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Small Boats and Big Waves – with Giveaway


Please welcome Leeann Betts to the blog today!

Small boats—and the thought of drowning, terrify me. This fear paralyzed me and caused me to miss out on numerous things—until God helped me see the bigger picture.

We went to Peru on a mission trip with my church. We arrive at a collection of tiny structures in the middle of nowhere, providing food and supplies for weary travelers. We slip, slide, and scramble down a muddy bank to the water’s edge where our sailing craft awaits. I look upstream. Nothing but a couple of canoes. I look downstream. A metal boat about ten feet long, its canvas covering long rotted—a tiny outboard putt-putting to life under the tentative ministrations of a teenage boy.

My hubby helps me clamber in, and I sit in the middle of the middle seat, clinging to the edges of the warped board. The rest of the team is chatting, laughing, leaning against the side, ignoring me, for which I’m thankful. I think, “Okay, God, I can do this. I just have to do this one more time, on Sunday, when we leave.”

I ask about crocodiles, and they laugh and say there aren’t any. Phew! “But keep your hands out of the water,” somebody says. “There are piranha.”

Oh, nice.

When will this be over?

Then the Lord showed me the riverbanks, which in some places looked like sculpted sand. He reminded me that the river didn’t carve these banks, because although we’re at the headwaters of the Amazon, the water is slow-moving.

God pointed out the wake of the boat nudging up against the riverbank, and told me that the hundreds of boats that ply these waters daily made the contours in the riverbank.

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“You are like the waves,” He said. “A little touch here. A nudge there. Your presence changes the lives of people, just like the wake changes the shoreline.”

In Risk Management, Carly learns that her life makes a difference. She must make decisions about a future she doesn’t want. And while the Peru connection isn’t where we find her, it, too, makes a difference.

Question for readers: How has God spoken to you recently about making a difference?
We will draw randomly from all comments left for a free ebook copy of Risk Management.


About Leeann:
Leeann Betts writes contemporary romantic suspense, while her real-life persona, Donna Schlachter, pens historical romantic suspense. Risk Management is the 12th and final story in her cozy mystery series, “By the Numbers”. Watch for a segue novella in September that weaves Carly’s story with the upcoming new cozy mystery series, “Mysterious Ink Bookstore Mysteries”, with its first title releasing in December 2020. Together she and Donna have published more than 30 novellas, devotionals, and full-length novels. They ghostwrite, judge writing contests, edit, facilitate a critique group, and are members of American Christian Fiction Writers, Writers on the Rock, Christian Authors Network, Pikes Peak Writers, and Sisters in Crime. Leeann travels extensively to research her stories, and is proud to be represented by Terrie Wolf of AKA Literary LLC.

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