Norma Donovan loves to read, write and go on bike tour trips. She enjoys having coffee and heart-to-heart talks with friends. Norma attained degrees in Elementary and Special Education and a Master's degree in Counseling and Guidance from the University of Arizona. She has been married to John since 1976 and together they have two adult children and live in Wichita, Kansas.

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Welcome to Restoring Hearts Ministry's website! You may be wondering how this ministry came to be. It's been a long time in the making as God has honed and refined me.

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The past twenty-five years I've been trying to obey God's call to write. On and off again I struggled to get articles published. Learning the craft of writing has not been easy for one who never excelled in English and who also has attention deficit disorder. Several years back I wrote out a list of all the reasons why God chose the wrong gal to write for Him. He immediately responded, "That's exactly why I chose you! The glory will then go to only Me!"

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In the year 2000 I heard God's call to mentor the masses. A pretty daunting task for anyone, but especially for one like myself, who wasn't speaking and doing very little writing at the time. That's just like God, to call things out as though they were. He places us in positions such as this not to highlight our weakness, but to highlight His strength. He likes to "flex His muscles" and show us all He can do so we are utterly amazed.

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The year following God's prophetic word to mentor the masses, I began to have opportunity to speak at my local church in their basic discipleship class. That eventually led to overseeing the teaching aspect of the women's ministry for several years. It was a privilege to develop a Bible study curriculum for a couple of years and to teach on what God was teaching me. Many of the messages were bent towards making broken hearts whole, since I have been in that process all my adult years.

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Then came a season where I wasn't doing much for God. Reflecting back on that period, I realize He was using the time I felt forgotten and placed high upon a shelf, to cause my identity to be rooted in Him and who I am as His daughter-not based on how well I could perform for Him. It was during that low point that I visited a ministry to pick up supplies to mentor women in the process of dealing with offense and losses within their hearts. The ministry director gave me a tour and showed me the books and cds he produces for various ministry leaders. I've never been one to promote myself, but before I knew it, my mouth opened and out came words asking how I could become one of those he supports. He began to prophesy and I began to weep.

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A year and a half later God gave me a specific assignment to write a weekly email on Mondays to all the women I've mentored in the past, called "A Mentor's Musing." This is one way I could continue to mentor many women without meeting one-on-one. My desire was to write about the current events in my life and how God intersected them with Himself. What the Holy Spirit was teaching me I wanted to pass on to others. Another friend turned it into a blog and the first thirty-one of those posts became the devotional book you can order for free.

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I'm amazed at how small acts of obedience turn into something bigger than you can possibly imagine, similar to the ripple effect one tiny stone can have when thrown into a pond. God only needs our small seed of faithful obedience to grow it into a giant tree.