Progress is continuing with the book. Love Courage and Miracles is shaping up! Last week, I
received it returned from the editor with corrections from two proofreaders. With some fear and
trepidation, I waited two days before opening it. What if it was filled with an overwhelming
number of needed corrections? How would I feel? The managing editor sent an email with the
returned manuscript to say this phase of preparing the book can be one of the most difficult for
authors. It is the final run, and proofreading for every grammatical and punctuation error can
reveal a manuscript full of red lines. Oh boy! What was I to find?
I found red. Yet, the red I found was relieving. It was making it more perfect, more ready. One of
my biggest mistakes was something I knew or should have thought of when writing. When you
use a number to describe how many of something there is, you don’t use numerals, but you write
it out. Like, 7 should be seven. I made that error many times over. Made me see how many
numbers there are in the book. Interesting.
I have gone through the manuscript and accepted the proofreading. I followed that with a careful
read out loud to myself to see how every sentence flowed. I still needed a word here and there. It
is crunch time, and I want my humble story of love, courage, and miracles to make sense. Not
only to make sense and read well but hopefully to support others who struggle with similar
challenges, inspire them, and make them feel not alone. I want a feeling of gratitude for it all to
come through, along with a storyline that will share how we found meaning. Taking a deep
breath now.
We all have struggles in our lives, don’t we? It is important to name them, recognize them, and muse about them. It is also important to tell the stories about them. We all can do that. We may
not recognize the importance of doing it, though. I know that not all of us are writers or
storytellers, but we are all storymakers. Every day, we get out of bed and begin the day by story-
making. If we are aware of that, we can see more how we have choices in the story we are to
make that day. Some events of the day seem not to be of our choosing or our creation but how
we assimilate it is. Did we have a terrible day? Did we have a good day? Did we have a terrible
day, but when you look at it again, it had a few good things sprinkled in, too?
“If a wish for my life to be different came true,
those blessings I hold dear that gave me comfort and inspiration would never have appeared.”
…from Love Courage and Miracles…
There is a certain amount we just can not control, including the strife that is in the world. At
times, it can feel so pervasive and overwhelming. Everywhere we look, we see images and
reminders of the sufferings of others, and we might wonder how we can make this day a good
day for ourselves or those we meet. We can give and find gratitude in the small things. We can
adopt that holiday feeling of light in the darkness and hope and giving. It is small things that do
make a difference.
We can impact another’s life in a good way. Sometimes, it is by sharing our story or sharing the
story of another to help uplift one when a friend is struggling. Think of small gifts of storytelling,
bits of sharing about our real lives so that another can relate and not feel alone. Think of using art
to express some of those stories. Maybe you don’t feel you can share the intimacy in your heart
with words, but you can by creating an image, making a card, or giving a small holiday gift to
another. There are ways.
Count all of the blessings you have. So many in our world are struggling and losing loved ones.
Don’t say you can’t help. You can find blessings in it all. Or you might say you do not have a
strong enough voice to share your story. A book I recently read tells how Buddism says that kind
of attitude is lazy. It is that attitude that says, “I am not enough.” We all are, and we all can find
our strong voice. We all must. That is what we are meant to do in this life of humanity. We have
hearts and brains that can turn it all around and touch each other. We all can if we try. Share your
story with an embrace of it being a miracle. It is. You are.
Be the light you want to see in others…..