CHOICES

We all make choices in our lives. Sometimes, the freedom to pick between many different options can feel more like bondage than freedom. Sometimes, our freedom of choice is a prison. Literally, yet, God can take any choice we make and turn it into His glory and victory.

Author Sylvia Ramos-Paneque's CHOICES: A Bail Bondswoman's Reflections is the harrowing, autobiographical account of the many life choices she made that led her to serve jail time in a Mexican prison for smuggling drugs in the early 1980s. Within this compelling memoir, Ramos-Paneque guides readers through her early days of growing up in "Rat City," a.k.a. White Center, a suburb of Seattle, through adulthood, and her growing faith journey along the way. Readers learn about the tough choices made in the author's life, from becoming a ninth-grade school dropout to getting married at the age of sixteen and ultimately drifting into her role as a drug smuggler, running cocaine from South America.

This riveting story showcases how God was with the author through all of her choices, and, in His powerful economy, everything can be used. After years of making "wrong" decisions, God's choice to provide the author with employment as a bail bondswoman for over the following twenty years turned her choices into God's decision to help countless others in similar situations. With God's help, our darkest and most painful experiences become His greatest assets in helping others.