I Know The Journey Seems So Long...

   ...you feel you're walking on your own...but there has never been a step where you've walked out all alone...

This was an especially challenging week, so I'm pretty proud of myself for getting as much done as I did. My daughters and I spent some time hanging out at the hospital with a friend from church on Sunday evening, and we had a beautiful opportunity to pray over him and his wife. Those were special moments for my little family because this guy is a dear friend, and we went home Sunday night feeling blessed. I woke up Monday morning to the news that another friend had been murdered, and the shock of those moments set a dark tone for the rest of the week.

Loss is a strange thing, and suffering through it never gets easier. The friend who was murdered used to ask me about my writing all the time, but it was a relatively new friendship and I don't think she had read any of my work yet. I spent the week with random thoughts of her popping up unexpectedly, in amongst mundane moments filled with proof that life goes on for the rest of us - no matter how abruptly it can be cut short for others. She spent so much of her time serving others, trying to help them, guide them, encourage them. We had a lot in common, and I had hoped our friendship would continue to grow. But now...now I have a stronger appreciation for the limitations I set in my life: limits I only learned recently, ones she hadn't learned yet.

I'm grateful now, rather than ashamed, for the way I sometimes hold people at arm's length, the way I'm no longer shy about making people earn their way in - not because I think I'm special, but because too many times, I've trusted wrong and paid the price in heartache. I'm more guarded now. The way she might have been, if she'd been given more time.

But I'm also awed by the incredible people still left in my life these days (my first friend mentioned here is now out of the hospital and doing better); when I count my blessings, I list their names. And of course, I look for wins:

The progress on STILL FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM was slow this week, as I struggled to fit writing in between life events, appointments, and several different crises. Still, I think chapter nine is actually my favorite one so far; I love getting to see Christine adjusting to life after Malachi. The next several chapters look like an incredible plot twist is on the horizon, and I can't wait to see how Christine rises to the coming challenge.

In the meantime, the revised and expanded second edition of FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM is set to release on May eighth! I think this ten-month wait will stretch my patience to the absolute limits, but I love the thought of honoring my mother's birthday with the re-release of Christine's story, especially since my mother's story of survival was such an inspiration for the Freedom Series. 

After all, it was my mother's determination (stubbornness, but whatever) to survive, passed down from her mother's unshakeable confident resolve, that taught me to...

*song lyric from "There Will Be A Day," Jeremy Camp