day.  Always handling problems can sometimes keep a woman from living victoriously.

If we’re around people who constantly point out what’s wrong with us and around us, then we too can begin to believe that there is lots wrong with our lives and that there is nothing we can do about it.  And we become depressed.

For women with chronic illness, we have another set of issues that tell us why we shouldn’t succeed.  In fact, many of these issues are not imaginary but really exist and are things that we have no choice but to deal with.  And in that case we not only become depressed but feel powerless about our lot in life.

In these examples, what the women have forgotten is that God made us to be complicated individuals.  Complicated in the sense that we have abilities that we use so much everyday that we don’t even realize that they are unique attributes.  We have an innate ability to organize and find ways around the obstacles we face, if only we’d ask God for help and remain faithful and obedient to His word.

Think about the time when you spent your last dime on paying bills and your daughter needed money for a school field trip?  Or when you knew you had a busy week upcoming both at work and at home, but you were sick and bed ridden? And you said, “Lord, how will I get this all done”?

Something happened, didn’t it?  And maybe it didn’t seem so miraculous.  You found a $10 bill that you stuck in your coat pocket and had forgotten about it.  Or that cold medicine seemed to work overnight; or the next day was such a beautiful sunny day that you got up and got started.

Everything that God does or makes possible isn’t always an elaborate display of miraculous acts.  Sometimes they are, like when I was comatose for a month with the West Nile virus seven years ago and today I breathe air.  But sometimes it is the small shove of confidence and help with decision making or organizing that helps us to live victoriously.

I’ve had juvenile diabetes for 40 years and so I have always had to figure out how to incorporate my diabetes monitoring into my busy schedule.   My schedule became even more complicated when my kidneys failed and I was on dialysis.  I was married, with a fifth grader and an automotive supplier executive.  I did peritoneal dialysis which required me to be connected to a machine which dialyzed me overnight and I did one exchange of fluid midday from work.  Because I kept my dialysis a secret from employees I usually tied up one of the phone lines and closed the door to my office so that it appeared that I was on a confidential call and no one would disturb me.

One day I needed to attend a meeting about a half hour away.  In order to get to the meeting on time, I wouldn’t be able to do my midday dialysis at the office.  Once I missed my midday exchange and felt awful, so I vowed never to miss dialysis again.  For a quick moment I thought, maybe I can’t do this.  Maybe it is too much to run a company while on dialysis.

This is where God helped me to think creatively so that I could attend the meeting and not miss dialysis.  I remembered that God created me to be a quick thinking and resourceful woman, and so from my office I gathered all of my dialysis supplies and fluid into a spare briefcase and put them into my car. In my office parking lot, I put on my surgical mask and washed my hands with the disinfectant wipe.  Carefully I uncoiled my dialysis hose implanted in my abdomen and connected it to the drainage bag that I put on the front passenger side floor (below my heart, so that gravity would cause the old fluid to drain out of my abdomen).  I laid my new fluid bag on the car dash to heat up from the sun and window defroster.  Once my old fluid finished draining, and at a red light, I moved the new bag of fluid from the dash and pinched it in my sunroof window (above my heart, so that gravity would cause it to drain into my abdomen).  I switched over the dam so that the fluid would start to drain.  After the bag was empty and at another red light, I washed my hands again, put on my mask and disconnected from the dialysis system.  I taped up my hose and buttoned up my pants.  I put everything into the trunk of my car and attended the meeting as scheduled and felt just fine.

What this experience reminds me is that no matter what people say or what may be going wrong, I am a child of God, created in His image.  He has shown me how to multitask and how to creatively work my way through problems and because of that, I can live victoriously—and so can every woman.

About the Book

Victorious Living for Women is filled with the inspiration, wisdom and pathways to victory of 42 incredible women who share stories of their life experiences, from their heart to yours. They have endured personal pain and have come through empowered, encouraged and victorious.

As they take you on their personal journeys you will find inspiration, encouragement and blueprints for victory embedded in each chapter. You will discover principles for transforming your life. You can learn how to overcome fear, find you purpose, define your destiny, recover from divorce, heal your heart, physical healing, dealing with the loss of loved ones and so much more.

This stellar assembly of women with inspiring true-life stories will captivate you throughout each page as you read how their lives were transformed from anger to joy, disappointment to destiny and trial to victory. Their candor, wisdom and inspiration can help you to pursue your path of becoming a victorious woman.

Read an excerpt and check the tour schedule at http://bit.ly/VictoriousLivingForWomenTour.