Staying the Course

At some point, we all reach points where we wonder if the valleys we find ourselves in will ever lead us to a mountaintop.

In the years since college, I immediately moved to California for grad school and started over away from all I knew in Michigan. I got engaged and endured a sometimes-lonely long-distance engagement. I got married and found that my Master's degree wasn't what I wanted, and withdrew even despite a great cohort, and a very high GPA. I dabbled in video game design for 5 months shortly afterward, and had to leave because of finances, again despite a high GPA.

We've experienced the pain of switching churches and experiencing a betrayal-like response from some family and friends, wondering if it even mattered that we all appeared to serve the same God. We've also experienced hurt to varying degrees from churches and people we've met along the way. It's not something drastic or new, it's part of life...but pain is hard to forget.

In my false starts regarding a Master's degree and a 2nd Bachelor's, I've really struggled with how feasible it actually is to write a series of science fiction novels, and even if I put pen to page, whether it will be a story worth telling, much less worthy of being published.

But in my heart of hearts, I don't focus as much on my own strife and pain as I do the hardship of others. I mean that - it's very difficult to bless others the way I'd like, when I feel that I can't do so without getting that big break. I see such a huge need to meet people where they're at, to champion causes that uplift the downtrodden. The simple truth is that my heart is bigger than my wallet.

From what I've learned, my story is worth telling. Every so often, I find a new cause that I wish to draw attention to through my books, where people can read my fiction novels, see a need presented through its plot or my characters, and then see a list of organizations that can bring very real relief to the world around us. This is what I want the true legacy of The Forever Saga to be: not adoring crowds at book signings, but abundance and wealth to heap compassion on parts of the world that are short on hope and long on oppression.

And so, I search every avenue, check every lead to a publisher, editor, agent, proofreader...even in a rough economy where publishers want a bestseller in every book deal, where new writers are crowded out in favor of big-name authors and flavor-of-the-week topics, there has to be a place for my story. These must surely be the times where I can give up, but they are also the times that will make me grateful for the mountaintop. I certainly needed God to see the beauty in life that I had missed before, and although many don't regard God as I do, I do know that the ideals of hope and compassion are universal.

If you are reading this, you are very much a part of my journey. As a result of moving and changing jobs and addresses so often, I am physically quite far from most of you. It's a blessing to know that something as simple as a blog, or Facebook, allows for connectedness. See the links below to see how you can contribute to the hopes and goals I have for the stories I've written, and the work I've done. It means a great deal to me, for I know that in every valley, what we remember even more than the dark depths, are the times where we walked with one another through them.

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