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Step Into The Light Podcast introduces listeners to people who have found their way out of the dark shadows of life and those who lead others on their journey from darkness.
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Latest Show
2024-12-26
Episode #272 - Featuring Antony Kolenc
Antony has won several book awards, is a columnist for Practical Homeschooling Magazine, and hosts The Shepherd’s Pie radio show and podcast. A previous guest on Step Into the Light, Antony returns today to discuss the sixth book in his teen historical fiction Harwood Mysteries series titled The Devil’s Ransom. Join us as Antony discusses The Harwood Mystery series, it's message for teens, and his plans for an innovative and intriguing adult series due to release next year.
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2024-12-12
Episode #271 - Featuring Pastor Joseph Misiaszek
A JOURNEY TO FAITH by LAURA EDGE 3/24/2025 8:30:00 PM BY Patti Shene
FEATURED BOOK: Heart of the Matter: A Journey to Faith, Release Date: May 1, 2024
AUTHOR: Laura Edge
PUBLISHER: Elk Lake Publishing Inc.
GENRE: Memoir
SERIES OR STAND ALONE: Stand Alone
TARGET AGE: 15-90+
IT IS MY PLEASURE TO WELCOME AUTHOR LAURA EDGE TO PATTI’S PORCH. LAURA SHARES THE INCREDIBLE STORY OF GOD’S FAITHFULNESS WHEN CONFRONTED WITH A LIFE THREATENING HEALTH CONDITION AS A YOUNG WIFE AND MOM.
A JOURNEY TO FAITH
by
Laura Edge
Life is a journey. Sometimes we choose the destination and set out on a path of adventure with the eagerness of a child on family vacation. Other times, the destination is chosen for us and is a place we’d rather not go. I’ve traveled both paths, taken many wrong turns, and found myself on dead-end trails. And I’ve seen how each path was designed by my creator to draw me closer to Him.
When my children were six- and five- years old, a virus attacked my heart and the result was a disease called cardiomyopathy. One day my husband and I were skipping around Disney world with our sons, and the next, I was in the cardiac intensive care unit of our Houston hospital, hooked up to enough machines to cause a city-wide blackout.
A team of cardiologists told us my heart was enlarged and severely damaged. That led to heart failure and my other organs were shutting down. Doctors thought I would not survive without a heart transplant, so they began transplant evaluation testing.
As cardiologists ran tests, I resolved to do everything in my power to keep my heart beating until I had raised my children and they were independent adults. I wasn’t going to have a heart transplant at 39 years old. Somehow or another, I would stay alive with a damaged heart and give my children happy, carefree childhoods.
I was approved, placed on the transplant waiting list, and sent home with a hefty bag of heart drugs. My heart slowly grew stronger, and my husband Gerry and I were able to watch our sons blossom into incredible young men.
But even with a modified lifestyle, a healthy diet, and two machines in my chest to help my heart beat, my health continued to deteriorate. My body felt like it was out of gas and puttering to a stop on a deserted country road. Eventually, it got to the point where no surgery or medication could keep it beating any longer. Doctors told me the only thing left was a transplant. I was evaluated for a transplant a second time, approved, and my name was placed at the top of the list.
Waiting in the hospital for a heart transplant reminded me of an experience Gerry and I shared on a ski trip the first year of our marriage. We were riding up a Poma lift, a small, round disk skiers sit on while a pully drags them up the mountain, and I fell off the lift. Gerry was ahead of me and kept riding to the top of the mountain. He didn’t notice I was gone.
I trekked through the woods and found myself standing at the top of a black diamond slope—a slope meant for expert skiers. I was a complete rookie, as far from expert as a person can get. I stared down that steep incline and looked at the moguls and jumps. I did not want to ski down, but there was no other way down the mountain. Other skiers whizzed past, flying past me like they were part of an Olympic ski team.
I was completely unprepared. I was scared. I didn’t want to do it. But I had no choice. From where I was standing, there was no other way down the mountain. So, after a long, long time looking down that mountain, I tipped my skis over the edge and plummeted down.
That’s how I felt about the transplant. The mountain was too high. I was scared. I didn’t want to do it. God showed me I would never be prepared, but He was with me and He was all the preparation I needed. I believe God stalled my transplant for 26 years—until I was firmly rooted in His grace—so I could use the experience for His glory. And so, I received the blessing of a new heart on July 17, 2019.
I feel like the luckiest person in the world. God blessed me with the greatest gift a person can receive—the gift of faith in Jesus Christ, the son of God. That is more than enough, but he also blessed me with a new, strong heart I can use to serve Him.
Everyone faces obstacles—disease, financial setbacks, job loss, shattered relationships, or the loss of a loved one. My obstacles taught me two things: God is good—always. And if you trust Him, He will use your obstacles to draw you closer to Him.
My prayer for each of you is that God will grant you the courage, faith, and peace to embrace whatever plan He has for your life.
Blurb for Heart of the Matter: A Journey to Faith
Laura Edge hears the words, “You need a heart transplant,” for the first time when she is thirty-nine-years-old. Her family has just returned from a joy-filled vacation to Disney World when she develops a cough. The cough worsens, and a team of cardiologists gives her news that tears her world apart. The mother of five- and six-year-old boys must trade Little League games for hospitalizations and her favorite Italian foods for handfuls of pills.
Heart of the Matter chronicles Laura’s journey as she tries to stay alive long enough to raise her children. She learns to trust God for each heartbeat and finds faith in His goodness. A survival story with a message of hope, Laura’s memoir will resonate with anyone facing life’s greatest challenges and most impossible questions.
Laura B. Edge loves to read, travel, dance, and watch football games. She received her bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Texas at Austin and studied abroad with the American Institute For Foreign Study in London, Paris, Rome, and Athens. Laura has taught reading and writing in middle schools and at a community college near her home in Kingwood, Texas. She is the author of a Christian memoir, Heart of the Matter: A Journey to Faithand sixteen nonfiction books for children and young adults. Learn more about Laura at www.lauraedge.com.
WRITING THROUGH LOSS by ANGELA SHELTON 3/20/2025 10:00:00 PM BY Patti Shene
FEATURED BOOK: Echoes of the Imperium
AUTHOR: Angela Shelton
PUBLISHER: Two Oaks Publishing, LLC
GENRE: Dystopian romance
SERIES OR STAND ALONE: Duology
TARGET AGE: 13 - 18
WRITING THROUGH LOSS
Finishing My Novel While Saying Goodbye to My Parents
by
Angela D. Shelton
Every stage of life has its own unique set of challenges. While I have some fond memories of my teen years, I’d never want a “do over” of being young and foolish even though I had some amazing friends and great adventures. Though having that young, pain-free body might be a wonderful blessing.
I can say that for my twenties, thirties, and forties as well. Both good and bad memories at every stage of life, and each decade providing more experience, more understanding, and more depth to my being and my relationship with myself, my loved ones, and my Lord.
My fifties have been a fantastic decade that is coming to a close. Part of that decade has been becoming an author and publishing two young adult series. The first was full of learning about the craft and how to find my audience, but the second set of stories includes a pain filled story of my own.
I finished writing Rise of the Y, a YA dystopian romance, in June 2023 and sent it off to my editor so full of joy that I’d finished it. In the midst of the editing process, though, my mother’s cancer came back in full force, and I returned to my hometown to join my siblings as we nursed her through hospice. She passed away at home in July 2023. Through the heartache of mourning, I somehow finished the edits and got the book published in November of that year.
Though heartbroken, I knew I had to complete the second book in the series, Echoes of the Imperium, and began it in October of that same year. Writing was slow, as my brain was still sluggish, processing the hole the loss of my mother had left in my heart.
When my father went into hospice in December, I returned home once more to the too familiar task of working with my siblings to ease our father through the end-of-life process. While I’d been heartbroken when Mom died, I thought I’d never recover at the second loss in the same year. My writing ground to a halt as my brain fogged up, unable to even put sentences together coherently.
Book two made it to the editor in January of this year. Where I’d written three books in one year when I started my new adventure in writing, it took well over a year to write this single book, Echoes of the Imperium.
Not that I didn’t want to write, I did. There were people waiting for the second book. Folks wanted to know what happened next to my main character, Lexi. Writing, normally an escape for me, continued to be a way to remove myself from the pain of reality, but it also became a burden of needing to get the story stuck in my brain out onto the page.
I’ve learned the grieving process takes time. You can’t rush it. Your body and mind won’t allow you to push past barriers God intended you to pause at for reflection. The death of a parent is a natural point in life to rest, review where you’ve been, and where you intend to head next.
Ecclesiastes 7:2-3 had always been a mystery to me. It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart. Frustration is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart (NIV)
After a rough 2024 where I struggled to bring this story to life, I understand that verse for the first time. I’ll never be the same person I was before I lost Mom and Dad. I’m a better, more compassionate, more complete person now that I’ve stood on death’s doorstep and helped my loved one walk through the door.
It isn’t just me that changed, though, my story did as well. What I’d originally planned to be a trilogy became a duology. I needed closure, and my loss was so intertwined with this series that I ended the story after the second book. (A note to fans of the first book, the ending leaves an opening for a new series, but Lexi’s love story unfolds to its ending.)
The ending of Echoes of the Imperium is full of hope for new life, just as my own is right now. Life is a circle and I’m ready for the next phase of mine. Ready for what God has planned next.
If you’d like to read Lexi’s story, you can find the first book here:
If you’ve been through the grieving process, or perhaps you’re in it now yourself, I’d love to connect with you about your own story. Find me at any of these locations:
Blurb for Echoes of the Imperium
The rebellion is about to begin
The Imperium controls everything. They arrange marriages, dictate professions, and orchestrate everyone’s destiny. But seventeen-year-old Lexi refuses to accept. She’s ready to ignite a revolution, but fate has other plans.
When a hidden diary falls into her hands, its weathered pages whisper of rebellion and hope. Now, Lexi is thrust into the perilous shadows of the elusive rebel group Y. In a whirlpool of danger, deceit, and forbidden alliances, every ally could be an enemy. Every truth could be a lie. And falling in love? That was never part of the plan.
Caught between duty and a yearning for freedom, Lexi navigates a treacherous path where love and loyalty are tested at every turn. Who can she trust in a world where betrayal lurks around every corner? As Imperium’s iron grip on dystopian Atlanta grows stronger, Lexi must decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice in her fight for freedom.
Perfect for fans of K.A. Riley and Rae Knightly, this clean YA romance is a pulse-pounding journey where forbidden love blooms in the cracks of a crumbling society. Rise of the Y explores the power of choice in a world that offers none.
Grab your copy and join the revolution today!
Angela D. Shelton is a multi-award-winning Christian fiction author who writes Christian fiction that blends faith, family, and survival in challenging worlds. Her books, including The Y Chronicles and the Collapse series, explore how people hold onto hope when the world around them changes. She enjoys creating characters who face adversity with courage and conviction, offering readers both an escape and an encouraging message. When she’s not writing, Angela works full-time in healthcare finance, balancing her love for storytelling with her career. She and her husband manage a cattle ranch in Georgia, where inspiration is never far away.
OVER 50, BUT WHO’S COUNTING? by DELORES TOPLIFF 3/12/2025 11:15:00 PM BY Patti Shene
FEATURED BOOK: Wilderness Wife
AUTHOR: Delores Topliff
PUBLISHER: Scrivenings Press
GENRE: Historical
SERIES OR STAND ALONE: Stand alone but sequel to come
TARGET AGE: 15-90+
IT IS MY PLEASURE TO WELCOME AUTHOR DELORES TOPLIFF TO PATTI’S PORCH. DELORES SHARES HOW HER WRITING JOURNEY STARTED AND THE AMAZING DEVELOPMENTS WITH HER LATEST NOVEL.
OVER 50, BUT WHO’S COUNTING?
by
Delores Topliff
An early life blessing was moving into a sub-division across the street from a community center that contained a library when I was age six. I was already reading and loved books, so that was a win. Next, a Bible college in nearby Portland, Oregon held a Vacation Bible School in our community to see if there was enough interest to start a church plant. There was. My second big win.
I attended. Mom did eventually, but when it came time for the first church summer camp and I didn’t have funds, the other moms held a contest to send one kid who wrote in 100 words or less why they wanted to go. I won and realize they may have rigged the contest. (I’d already been writing things, and they had paid for their kids to go.)
The older I grew, the more I wrote. Several of my third grade rhymed stories are now illustrated children’s books. Two have won first prize in international contests. I’ve had stories, poems, and essays published starting in early years, but no fiction until after age 50 when I began seriously writing those. I loved weaving exciting WWII local history into both books of my Columbia River Undercurrents series.
My hometown, Vancouver, Washington, was established as Fort Vancouver by the McLoughlins in 1825. Everyone knew about Dr. John. The Lord impressed me to research Marguerite, and I found solid gold. Although she had been a disillusioned and abandoned single mother, she was courageous, inspiring, and won the admiration of many including younger Dr. John who kept proposing marriage until she finally accepted. Together they birthed five more children, crossed a continent, and changed history. Today they are known as the father and mother of America’s Pacific Northwest, and she asthe kindest woman in Oregon. I loved researching Wilderness Wife, and felt like Marguerite became a personal friend.
Imagine my joy last November when Marguerite’s 4th and 5th generation real life granddaughters contacted me. They had information I didn’t. I added to theirs. We had a fabulous book club Zoom meeting and scheduled another for next August. One descendant resembles Marguerite. These women portray Marguerite’s strengths and Christian qualities.
Last week I received an email from another direct descendant. I had the pleasure of introducing both lines of these people to each other while realizing that truly praiseworthy traits are never lost but continue from one generation to another and are living history now. I am in awe.
Where do we go next? More of Marguerite and John’s history should be written. I had started a sequel but was overwhelmed by the vast amount of material and the long span of years. However, recent feedback has so encouraged me that I’ll finish current writing commitments, then return to tracing John and Marguerite’s lives as they truly blessed and changed our nation.
Wilderness Wife blurb:
Set across frontier North America in 1810, Wilderness Wife presents the early life of Marguerite Wadin MacKay who believes her 17-year marriage to explorer Alex MacKay is strong—until sudden fame destroys it. When he returns from a cross-Canada expedition, he announces their frontier marriage is void in Montréal where he now goes to make his fortune and choose a society wife—not one with native blood. Taking their son, MacKay sends Marguerite and their three daughters to a trading post where she’d lived as a child.
As an abandoned mother living only for her three girls, her hardships forge her into such a woman of strength that Dr. John McLoughlin will marry no one else. Together they carve out an inspiring legacy that changes North American History. See the trailer here
Patti’s Review of Wilderness Wife
This book about a mixed race Native American woman in the Canadian wilderness in the early 1800’s. is full of adventure and strong characters. The indomitable courage and wilderness survival skills the heroine, Marguerite MacKay demonstrated in the story are amazing and admirable. This fictionalized story is based on real historical figures, and it shows in the writing that a considerable amount of historical research was integrated into the novel. The struggles Marguerite faces as she is abandoned by her first husband and then waits an inordinate amount of time for her second husband to return is well-defined. This was a most enjoyable read, and it was exciting to meet relatives of Marguerite through our book club who discovered the book and joined our discussion.
Delores Topliff is from Washington State but married a Canadian and spent many years living there. She now divides her year between a family farm in central Minnesota and near friends in warmer Mississippi. She published non-fiction and four children’s books before writing four historic novels and her memoir/travelogue, A Grandmothers Guide to Israel: Adventures, Wit, and Wisdom. She teaches online university classes and provides consulting and free-lance editing services. Connect at delorestopliff.com
FEATURED BOOK: Heart of the Matter: A Journey to Faith, Release Date: May 1, 2024
AUTHOR: Laura Edge
PUBLISHER: Elk Lake Publishing Inc.
GENRE: Memoir
SERIES OR STAND ALONE: Stand Alone
TARGET AGE: 15-90+
IT IS MY PLEASURE TO WELCOME AUTHOR LAURA EDGE TO PATTI’S PORCH. LAURA SHARES THE INCREDIBLE STORY OF GOD’S FAITHFULNESS WHEN CONFRONTED WITH A LIFE THREATENING HEALTH CONDITION AS A YOUNG WIFE AND MOM.
A JOURNEY TO FAITH
by
Laura Edge
Life is a journey. Sometimes we choose the destination and set out on a path of adventure with the eagerness of a child on family vacation. Other times, the destination is chosen for us and is a place we’d rather not go. I’ve traveled both paths, taken many wrong turns, and found myself on dead-end trails. And I’ve seen how each path was designed by my creator to draw me closer to Him.
When my children were six- and five- years old, a virus attacked my heart and the result was a disease called cardiomyopathy. One day my husband and I were skipping around Disney world with our sons, and the next, I was in the cardiac intensive care unit of our Houston hospital, hooked up to enough machines to cause a city-wide blackout.
A team of cardiologists told us my heart was enlarged and severely damaged. That led to heart failure and my other organs were shutting down. Doctors thought I would not survive without a heart transplant, so they began transplant evaluation testing.
As cardiologists ran tests, I resolved to do everything in my power to keep my heart beating until I had raised my children and they were independent adults. I wasn’t going to have a heart transplant at 39 years old. Somehow or another, I would stay alive with a damaged heart and give my children happy, carefree childhoods.
I was approved, placed on the transplant waiting list, and sent home with a hefty bag of heart drugs. My heart slowly grew stronger, and my husband Gerry and I were able to watch our sons blossom into incredible young men.
But even with a modified lifestyle, a healthy diet, and two machines in my chest to help my heart beat, my health continued to deteriorate. My body felt like it was out of gas and puttering to a stop on a deserted country road. Eventually, it got to the point where no surgery or medication could keep it beating any longer. Doctors told me the only thing left was a transplant. I was evaluated for a transplant a second time, approved, and my name was placed at the top of the list.
Waiting in the hospital for a heart transplant reminded me of an experience Gerry and I shared on a ski trip the first year of our marriage. We were riding up a Poma lift, a small, round disk skiers sit on while a pully drags them up the mountain, and I fell off the lift. Gerry was ahead of me and kept riding to the top of the mountain. He didn’t notice I was gone.
I trekked through the woods and found myself standing at the top of a black diamond slope—a slope meant for expert skiers. I was a complete rookie, as far from expert as a person can get. I stared down that steep incline and looked at the moguls and jumps. I did not want to ski down, but there was no other way down the mountain. Other skiers whizzed past, flying past me like they were part of an Olympic ski team.
I was completely unprepared. I was scared. I didn’t want to do it. But I had no choice. From where I was standing, there was no other way down the mountain. So, after a long, long time looking down that mountain, I tipped my skis over the edge and plummeted down.
That’s how I felt about the transplant. The mountain was too high. I was scared. I didn’t want to do it. God showed me I would never be prepared, but He was with me and He was all the preparation I needed. I believe God stalled my transplant for 26 years—until I was firmly rooted in His grace—so I could use the experience for His glory. And so, I received the blessing of a new heart on July 17, 2019.
I feel like the luckiest person in the world. God blessed me with the greatest gift a person can receive—the gift of faith in Jesus Christ, the son of God. That is more than enough, but he also blessed me with a new, strong heart I can use to serve Him.
Everyone faces obstacles—disease, financial setbacks, job loss, shattered relationships, or the loss of a loved one. My obstacles taught me two things: God is good—always. And if you trust Him, He will use your obstacles to draw you closer to Him.
My prayer for each of you is that God will grant you the courage, faith, and peace to embrace whatever plan He has for your life.
Blurb for Heart of the Matter: A Journey to Faith
Laura Edge hears the words, “You need a heart transplant,” for the first time when she is thirty-nine-years-old. Her family has just returned from a joy-filled vacation to Disney World when she develops a cough. The cough worsens, and a team of cardiologists gives her news that tears her world apart. The mother of five- and six-year-old boys must trade Little League games for hospitalizations and her favorite Italian foods for handfuls of pills.
Heart of the Matter chronicles Laura’s journey as she tries to stay alive long enough to raise her children. She learns to trust God for each heartbeat and finds faith in His goodness. A survival story with a message of hope, Laura’s memoir will resonate with anyone facing life’s greatest challenges and most impossible questions.
Laura B. Edge loves to read, travel, dance, and watch football games. She received her bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Texas at Austin and studied abroad with the American Institute For Foreign Study in London, Paris, Rome, and Athens. Laura has taught reading and writing in middle schools and at a community college near her home in Kingwood, Texas. She is the author of a Christian memoir, Heart of the Matter: A Journey to Faith and sixteen nonfiction books for children and young adults. Learn more about Laura at www.lauraedge.com.