Barbara Ann Merz was born in Brooklyn, NY, in August 1953. She was raised on Long Island, graduating from East Islip High School as an art major and an honor roll student in 1971. After working for a few years, she enrolled at Suffolk County Community College, as a liberal arts student, with an emphasis in the humanities. She intended to become an art educator, but, as is often the case, life brought some circumstances that caused those plans to change.

Barbara worked for a while as a data entry clerk for a manufacturer of computer peripherals, where she found she had an interest in computer software. After teaching herself to program, she worked for a while as an independent software developer before getting married and leaving the work force to raise her two children and help her husband launch a home business.

In those years that her children attended school (the early elementary grades), Barbara spent a great deal of time volunteering in the school, often leading classes in arts and crafts. After taking her children out of school to homeschool them, she often taught art and craft classes to the children in her local homeschool support group.

Shortly after she started to home school her children, Barbara was brought from spiritual death into life in the Lord. She spent the summer of 2002 writing theological essays, two of which were accepted by two Christian magazines, Salt and Long Island Prays. At the end of that summer, as another homeschooling year began, Barbara received a prayer request that turned her life in another direction. See "How Hands of Praise Came to Be" for more details on this part of the story.

It is Barbara's belief that all talents come from God, and that those talents should be used for the purpose that they were most likely given -- to point others to the Lord and His love and to bring glory to Him. Although her artwork appears on giftware, she will tell you that there is no gift greater than the gift that God, in all His love, gave to us, which is the gift of His Son, sent to die and then to conquer death that we might live.

Barbara currently resides with her husband Eric on eastern Long Island, home schooling and raising their two teenage children, writing, drawing, and giving praise, thanks, and glory to God, without Whom none of this could have ever happened.

Hallelujah! All praise be to God.

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