The Worst Time

I picked the worst time to decide to blog again, but I have so much on my heart that I need to get out.

I had surgery on my right elbow and right wrist a couple of days ago. These surgeries were because of my frozen shoulder, which still needs to have another operation in three weeks. I’ve been dealing with the frozen shoulder for two-and-a-half years. I had surgery in March that didn't work, and the resulting physical therapy left me with pinched nerves in my elbow and my wrist. When I was being assessed for surgical needs on my wrist, they compared the function of the nerves in my left hand to get a baseline and discovered my left wrist needed surgery as well.

Yeah, it's been a painful year.

This is all happening on top of my mother being diagnosed with Alzheimer's and a possible return of her cancer. We will find out next week if it is back. My daughter has also been dealing with a major health issue of her own since August.

Then, I was let go from my job the week before my surgery. I'm beginning to feel a bit like Job, as you can imagine. In fact, I've been wondering if the God of the Old Testament is who I'm up against. Am I being punished for misdeeds in my past even though I've been trying really hard to stay on a straight and narrow path for the last several years, which I could not honestly say was true before that? But if that were the case, why is my mom also being punished? And my daughter as well? I know this is not true, but it's been hard to combat, especially when I got caught up reading Leviticus, chapter three last week.

I've cried a lot of tears in the past couple of months. My mother's diagnosis has me scared and worried for the future. It's brought to the forefront family issues that were not being dealt with and are still not resolved. The month of October is always the worst month, particularly Halloween Day, for me for personal reasons, and that was looming and giving me anxiety well before Thursday arrived.

But in the midst of all of the strife all of the heartache all of the disappointment and all of my own failures to keep the faith and show my daughter that God is still in control and has not abandoned us, good things have happened as well. I had a manuscript that I was very excited about that I completed the first draft of before my surgery in March. My agent requested that I extend it from a 55,000-word manuscript to an 80,000-word (for a bigger publishing option), and I managed to complete this new draft the Sunday before my surgery. This took a lot of work but I'm so happy with how it came together and that my editor was on top of things and finished her revisions to it in time for me to get the completed manuscript to my agent prior to my surgery. This is a story that I am so excited to share with you. It has elements of humor and romance, but it also tackles issues head-on that our country and our world are currently facing. I feel like this is a great way for me to put my heart and my thoughts out into the world with this story.

As much as I believed in the mission of the previous nonprofit that I worked for, I had already planned to quit before the end of the year, especially with all of my own medical issues and the schedule that I will have to be able to maintain not only with my physical therapy but with my mother's treatments for her Alzheimer's. As hard as it is to admit, being let go was probably the best outcome as I was provided with another month's salary where I didn't have to worry about actually taking on any tasks or projects. My heart hurts with the way that things went down but, honestly, it's a very hard economy to be trying to raise funds for a nonprofit when so many of us are worried about paying our own bills each month.

That being said, I am one of those people. I’ve been helping my daughter with her living expenses (living in Paris isn’t cheap), and it was getting harder to manage that with the salary I was receiving. I am now having to trust God to provide not only for her rent but for her groceries and her other expenses as well, as with her health issues she has also been unable to work. We are being tested, we are being tried, we are having to keep faith that is hard to hold on to at times, but we know that God works all things for good.

Not only am I grateful for finishing this manuscript and having an agent who believes in my talent and in the strength of this story, but I am also grateful for a husband, family, and friends who rally around me when I am dealing with recovering from this surgery and the upcoming two that are still on the schedule. This may be a sign for me to pare back, refocus, not spend time on projects that are outside of God's plan for my life, and dig deep into what I really want to do, which is not only publishing novels but working on scripts. I have an opportunity to work with an amazing, huge director who has me in mind to help with a series of eight stories being turned into scripts. I will also have more time for audiobook narration, which is something I have been doing a little of on the side for a while now. I just hope AI isn't taking all of the good jobs.

This is not how I intended for blog posts to be written. Voice-to-text creates an opportunity for me to ramble, which is not necessarily a good thing. But I want to thank you all for sticking with me through excitement, disappointment, rejoicing, and being let down as many times as I have been since I began this journey of being published. The first story in my series should release next year. It may get some more tweaks, as I've grown as a writer since I originally finished what was the final draft but I'm excited to bring you a story of love and loss that resonates with me even more as I'm facing this difficult journey with my own mother.

As we begin November and 30 Days of Gratitude, which I've never been consistent with, I fully intend to post something every single day both on my website and on my socials that speaks to my gratitude for this life I've been given. It's not easy, it's rarely fun…I've brought a lot on myself, and I intend to address some of that in the next month because I've realized that my back story isn't there to shame me. There's so much more to it and I know it can be used to speak to someone else who may be going through what I've been through, who may be making choices similar to ones I made in the past that led me down some roads I never wanted to go down. My story is messy but I do believe there's a message in it. I've made mistakes, but I know that they can be redeemed. I've seen it, and I know He'll do it again.

Hope remains…