My blog sister, Regina of Regina’s Family Seasons, has gifted me with an award that touches my heart. It is an honor to pass it along, but first let me give you some background.

The award was created by Crystal at Memoirs Of A Mommy in honor of the donor who saved her son Noah’s life. You see, her son Noah had to have a heart transplant when he was born and Crystal’s Web site is to raise awareness of the importance of organ donation. The following is Crystal’s message:

“The rules of this award are: SHARE THE LOVE!!! Share this award with all those blogs out there that you love. All the people who make you smile. All those that make you laugh. All those that make your day. All those that leave uplifting comments on your blog. **All I ask, is that you include a link to this post with the award and ask your recipient to do the same** As you may have recently seen on my side bar, I have finally created a custom blog award!! I have wanted to do this for a long time but never came up with something that “fit”. I didn’t want just anything. It had to be something that meant something to me. And what could mean more than Sharing the Love by giving you pieces of my heart??

So I created this award in Honor of the Donor That Saved Noah’s Life. I share this award with those of you whose love and friendship have enriched my life and made my world a better place. I hope by passing this award around the blogging world we can all help raise awareness of the need for Organ Donation.”

With this in mind, I wanted to pass this along to my newest blog sisters…I by no means want to ignore all of my other blog sisters, but want to welcome my new sisters and extend the branch of sisterhood to them…I pass this to:

Rachel - Christians In Good Company

Cynthia - Love.Self.Entirely.

Sharon - The True Urban Queen (not necessarily new; but I wanted to give you a hug)

KWiz - Women Walking In Wisdom’s Footsteps

I thank all of you for your constant encouragement and visits…I appreciate you all!

A labor of love…a book of inspiration…words of encouragement…all these phrases describe “Steppin’ Out Of The Darkness,” a book by Roderick O. Solomon, otherwise known as Manchild to us in the blogosphere.

I “met” Manchild through his site, When Least Expected, last October. Stumbling across this site came at a point in my life when inspiration was needed. But his book has sealed my belief that there is a reason that I found his site, and so I am passing that blessing on to all of you.

“Steppin’ Out Of The Darkness,” in Manchild’s words:

“…contains a message meant to inspire good people who are destined to become great to unearth the forgotten dreams buried beneath the abandoned visions still littering a cluttered valley filled with sun-dried bones.”

While reading this book, I was encouraged by the imagery and motivation that was ingrained in me to “step my game up,” so to speak. It is within the pages of this book that I discovered that it is my choice to live by faith, or to continue to try to control how my life turns out. When faced with Adversity, Failure, and Rejection (and Lord knows that I have had my share of these over the past year), what do you do? You can either lay down and accept things as they are, or you can get up and keep pressing forward. Staying in the arena of being okay with living your life below the level that you know you are capable of living it is not okay. Settling for less than better is not what God has planned for you.

It is with the utmost respect and love that I recommend this book. It has opened my eyes to what I can become…to what I already am. Realizing that your dreams can become reality just by working hard and having faith is empowering and freeing. I thank Manchild for delivering this gift to the masses.

You can purchase “Steppin’ Out Of The Darkness” by visiting Manchild’s site…you can also read the prologue to the book by clicking here.