Once in a while along the way...
But, worry not, I didn’t sit in a corner and fade. I caught up on home and hearth and reconnected with hubby. I started and finished three quilts for some very special people. I outlined and researched my NaNoWriMo project, then took the month of November to write it. I finished my first ever novel for women, Big Hearts, a romance in the style of Nickolas Sparks’ P.S. I love you. And I started another ‘pony’ book, also as far out of my comfort zone as Big Hearts, about a teenaged beauty queen who wants to break free of her mother’s control and reach for her dream of riding and training barrel horses.
I also survived a pretty serious illness, which still has no real name or diagnosis. You do not want to know what I call it!
Along the way I centered myself a little better.
I can’t do everything I dream up. I can’t do everything the rest of the world wants me to do. I can barely do everything my wonderfully supportive husband needs from me, and I need help doing for myself. What I can do is stop and enjoy the love and beauty which surrounds me.
For fifteen years I lived in the picture post card of the world, a place dreams are made of, a place largely untouched by the stink of mankind’s destruction – Alaska. I thought my heart would be forever broken when we drove away from my beautiful, hand built cabin in the woods, and I very nearly despised the very essence of the state I returned to, Texas.
But that sort of emotion festers and poisons the soul. It robs you of joy along with creativity.
Decades ago, when the world was young and I was too, my family moved from Arizona to Texas. I was unhappy then as well. But a wise and gentle old sorrel cow horse named Charlie helped me turn that around. Charley listened while I ranted about the unfairness of life in general, and the wretched landscape and stink of oil wells surrounding the tiny coastal town of High Island. Trust me, it’s tiny – under 500 people. Charley watched me with understanding golden eyes while I cried over my losses and he nudged me when I could barely move out of my depression. And he kept my secrets. No one knew my agony.
To bring the story back home, it happened again. I left a place I loved to come to a place which would again test me. But I remembered Charley and what I learned from that old horse. I learned to look into myself and look to my faith. Here’s the point of the lesson – that thing I learned along the way – I am God’s gift to this world. I was His gift to my parents and then to my husband. I am God’s gift to those around me…
So I’d better be a worthy gift! God doesn’t give junk, He gives priceless treasures.
Yes, I make a place better just by being in that place. Not by my own power or wondrous talents and abilities, but because I’m able to step aside and let God’s love shine in my life.
Sometimes I bite off more than I can chew. But God is able to take my chunk and cut it up a bit so I can swallow it – if I let him. What in the world can keep me down when God is here to carry me?
So I take up my pen again and write as I have done since I could hold a crayon. I tell stories.
And once in a while, along the way, I learn new things.
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