Month: June 2010

During my prayer time today I asked God for some encouragment. The writing life can be full of rejections and silences. It’s enough to drive a sane person crazy. So I prayed for a little good news.

And it came. No, I didn’t sell a story or get a call from my agent. But my niece sent me an e-mail telling me she’d finally gotten to read a copy of my first book, “Instead of Ashes.” She told me she couldn’t put it down.  Sigh. My heart beat a little faster. A smile came to my face. That one little e-mail meant so much. I marched up to my lap top, turned it on and started working on another story to send out.

Please don’t think I”m looking for anymore pats on the back this week, my “kudos tank” is full. But I got to thinking, who could I encourage?  Who can you?  Take a minute today and think about someone you might like to thank for being in your life or helping you with a problem and then jot them a note, an e-mail or give them a call. Sometimes we don’t realize what such a simple act can mean to someone.

Douglas Adams died last week. I remember reading Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in high school and loving it. Adams’s passing got me thinking about another book I read during that time, Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach.

To be honest, I can’t recall much about the storyline now. But one line a character spoke stuck with me. “Live your life so as never to be ashamed if something is published about you. Even if what is published isn’t true.” I remember memorizing that line at the time and thinking it was a great philosophy.

Think about it. In order to make that a reality, you would have to be secure in who you are, in everything you’ve done, and all that you’ve said over the years. I wish I could say I’d never made a mistake, said the wrong thing or made the wrong decision; I have. But I do feel I’ve stayed true to the person I want to be. I’m not perfect, far from it. But my mistakes were honest ones. And I’ve made fewer as I’ve gotten older. I’ve learned to take myself less seriously, to value others more than myself and to keep my mouth shut unless I know I’m adding something positive to the conversation (although this one I still struggle with!)

It’s interesting to think about in this day in age. With the media ready to pounce on anyone for any indiscretion, is there anything you would change about your life? Anything you wish you would have done differently? I wonder when our life is done here, will we be forced to watch those mistakes and see how they affected others? Perhaps that’s what God’s grace is all about. For now, on this side of things, I will continue to try and not be ashamed by anything I say or do, even if CNN decides to broadcast it!