Cheryl L. Crane is a graduate of the University of Michigan (B.A. English), Jerry Jenkin’s Christian Writers Guild, and the 7-year Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) curriculum. She serves in BSF leadership in metro-Detroit. A mother of three, Cheryl is passionate about helping families realize that God’s Word is alive and life changing.

Journey of Faith

Despite Christian upbringing, Jesus wasn’t real. God was up there somewhere making rules, and I thought following the rules well enough would get me to heaven. However, I failed miserably at following His rules and lived with a constant fear of failure, sense of inadequacy and feeling of emptiness.

First I thought I’d feel complete if I busied myself with classes, clubs, making A’s and looking together. It worked through high school. In college, I couldn’t camouflage the emptiness with busyness. There were too many people. Nobody cared what I did. I’d left a 900-person high school for a college of thousands. Besides, everyone else was smarter, richer and a prep school grad. My new emptiness-fighting strategy was socializing, but the more parties I attended, the lonelier I felt. I finished college and my early 20’s with an English degree, low self-esteem and a tendency to drink too much. The emptiness remained, but I blamed it on not yet having a job.

As a copywriter in a small Detroit ad agency, the emptiness lingered, so I thought a big agency job would fix things. I got my big agency job — and hit bottom. I was threatened with being fired, a real career crisis. Since work was my life, this was an everything crisis. Returning to church crossed my mind, then God really got my attention. My future husband left Michigan for a job in Texas. At 26, life was over.

What I didn’t know was that this was a beginning. I did go back to church, began to let God fill my emptiness and moved to Texas. In the next 7 years, God gave me a perfect job, godly husband, beautiful children, Christian community and a personal experience of Himself where I was assured that living for Him eliminated all emptiness.

He’s transformed an empty life into meaningful, purposeful abundance – complete with love, joy and eternal hope!