Introducing Trish Berg

Welcome to our new Christmas blog! I am so glad you found us here.

Well, Tuesday is my day to post, so I wanted to start by just telling you a little bit about who I am and why I so believe in this book, A Scrapbook of Christmas Firsts.

I started writing when I was a child. I loved writing poetry and short stories. I remember coming up with make believe places only I could travel to. I needed to escape sometimes, since my childhood was troubling at times.

My mom and dad fought all the time, and eventually divorced when I was about eight years old. I lost my dad as he moved out of state thousands of miles away. I only saw him a few times a year at best, and felt like a lost puppy.

As I entered my teen years, I continued to write for fun. I loved researching and writing, both fiction and non-fiction. I went to college at Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio, and started of as a journalism major. I wrote on the newspaper staff as a sports writer, and headed up the yearbook staff as well.

Then I decided to expand my major into fiction writing. I remember sitting in my first fiction writing class (creative writing) feeling as nervous as can be as the professor read my fiction story out loud to the class, and then proceeded to rip it apart.

I had a lump in my throat the size of an apple, and went home to cry for hours.

I never took another writing class. I let what one person said to me impact my life decisions. I could not take the rejection and embarrassment of someone hating my writing.

I became a business major, and learned to love the field of marketing. I put away writing at that point.

I also met my husband at B-W, and God changed my life forever. I did not grow up in a Christian home, a very loving home, but I was not a Christian at that point in my life.

My husband, Mike was. And over the first year of our dating relationship, he exemplified God's love and grace to me in how he lived his life. About a year into our relationship, I asked Christ into my heart, and God has never stopped loving me, or forgiving me when I need His grace.

After Mike and I were married, we moved to his family cattle farm in Ohio, and I had more adjusting to do. I am a city girl at heart, now living on a 200 acre beef cattle farm.

When I became a mom in 1995, I joined a local MOPS group, and that is where God brought writing back into my life. I began writing the local MOPS newsletter, which led to writing for MOMSense Magazine, and with the mentoring of a godly editor, my first book proposal.

That is probably more information that you want to know about me. But I guess I felt I needed to share that with you because I want you to know that whether or not you have a relationship with Jesus right now, God loves you. He is working in your heart and your life. He is leading you. He is there waiting to hold you.

And boy oh boy, does He have plans for your life.

If I think back to 1988, the year before I met my husband, I would never have imagined myself as a Christian, living on a beef cattle farm, writing books, and speaking to audiences of thousands of women about God's love and grace, and the humorous side of motherhood.

Yet here I am. Unworthy as ever, relying on God each step of the way.

And I stand amazed at God's love, and at the doors he continues to open for me. When I met the other 5 authors of SOCF through an online writer's group at Yahoo, I had no idea what God had planned for us.

He brought the 6 of us together to love, support and pray for each other as we each journey down this writing career path. But He also put us together to produce this amazing book, A Scrapbook of Christmas Firsts.

SOCF is an amazing book of faith and fun, tips and stories, and recipes. It is the best of each of us, and a reminder about what is truly important about Christmas.

I encourage you to read SOCF for yourself. Discover the simplicity of the baby in the manger, and the love that never ends.

Welcome to our new Christmas blog! I am so glad you found us here. And I can't wait to get to know you all throughout this amazing journey.

PHOTOS:
(The first picture is my family when my mom book Rattled was released this year. The 2nd picture is the OHIO Word Quilters meeting to sign the book contract for SOCF - pictured are Brenda Nixon, Karen Robbins, and myself.)

Enjoy the journey,
Trish
Psalm 118:24
www.TrishBerg.com