Dear friends,

I’ve been sitting with this project for a long time, praying over it, wrestling with it, and letting God shape it in ways I didn’t expect. Today, I want to share a small piece of it with you. This excerpt is from the introduction to my book, Backslider’s Dawn, a work born of returning, relearning, and letting grace meet me where I once tried to outrun it.

My hope is that these words offer you a glimpse into the journey woven through the pages: the honesty, the questions, and the quiet ways God draws us back to Himself, even when we feel far from who we used to be.

Thank you for walking with me, for reading, and for showing up with open hearts. I’m grateful to share this part of the story with you.

Introduction 1

Backsliding did not arrive in my life like a storm. It came quietly, like the tide at dusk, almost beautiful in its subtlety. At first, it felt like a series of small surrenders: a neglected prayer, a delayed obedience, a heart too tired to keep watch. By the time I understood what was happening, I was already living at a distance from the warmth I had once known in God’s presence. That distance taught me something I had not wanted to learn: a soul can remember the language of faith long after it has begun to drift from its source.

These pages record the drift and the slow, often painful return that followed. They were born of confession, longing, grief, and God’s relentless grace. I did not write them as polished stories but as truthful ones. What lives here is the inner landscape of repentance: the sorrow that settled in hidden places, the ache of estrangement, the shame of knowing better yet still wandering, and the quiet, persistent hope that God still heals what has strayed far from Him.

As I share poems, memories, prayers, and fragments in memoir-diary form, I am not simply telling my story. I am making room for the reader who may also be standing in that lonely country, wondering whether a road home still exists. I know what it means to live with that question. I know the dimming of the inner fire, how devotion becomes memory, and how regret begins to feel more solid than hope. Yet even there, in places I thought mercy could no longer reach, God had not abandoned me. He was waiting, not with indifference but with the patience of a Father who still recognized His child.

Backslider’s Dawn, to me, is the hour when darkness begins to loosen its grip. It is the trembling realization that my life did not end in distance, that regret does not have the last word, and that mercy had been moving toward me long before I found the courage to turn around. It is the first breath after a long night, the thin line of light at the edge of the sky, and the holy surprise of discovering that God still welcomes home the heart that has wandered.

There were moments in this journey when the truth of God’s mercy undid me. I had expected shame to speak the loudest, but mercy drew near. It did not excuse my wandering, nor did it cast me away. It met me in my brokenness and opened before me a deeper understanding of salvation, one that reached beyond my first confession of faith and into the wounded places still needing healing, deliverance, and restoration.

During my return, Romans 8 became more than a beloved passage of Scripture. It became a shelter. When regret pressed in, when the past replayed itself with merciless clarity, and when the exhaustion of unhealthy relationships left me spiritually spent, those words, “There is now no condemnation,” gave me room to breathe. It reminded me that repentance is not meant to crush a person beneath guilt but to lead the soul back into the freedom of God’s grace.

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I’ll share Part 2 of the Introduction in the next entry. I’m offering this book in small, prayerful portions, trusting each piece will meet you where you are.

In the meantime, I invite you to visit this extract👇🏽

https://keziahthinkspress.wordpress.com/2026/04/27/backsliders-dawn/

Thanks for reading! 😍