Deana-Kay Thomas doesn’t look like what she has been through, and this will become obvious when you read her book, Behind the Perfect Picture.
The 26-year-old author lost her mother when she was eight years old and was placed in the care of a family member. Life went downhill from there.
“Everyone on my father’s side of the family who would have seen me during those years thought that everything in my life was okay, but they did not know that I was going through a lot of things; abuse, hurt, all of those things that a child should not endure,” she said.
Thomas was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write the book, and in 2014, the title for it was coined.
“I was still going through my process, and it was very difficult to write at that time. I started writing and stopped. I remember I was feeling so overwhelmed in 2020 or 2021, one of those two years, and I remember getting up off my bed with my back against the wall and I was crying. I was sitting down on the floor and I was crying, and I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit say, “write.” That’s all I heard, and I got up,” she recounted.
“I took the computer, and all the chapters for this book came to me, and I just wrote the titles of all the chapters, and then I began one by one to write each chapter as the Holy Spirit would have led me,” said Thomas, who became a Christian at 15 years old.
The Christian journey has not been easy. She knows from experience that it requires prayer and perseverance to stay grounded. She had to learn to know God for herself and know her purpose.
“Picture a road being bumpy, and you’ll have to go through a lot of detours; a lot of stops; hurt; pain; falling down on my face; yielding to temptation; and being hurt by persons on the journey that I thought would have been there to console me and help me to grow,” was how she described her Christian walk.
Thomas describes the 72-pager as neat and small. In the first chapter, she documents her emotions following the death of her mother and expounds on what it means to be a covenant child. Her mother had challenges conceiving, but after much prayer from her brethren at church, she got pregnant. Her mother was diabetic and had other health complications, which contributed to her death.
“Even now I’m saying, “God, my mommy prayed to have me, but on this journey, I went through so many things,” but now I understand why I had to go through all of those things, because I am indeed a purpose,” she told Freedom Come Rain.
“This book I know will help others overcome suicide; it will help them overcome temptation; it will help them understand their purpose, because I understood my purpose from going through the hurt and the pain,” she said.
Behind the Perfect Picture was launched on February 25 and is available on Amazon and Amazon Kindle. Persons can also order from the author directly from deanakaythomas@gmail.com.