It's 1:01AM on Tuesday morning and I still need another seven hundred words in order to reach my daily word count. (Can you tell I'm on major deadline?)
The book I'm writing now, Within My Heart, has been an especially hard one to write. Not that any of them have been easy, but it feels like I've been writing this book forever. I know these characters through and through. I even know the next several scenes and have details summarized in bullet points (I love bullet points) on my desk to my right. I rarely know upcoming scenes in this much detail (and really get perturbed at writers who do...ahem...Tracie Peterson!). On top of the individual pages of scenes, I have sticky notes––a writer's best friend––plastered at odd angles with other details jotted down. Little nuances or character thoughts that I need to be sure to include and will, no doubt, forget if I don't make written record.As I stared at these handwritten pages a few minutes ago, eating the last of the Sweet Potato Souffle we had for Thanksgiving (don't ask me how my gravy turned out, but if you're hanging wallpaper this week, I'm your gal!), I couldn't help but think of how my life is already "written" before God. He sees everything, my entire life, from start to finish.
"You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed."
Psalm 139:16
That's comforting to me. Reassuring. To know that God knows what's coming down the pike, even though I haven't a clue.
Last Thursday was our first Thanksgiving without Mom. It also would have been her seventy-fifth birthday (which I might have gotten in trouble for telling you if she was still here). My family was together, we had a wonderful time, but the day was bittersweet without Mom. There are moments when I still can't believe she's gone, then others when I can almost see and feel her (through sanctified imagination) in "present" heaven, praying us home.
Shortly before she went to be with the Lord, she and I were talking in the sunroom, laughing and reminiscing. She looked at me and smiled and simply said, "The shoes!" I started giggling, knowing exactly what she was talking about.
When I was junior in high school, I was going on a date and needed black heels to wear with a black dress. I went to the mall and being the frugal shopper that I was, I found the most gorgeous pair of black dress shoes. And they were only $19.00! My budget was $20, so score! I bought them and took them home to show Mom.
She didn't say a word until a couple of weeks after the event (which I can't even remember what it was now) when she showed me the receipt––that I had signed, mind you. The shoes weren't $19.00. They were $49.00! And that sweet woman had let me keep them. (For those of you who are younger, that's like $1497.62 in today dollars.)
Mom told me there in the sunroom that day that she still had that receipt. Dad found it a couple of weeks ago when he was going through the dresser drawers, and he brought it to me at Thanksgiving. Mom had kept it all those years, with a handwritten note on it. So precious...
It's nearly 2:00, and my "remaining seven hundred words" are calling. So off to write, while knowing full well that God already knows the remainder of my story. And yours.
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My family, last Friday, at (and with) Jack Daniels in Lynchburg, TN. We had a blast. Afterward, we had lunch at Cattywampus, a local restaurant. They serve cornbread in tiny iron skillets with a side of molasses butter. Just what we needed after that light meal on Thursday!
