I shall not die.

They were Jimmy's words but they belonged now to Kendra Norman-Bellamy. For two years, they'd moved around inside of her, strumming her heartstrings every time she remembered the title of the last sermon he preached.

RENEE' HANNANS HENRY/AJC (ENLARGE)

Award-winning author Kendra Norman-Bellamy (middle) is surrounded by her daughters, 15-year-old Crystal Holmes (left) and 18-year-old Brittney Holmes.

RENEE' HANNANS HENRY/AJC (ENLARGE)

Christian author Kendra Norman-Bellamy found her calling after her first husband lost his fight with AIDS.

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Growing up, it wasn't usual for her to record events of her life in diaries. She wrote plays, skits and poems and proudly shared them at her church, funerals, weddings and family reunions.

But not these words. These were meant for her eyes only.

Bellamy typed and cried and typed and cried until all the pain was gone, until there was nothing left but stories like hers and Jimmy's.

What would she do with those?

They barely had passed their teen years when they were married in the fall of 1988 at Valdosta's St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church. She was 21 and Jimmy Holmes was 20.

He loved her. She loved him and everybody loved Jimmy.

"You would've though he was a celebrity," Bellamy said.

And he was in a way. He had a singing voice like gospel great Donnie McClurkin. And at First Revival Church, where he was youth pastor and Bellamy's father was senior pastor, the children adored him.

They had two children of their own, girls named Brittney and Crystal. Life, Bellamy said, couldn't have been better.

But just two weeks after Crystal's birth, a gum infection sent Jimmy to the emergency room. Doctors told Jimmy he had full-blown AIDS, and they gave him three days to live.

He told his wife that he didn't know the source of the virus but that it could've been the result of a blood transfusion while he was in college, and she didn't question it.

Three times she tested for the deadly virus. Three times the test came back negative.

Despite the dark prognosis, he lived three more years. On Oct. 5, 1995, just days before their seventh wedding anniversary, Jimmy died.

Bellamy turned her grief inside and focused on Jimmy's parents, her parents and the girls. She went back to work during the day and at night attended Valdosta Technical College. If she were ever lucky enough to be alone, she cried.

The year she graduated, she married Jonathan Bellamy, one of Jimmy's friends, and moved to Stone Mountain.

That's when Jonathan Bellamy bought his wife a computer, and she sat down to write.

"I shall not die," she began.

Bellamy had held onto those words for years. If he died, Jimmy told the church that Sunday long ago, he would live in heaven. If God healed him, he'd live here.

The words and memories flowed from her heart like the tears rolling down her face.

That's right, Jonathan told her. Go ahead. Keep typing.

"It was like a purging process for me," she said. "When I typed the very last sentence, a floodgate of stories came and I started writing stories for the enjoyment of it."

When she stopped, Bellamy had eight faith-based manuscripts stacked behind her bed. She submitted her favorite — "A Love So Strong" — to several publishers. They all said no, but Bellamy was undaunted. In the summer of 2002, she decided to self-publish.

Then, she said, she took a leap of faith.

Within a month of quitting her job to write full time, she had contracts from two different publishing houses. Last year, she picked up a third, Urban Christian, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp. based in New York.

"Kendra is awesome," said Joylynn Jossel, Urban's executive editor. "She is one of our top-selling authors."

Urban has published two of Bellamy's books: "In Greene Pastures" and her newest release out this month, "Battle of Jericho." A third, "Three-Fifty-Seven A.M.: Timing is Everything," was co-authored with Emmy-award winning poet Hank Stewart.

The 41-year-old mother has been on Essence magazine's bestseller list five times since 2005 when "Crossing Jhordan's River" climbed from the No. 3 spot to No. 1 in just a month.

Last year, her oldest daughter, Brittney, was named winner of Urban's 2007 Open Book Award for Young Adult Fiction for "Living Consequences." A sequel, "Testing Relationships," is scheduled for release in June.

Jimmy would be proud.

"All my life I wanted to be an executive secretary because that's what I thought was my life passion," Bellamy said. "I might still believe that, had he not left such a profound impact on my life."