God's Gift

2 Corinthians 9:15 says, "Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift." I have never really noticed this verse. I mean it has never really

stood out to me before … until chapel at school last week … and now I will  never forget it.


I substitute at a Christian school and happened to be subbing on chapel day last week. The speaker was interesting. She drew a huge chalk picture as she spoke. I did not know her and sadly cannot remember her name. But I remember the verse she quoted.

She said this verse is the perfect verse for this time of year because it begins with thanksgiving and ends with a gift. What a powerful observation about this verse! It is a perspective that sealed this verse in my mind.

As I'm writing this it is the day before Thanksgiving. This year will be different for me. My Mom passed away last summer, and her absence is felt. Two of my sisters called me this week grieving again over her passing. I’m reminded of her as I prepare food to bring because so much of how I cook was learned from her.

We’ll have Thanksgiving at my adult daughter’s this year for the first time. I’m excited about passing the baton. She’ll have a house full with her, her son, fiancé, his two sons, two brothers, one of the brothers fiancé’s and my husband and me. I tried to tell her how I cook a turkey but she assured me she could find the instructions online. 😁

It’s a new chapter and I am determined to embrace it because truly, I have so much to be thankful for! Having had a loving mother who lived a long and wonderful life and a daughter who is carrying on traditions are just some of my many, many blessings. Most of all, I am thankful for God's unspeakable gift--His son, Jesus who came not to condemn the world but that the world through Him can be saved. 

NaNoWriMo

Many of you may have read my blog post title and have no idea what it means. Maybe you thought I was writing in some kind of secret code. In some ways I am. This is a term writers, esp fiction writers, know well. It stands for National Novel Write Month. Every November fiction writers j
oin this formal joint effort to get a new novel written or to make serious progress on a novel they have been working on.


I have never participated in NaNoWriMo and I am not this
year either, not formally anyway. Those who do participate work at writing as many words per day as they can during this month. There are goals and requirement for those who participate but as an almost exclusive nonfiction writer, I have never been motivated to participate. And like I said, I am not participating this year either, at least not formally. But coincidently, I have started on my next novel and have written over 8,000 words on it so far. Maybe I should have joined.

My sweet mother passed away suddenly last August. I had seen her just two weeks before she died  at a family reunion. During that time she encouraged me to write my Nigerian brother, Abel's, story in a fiction-based-on-fact similar to The Whisper of the Palms, the fiction I released in 2016 about her and my dad. Abel's is a story I have thought about writing for a long time but Mom's encouragement to do so, followed so closely by her death has tugged at my heart to get started. So, I may not be as disciplined about it as I would if I had joined NaNoWriMo, but I am working on it and enjoying the adventure of writing another novel. I have no idea when I'll have it finished (certainly not by the end of November) but that goal is 8,000 words closer now, at least.

*The picture at the top of this post is my brother, Abel at about 14 years old carrying a preschool missionary kid (MK) in a basket on his head.