Catastrophe. That’s quite a word. It’s the epitomy of a word trying to describe the worst of a circumstance and even with this word it’s still not enough to truly explain the loss. Flood, almost 4 feet deep = Catastrophe. The catastrophic nature of what happened back on May 19 doesn’t begin to describe enough the significant loss Keith, Athena, me, and my mom went through. Athena literally no longer has a bedroom. Our house only has 3 bedrooms in it. Two on the main floor - Keith & I … [Read more...]
Loss… Sentimental and/or Physical #flood2020
The evening of Monday, May 18, it had been a typical day in our home. I’m a virtual assistant (equivalent to an executive assistant/personal assistant from the comfort of my home office). I’d had another typical day of taking care of my clients and the tasks they needed me to take care of. Due to COVID-19, Keith was home and not working (lots of freetime). Athena was also home as there was supposed to be “online” learning. Yet today’s school system has no belief in this generation to be able to … [Read more...]
Out of Control
Have you ever felt like your life is out of control? You have a direction you'd like to go, but your path is anything but straight. If you'd look back, it's as if you're drunk with the way it looks like you've weaved back and forth along the way. For the last few years, that's how my life has been. There are things happening in our home that began in the summer of 2015. While I can't go into details, the seriousness that's evolved as a result has added an enormous strain on our … [Read more...]
5 Things to Find Happiness In
You might be thinking that the five things are going to be your stereotypical answers. Yet, the five things might shock you as the word "happy" rarely, if ever, is correlated to these five things: Our Weaknesses Insults Hard Times Suffering Calamities Who in their right might would think these five things can bring any sort of happiness? Certainly not me, at least in the world's view of happiness. However, as a believer, aren't we told to do just this? It says in 2 … [Read more...]
Have you ever been wrong before?
When I last posted on this site, I'd made an announcement about no longer using this site due to having two sites and my plan was to use the one I've had the longest: my daughter's dedication website. However, since I posted my last post on here (November 25, 2015), I've come to realize, with a little nudge from God (I think) that while my daughter's site was important for me to write on those first several years after losing her, the purpose of the site itself is no longer needed. This … [Read more...]
Seeing the Gift
Wow, it's hard to believe that Mari's book is done. I entered the last of the edits to part 2 and sent it off to my editor (my dear sweet friend Deirdre). This day has been almost six years in the making. A week from tonight I will be on a plane heading toward Chicago as I go visit family. But even bigger than this is the reason I'm heading out that way to begin with. ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) is having their annual writing conference September 25-27 in St. Louis, MO. I'm … [Read more...]
R is for Remember #atozchallenge
It's hard not to remember such a remarkable little girl as Mari. I know that I might be a tad bit biased, but I also know how this one little girl touched so many people's lives in ways I never could have imagined. In the two weeks prior to Mari contracting E. coli, she was in a special summer school program as well as a camp for special needs children. She went to summer school Monday through Thursday until around 1pm and then a bus picked her up and took her to camp. On Friday's she got to go … [Read more...]
Happy Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving. It's a time of year where families gather round their tables to eat a big feast of turkey, ham, yams, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, apple pie, pumpkin pie, or whatever family tradition yours might have. But before you eat, many families will go around the table and say what they are thankful for over the past year. Five years ago on this very day I remember how hard it was for me on that first Thanksgiving with Mari gone. (Click here to view the post from … [Read more...]
Day 168: Hero (or Heroine) Story
To try to put into words what today's post is about, I don't know if I could give it the justice it deserves. Here is what I read for today: When he was fifty-one years old, Reynolds Price learned he had a ten-inch malignant tumor in his spine, and he believed that his happy life of writing and teaching was over. Surgery and radiation left him a paraplegic, in unspeakable pain, and not sure that he would survive. But he did survive and was able to manage his pain through hypnosis. He then … [Read more...]
Day 166: Blocks
In life we can take those things we need or want to do and put them into blocks, like blocks of time. Depending on the block is whether we get right to it or we end up procrastinating about it all. I tend to be a procrastinator, even though I don't want to be. When it comes to writing, I can put my fiction into one big block and nonfiction into another big one. Then those big ones break down into smaller ones where Mari's book is one and then the fiction book I'm writing now is another. At the … [Read more...]
