MY PATH to GOD in APPALACHIA

By Sherylene Holbrook

In Appalachia, the mountains seems to be a place where you can sense the presence of God. In the Bible, it says many times that Jesus went up to the mountain to pray. The people that are raised in that area seem to have a desire to serve the Lord. Our life is a battle between God and Satan for our souls. It's a fight between our flesh, which is the mind, and the spirit, which is our soul. The flesh lust against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. We will encounter many things in life as we mature from children to adults. Some encounters can be spiritual, physical, mentally, or even financial. As we go through life, we make all kinds of choices and decisions. We need to make sure that we stop and think about what the choice or decisions are about and how it will affect our future. First and foremost, we need to ask God to help us make the right choice or decision. The choices and decisions in life will be the way our life will turn out. This was my Path to God in Appalachia. He never left me or gave up on me. He loves me just as I am. He has taken me to his plans and purpose. What a mighty God we serve! Be strong in the Lord and His might, be bold and stand your ground in Jesus, the Rock of our salvation. You will defeat the enemy and be victorious in Christ.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644581445

Book preview

Chapter 1

I was born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains, in southeastern Kentucky next to the Virginia state line. It is very beautiful and a great place to grow up. Life was slow-paced and laidback, with many small towns, high mountains, and valleys that surround each town. The mountains are so beautiful in the spring and summer. The trees are in full bloom with green leaves and grass that cover the mountains. As you look upon them, it looks like clouds of green surrounding the mountains and valleys below. The flowers are in full bloom and fill the air with sweet-smelling aroma.

In the fall, trees begin to change colors—to multicolors of red, orange, yellow, and brown. Such beauty! A sight to behold that only our Creator could actually create such magnificent colors! The color and landscape are something we continue to enjoy year after year. In the winter, everything dies, but still God gives us beauty to behold. He gives us snow.

When it snows, the ground and tree branches are covered white until they are barren down with weight. When you look upon it, it’s like blankets of white that cover everything that had looked dead before. Oh, the beauty to behold! As you look at it, the snow glistens and sparkles with vibrant colors. The snowflakes are wonderfully made, each one a shape of its own from our Creator. He makes them for us to enjoy during the dead time of winter.

I was born into a family of ten children, me being the eighth. I had three sisters and six brothers. Growing up, we could always tell when spring was around the corner. We would sit on our front porch and hear the frogs singing from a pond down from our house. They sound so beautiful on a warm spring night. As children, we looked forward to the first of May because that meant we could go barefoot and play in the creek and spray each other with a water hose and have so much fun on those hot summer days.

Our neighbor’s children would come over, and we would play outside, catching lightning bugs, playing hide-and-go-seek, jumping rope, hopscotch, and, of course, cowboys and Indians. We would play in the hills, eating the beechnuts that fell from the trees, and we would swing across the garden on a vine from the hill. We had a barn, and we would go up in the loft and jump out onto sawdust that laid upon the ground. We rode horses, and all the kids enjoyed it.

A train ran in front of our house and left empty train cars sitting on the tracks. We would climb the ladder on the side of the coal cars and climb deep down inside to play. My poppy (grandpa), who worked on the railroad, would sometimes throw twine out of the window of the train for us to catch as they went by. We would spend hours playing in these coal cars, from one to another, up and down the tracks.

We were raised on a farm with horses, cows, pigs, and chickens in a working middle-class family. Our source of living back in the hills of eastern Kentucky was the coal fields, in which many men worked to support their families. My daddy was a coalminer, and my mother worked for the United States Postal Service, where she would deliver the mail from town to town. There were very few jobs in these small towns. The only big grocery store and the only one that sticks in my mind was the A&P. It was the best place to buy groceries back then, and there were a few small retail businesses. If we wanted to shop more, we had to drive approximately ten miles from our home, across Kentucky state line into Pound, Virginia.

Positions in schools and government jobs were only available if you knew someone to help you get in. The only restaurants to visit were custard stands, cafés, or drugstores that served food. Growing up in small towns, everybody pretty much knows each other. We didn’t have a lot of places to shop, and on Sunday mornings, families would go to church and afterwards drive around and go on picnics just to enjoy the day together. The older girls would be responsible for caring for the younger siblings, cleaning the house, and cooking. The boys were to feed the animals and to help with gardening while our parents were at work. Our parents taught us well to be independent as we grew.

My mother was a Christian raised in a Pentecostal Church. She made us go to church every Sunday and youth nights, even sometimes when we didn’t want to go, and I gave my heart to Jesus at a very young age. It’s been a journey through my life and a rough path, and I thank God for a mother that led me to Jesus and that Jesus has placed a desire in my heart for Him.

My parents were very protective of us growing up. We didn’t get to socialize with people outside the family besides our neighbors and people with whom we went to church. On a few occasions, I spent a night with a friend from church but never anyone else. Being raised in a protective environment and attending church regularly, we learned that God wants us to love one another. I always try to look at people to see the good in them. As I have gone through life, I experienced difficult times