So maybe some of you are wondering about now, why I am writing this book anyway? Is it just to "expose" myself - or is there a deeper meaning behind my words? Does this book have a story to tell or a special message to get across?

Well - in a nutshell - this story has many meanings, and many reasons. The most important message I would say is that no matter what we do, no matter who we are, or what we accomplish, or don't accomplish - there is a deeper meaning to life. And that meaning for me, the reason that I live, and I mean the only reason for my life - is God.

Yes..... I know some of you might be raising your eyebrows at that one and saying oh great - this is another book about THAT......

About "God", written by one of those "religious" folk........

When I say the word "religious", let me explain what that means for me. I do not consider myself particularly "religious". What I do know is that I have a relationship with my creator, God, through his son Jesus Christ. That relationship is what saved my life, put me in this chair and able to write this book, and is the only reason I am still here. Without that relationship I would have given up a long time ago - through my guilt, my shame and the things that happened later on in my life (hold tight because - yes - there is much more to come)

So much more that at one point I had considered suicide, thinking that I could no longer go on with life, that there was no point anymore. Life had just hurt me way too much.

The funny thing is that when I was growing up nobody taught me about God. I didn't go to church, I didn't even own a Bible. I wasn't even sure who God was let alone why He was important. All I remember was my elderly aunt Francis taking me to church with her maybe once or twice a year, and listening to some man with a funny suit talking in some language I didn't understand. I would sit in the pew totally bored out of mind and couldn't wait till I could go home and play. Then there was the time my parents dropped me off for Sunday school one morning, but I never returned after that (perhaps I met God there, but I really don't remember)

These were the only encounters I had with God growing up, but oddly enough, I knew God all on my own, in my own little world.........

As a child I would pray every night (where that came from I have no idea because no one ever prayed with me)........and I would recite the same prayer every night, that I had made up, that I still remember to this day. I even made a sculpture of Jesus when I was a teenager, before I was even quite sure of who He was (I also made a sculpture of the devil too so obviously there were curious thoughts in my imagination about what "good" and "evil" meant)

All I know was that growing up I had an active faith in someone I didn't even know, but believed in anyway. That faith would later on become the rock upon which I stood when the storms of life later threatened to take away my sanity and my purpose for living.......

It would be quite awhile before I would start to really understand who God was, and there were many trials to come before I would finally throw up my hands and my heart to God, who became my "redeemer". That is why I named this book "A Story of Redemption", because without that redemption from God, I would not have been able to go on, or even to write these words.

And that is why I write - to share my story to encourage people, for them to know that no matter what you go though, no matter how hard life gets, you are never ever alone, because there is someone who will never leave you alone, never forsake you, never blame you for the mistakes you've made - and that person is God.

(Dorsi Diaz is a freelance writer and blogger in the San Francisco Bay Area)