So, yesterday I told you my AHA moment when I got the idea about how service is working miracles. Today I’m going to give you the background behind the actual story, and how I began writing. Well, the idea about service just kept rattling around in my brain and in my fingers, because I got really into doing service. It was an amazing experience. I would make food and then pray where I should take it, because after all, who doesn’t want to make miracles. Now keep in mind I didn’t have a job then and just a few little ones, so I had lots of time to fill. I don’t know if I really started it to be kind, or just to have something to do while the hubs worked some intense hours. Whatever the reason, I was on a mission. I would help anyone I could. I had so many amazing experiences where I literally felt like I was being used as the Lord’s hands. It was awesome. Wish I could say I kept it up, but instead I had another baby, got a job, and generally got caught up in life. But for a glorious six month period I actually was a real miracle worker. By this time my husband, bless his heart, figured out that I was a writer, still hadn’t clicked for me. I had sketched out a Christmas something-or-another for a party at the last minute. ( My only speed.) He was sure it was brilliant. I promise it was only a little better than average. You need to keep writing he said. So I did. I had a job baking biscuits, and pies that started really early in the morning (like O dark thirty early) and I would just bake and think and write out some ideas. I wrote a Christmas story, a song, a bunch of crazy poetry– Believe me I am no poet. Well all this stuff just kept pouring out of me and I had nowhere to put it.  In 2002 we moved to a little town in Northern Washington and not long after, I met a wonderful woman named Liz Adair.  She introduced the world of writing to me, and I found out there were lots of us who talked to the voices in our heads– and it was a good thing.

I attended writers meetings where I wrote on a monthly prompt and made up short stories. Then one day I actually started scheming out a novel. I went on vacation, sat on my mother-in-laws porch,drank herbal tea for a week, and I wrote my guts out. Here I had a gloriously lovely time finishing up the most hideous piece of literature that the world will never know. It was a fantastic experience that produced an incredibly flawed book. My mother wouldn’t even edit it because she said it was a mess, but the story was okay. So no grammar, check! Plot, it could use one, check! But oh the characters. I loved them, and that is when I fell in love with writing. So I kept working and working and progressing. Still can’t figure out where a comma goes, but it’s a lot better. Fast forward to 2006. Still writing, but busy. Kids, work and that life stuff. Then my husband got really sick, like in a bed for a long time sick and we lost everything during a two year health struggle. I was running a daycare out of my home, but it didn’t pay half of what the hubs job had.

During a particularly bleak day when the power was about to be turned off for the second time, ( The PUD lady hugged me it was really sweet) I went upstairs and decided to write down this story that had been banging around in my head for years and become a famous author and save my family. Now, any of you who have been published are at this point laughing hysterically, because you know that being an author isn’t really high paying gig, but I didn’t know that at the time.( SHHHH don’t tell any of the other authors who don’t know yet, they might write some really great stuff.) I wrote the story down in about fifteen minutes. It took about two years of editing and a wonderful critique group at a writers group to get the story where I wanted to submit it, but the main idea really just flowed out. And here is the interesting thing. When I read back through what I had written, it was an answer to a prayer. I had thought I was writing to save my family, but what I read was my answer to save myself. It was a very personal answer about how I could be happy while I was going through this horrible time in my life where everything was falling apart. All the lessons I had learned were there, and I could use them to save myself. I started to do service again and found happiness. Life got better over time, although there were many years of struggle ahead. The most important thing though, is that God had given me an answer to overcome this trial. He knew me and my struggles. I could get through this. And that is the story of how the Miracle Maker story came to be.