Watching Amy Grant perform “Til the Season Comes ‘Round Again” live with Michael W. Smith and Jordan Smith this past December 15 left tears running down my cheeks. I felt so blessed to be watching that performance in Columbus, Ohio with our three daughters, our son-in-law and our grandson and granddaughter.
Normally I may not have had that much of an emotional reaction to a song but that concert represented the beginning of the precious Christmas season with our family and the start of wrapping up 2017 — which was one of the most stressful years of my life.
Mind you, there’s good stress and there’s not good stress and I had my share of both of them this past year. On the good side there were the travels John and I took together — Mexico, L.A., San Diego, Columbus, Ohio (multiple times), San Antonio and Austin, Texas, Spring Green, Wisconsin and the birth of our beautiful fourth grandchild, Evelyn on September 7.
Then there was the huge updating project on our house which lasted the whole summer and entailed moving the entire household into our basement in June and then back into the main two stories in September. It took countless hours of work and shopping to make the house the industrial country home of my Pinterest dreams.
My career had challenges which led to growth and expansion into new endeavors. I had the opportunity to copy edit a movie script and eventually earned billing as the co-writer (check out The Islands when it comes to a theater near you in November, 2018). I copy edited a business book by Cheri Tree called Why They Buy that has turned out to be a best seller. In November I wrote the third book in my Heaven Intended Civil War series (Book #2, A Life Such as Heaven Intended, comes out April 2, 2018).
The biggest news in my career is that my first novel, A World Such as Heaven Intended, is under contract to make it into a movie. It’s exciting and surreal to enter the film business as a movie producer. The director, Michael Sajbel, and I are in the process of securing investors for production of the movie and once we hit a certain threshold, everything begins. (If you have an interest in investing — or learning about investing— in a movie that will be engaging, entertaining and profitable, contact me.)
On the less-than-stellar stress side, for the past five months we’ve been dealing with physical and mental health issues with my mom. She went from a healthy, active 80-year-old to incapacitated overnight. On August 15 her colon ruptured which led to emergency surgery. The trauma of the surgery, combined with medication and other factors brought on a form of PTSD called hospital delirium. She has been either hospitalized or under 24/7 rehab care for five months.
Those months were traumatic not only for her but for me, her primary caregiver, as well. The good news is she is regaining her health, strength and mind. It’s not a quick or easy process. The next step will be bringing her back to her home. We have no idea how that will turn out but we’re very grateful to still have her with us.
We’re starting out 2018 with a clean slate and are looking forward to what the year holds for us. We know the highlights will be the time spent with our children, grandchildren, parents, siblings and friends. We’ll have adventures and trials and tribulations (or growth opportunities as we like to say) as well but we’ll take each day one at a time and enjoy the highs and do our best to learn from the lows.
For our family and friends, new and old, we can’t really say it any better than Amy Grant did…
“May the New Year be blessed with good tidings, ‘til the next time I see you again. If we must say goodbye, let the spirit go with you, And we’ll love and we’ll laugh in the time that we had, ‘Til the season comes round again.”