IWSG: Reflections on the Year

           

            This is my post for the December 6th IWSG Day. I am posting early because I will be taking a trip to London next week! The Insecure Writer’s Support Group was founded by Alex J. Cavanaugh for writers to share their insecurities and encourage one another. We are given an optional question to answer each month, and here is the question for December 6:

As you look back on 2017, with all its successes and failures, if you could backtrack, what would you do differently?

            I could discuss other areas where I have reached my goals, but this post is meant to specifically address writing. I would have to say that as far as writing goes, 2017 was not the best year for me. I nearly abandoned my blog and followers a couple times (sorry guys!), I did not participate in the IWSG Anthology contest this year, and I did not listen to my own recommendation to discipline myself and write every day. As for NaNoWriMo, I will probably fall somewhere between 3000 and 4000 words by the end of the day. I was not aiming for 50,000, nor was I working on a novel, but I did hope to get a little more written. I guess I had some distractions this month, including London planning, so I’m not entirely disappointed with the results. It will make it easier to beat next year! I had fun with the little projects I was working on with NaNo, so it was a good experience.

            If I could backtrack, I would probably not only say I want to be more disciplined in my writing, but I would also take the time to plan out writing sessions and stick to them. I’d put my words into action instead of just thinking about it all the time. I would have planned time for my blog posts and visits instead of handling my blog with the casual disregard I’ve had most of this year. There are probably many other moments when I could have been writing this year, and I will need to work on those things that I allow to divert my attention in the year to come.

            Congrats to the NaNo winners out there! You have accomplished a great feat! 

Now it's time to finish packing!

Flashback Friday: Witnessing a Miracle

            **It's the last Friday of the month, which means it's time for Flashback Friday. Participants repost an old post that needed more attention, that you're very proud of, that you think is still relevant, etc. It was hosted by Michael G D'Agostino, but he has opted out. You can still find a list of previous and current participants on his blog. It has now been two years since the accident I mentioned in this post and Victoria's progress continues to astound me.**

 

 

Witnessing a Miracle (previously posted February 25, 2016)

“Pray without ceasing.” 1 Thessalonians 5:17 (KJV)



Victoria, Sam, Aleigh and Lucas with their parents and grandparents

 

            This past Sunday, February 21, 2016 marked one year since Victoria Turner, two of her siblings, and her maternal grandparents were in a terrible car accident. Today Victoria, or Tori, as she’s often called, is a living, breathing miracle. I have shared her story before, but I haven’t given an update for a while. So, I thought I would share my own personal reflections of those months last year.

On February 14, 2015, I had the privilege of babysitting my friend’s three precious children while she was with her husband at our church’s sweetheart banquet. I absolutely adore her kids and consider them like family. One week later, late in the evening, those three children were in a terrible car accident with their maternal grandparents. The middle daughter, Aleigh, and grandparents were fine (which was a miracle in and of itself), but the oldest son, Samuel, and youngest daughter, Victoria, were critically injured. Samuel had a fractured ankle and pelvis and Victoria had multiple skull fractures and brain injuries; they didn’t think she was going to make it. When I heard the news the following morning at church I was struck with such a sense of hopelessness and concern. I had just held Tori and read to her the previous week, what was I to do? There wasn’t anything I could do except pray. So that is what I and my church did.     

Samuel was released within a couple weeks, but Victoria took a turn for the worst. She got pneumonia due to her weakened immune system, and had to be put on life support. So, in the weeks following we continued to pray for this precious two-year-old. There were so many ups and downs during those critical weeks when many people, including myself, checked the Facebook page repeatedly throughout the day hoping for good news. Eventually, the miracle we were praying for came and Victoria survived! After months of therapy, a transfer to a hospital closer to home, and slowly being weaned off the oxygen support, Tori was finally able to return home in June. One of many amazing things about all of this is that during her time on life support, the doctors were not able to treat her skull fractures, but when they finally took an x-ray they found that the fractures had healed on their own and no additional surgery was necessary.

This picture was taken the day I went with Victoria, her mom and little brother to her check-up
 

She is still undergoing speech therapy, but she communicates her needs fairly well with her limited vocabulary. I have had some opportunities to observe her at play, I even got to let her sit in my lap and read to her again, and I think she seems just as bright and eager to learn as ever. I was watching her run and play with another three-year-old at church the other day and every time she laughed or smiled I was reminded of what a miracle and a testimony her young life has already been to so many people.

My church was strengthened in prayer during that time. We came together as one body and the power of prayer was shown in a way that most of us will never forget. And we were not alone. The church has somewhere between 200 and 300 members, but the Pray for Tori and Sam Facebook page has over 9000 likes. It amazes me that so many people beyond our church were willing to pray and show support for Victoria and her family, and all of those lives were impacted by this tragedy. Prayer is powerful, but things may not always turn out the way we want them to. Even if things had gone the other way with Tori, her parents said they would still believe that God works out the good in all things. Of course, it is better to always be in prayer, whether we are in the midst of disaster or delight, but as incomplete works in progress, we probably lapse in our prayer time once in a while, especially if things are going smoothly.  Just remember that God is always just a prayer away and He wants to hear all of your needs, your desires, your worries, your fears, your praise, and your worship.

 

 

 

You can find more information about Victoria's journey on the Pray for Tori and Sam Facebook page, and the pictures I shared in this post are from that page.

A to Z Challenge 2016 Reflections

 

 

            It is time to reflect upon the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. This year my theme was Classical Music. I was looking through my notes of reflections and I decided to pull up my reflections post from last year. This is my second year to participate in the challenge and the things I wrote about connecting with the blogging community still apply this year. The main difference is that this time I knew what I was getting into and had somewhat of a plan of setting time aside each night for comments. What I did not anticipate was my incomplete posts. I am a procrastinator the majority of the time, and only a few of my letters were finished more than one day before they were due. I will say that it was not a total procrastination, because I had all of my composers picked out by the beginning of March with a few facts I already knew. And I had all of my featured videos picked out and saved in a playlist. I still had to arrange my posts and do a little research for extra facts on the composers for most of the letters. Early on in April, I mentioned something about an elaborate idea for next year’s challenge. I must declare now that I will not carry out that idea unless I have all the posts ready by sign up time! Otherwise, I think I might go simple next year if I participate.

            Beyond the post writing, I enjoyed making visits and comments a lot more this year. I understood more about engaging with the community and I connected with some new blogging friends, which makes the experience worth the effort. I did notice something that I have seen before but never fully understood its purpose until now. Many blogs include a blogroll of some of their favorite bloggers, and I noticed some people utilized the blogroll specifically for A to Z themes they liked. That is an excellent idea! I think I will get that set up so I can try it out on my blog.

            I want to say a big thank you for all of my friends and fellow bloggers who followed my theme this year. I learned a lot about the composers just like many of you did. Many of them lived interesting lives, and I am most surprised by the number of composers who did not reach the age of 40. Before my research, I only knew of Franz Schubert because I had heard about his “Unfinished” symphony. It turns out that many composers left works unfinished or lost, and it does make me wonder what more they could have come up with if they had lived full lives. I also want to thank those who left words of encouragement and my two best friends who provided their support via texts. It was a fun month, but I am glad that we have reached the month of May! I will be taking a short blogging break for a couple weeks. I do plan to visit some of your posts and I’m hoping to concentrate on some writing during my “time off.” If you missed my theme during the challenge, I have all of my posts and my video playlist set up on the A to Z Challenge 2016 page. I hope everyone has a great month and congratulations to those who completed the A to Z Challenge!

 

Witnessing A Miracle

“Pray without ceasing.” 1 Thessalonians 5:17 (KJV)



Victoria, Sam, Aleigh and Lucas with their parents and grandparents

 

            This past Sunday, February 21, 2016 marked one year since Victoria Turner, two of her siblings, and her maternal grandparents were in a terrible car accident. Today Victoria, or Tori, as she’s often called, is a living, breathing miracle. I have shared her story before, but I haven’t given an update for a while. So, I thought I would share my own personal reflections of those months last year.

On February 14, 2015, I had the privilege of babysitting my friend’s three precious children while she was with her husband at our church’s sweetheart banquet. I absolutely adore her kids and consider them like family. One week later, late in the evening, those three children were in a terrible car accident with their maternal grandparents. The middle daughter, Aleigh, and grandparents were fine (which was a miracle in and of itself), but the oldest son, Samuel, and youngest daughter, Victoria, were critically injured. Samuel had a fractured ankle and pelvis and Victoria had multiple skull fractures and brain injuries; they didn’t think she was going to make it. When I heard the news the following morning at church I was struck with such a sense of hopelessness and concern. I had just held Tori and read to her the previous week, what was I to do? There wasn’t anything I could do except pray. So that is what I and my church did.     

Samuel was released within a couple weeks, but Victoria took a turn for the worst. She got pneumonia due to her weakened immune system, and had to be put on life support. So, in the weeks following we continued to pray for this precious two-year-old. There were so many ups and downs during those critical weeks when many people, including myself, checked the Facebook page repeatedly throughout the day hoping for good news. Eventually, the miracle we were praying for came and Victoria survived! After months of therapy, a transfer to a hospital closer to home, and slowly being weaned off the oxygen support, Tori was finally able to return home in June. One of many amazing things about all of this is that during her time on life support, the doctors were not able to treat her skull fractures, but when they finally took an x-ray they found that the fractures had healed on their own and no additional surgery was necessary.

This picture was taken the day I went with Victoria, her mom and little brother to her check-up
 

She is still undergoing speech therapy, but she communicates her needs fairly well with her limited vocabulary. I have had some opportunities to observe her at play, I even got to let her sit in my lap and read to her again, and I think she seems just as bright and eager to learn as ever. I was watching her run and play with another three-year-old at church the other day and every time she laughed or smiled I was reminded of what a miracle and a testimony her young life has already been to so many people.

My church was strengthened in prayer during that time. We came together as one body and the power of prayer was shown in a way that most of us will never forget. And we were not alone. The church has somewhere between 200 and 300 members, but the Pray for Tori and Sam Facebook page has over 9000 likes. It amazes me that so many people beyond our church were willing to pray and show support for Victoria and her family, and all of those lives were impacted by this tragedy. Prayer is powerful, but things may not always turn out the way we want them to. Even if things had gone the other way with Tori, her parents said they would still believe that God works out the good in all things. Of course, it is better to always be in prayer, whether we are in the midst of disaster or delight, but as incomplete works in progress, we probably lapse in our prayer time once in a while, especially if things are going smoothly.  Just remember that God is always just a prayer away and He wants to hear all of your needs, your desires, your worries, your fears, your praise, and your worship.

 

 

 

You can find more information about Victoria's journey on the Pray for Tori and Sam Facebook page, and the pictures I shared in this post are from that page. I have also written these posts about her: Prayer, Encouraging Updates, and Victory in Jesus.

A to Z Challenge 2015 Reflections

 

           Well, I guess April wore me out more than I realized.  It was nice to take a few days off, but I’m back now for my A to Z reflections.  This was my first year to hear about the challenge and I am glad that I chose to participate despite the real challenge it has been.  I will warn you now that this will be much longer than my other posts within the challenge, but there are so many great things I’ve learned and would like to share.  Let me start from the beginning:

 In early February, I was doing a random search on the internet; I don’t remember what I was looking for.  In the search results, I came across Sue Kuentz’s site and she had an A to Z 2015 badge in the sidebar.  Being naturally curious and easily distracted, I clicked on it.  At that point, I had not written a new post since 2013, but I thought that it sounded doable and that it would be a good way to jump back into blog writing.  I wanted to be ready, though, so I considered possible topics and themes and I wasn’t going to sign up unless I had a topic for each letter.  I liked the idea of an overall theme, and I decided Life Lessons from the Bible would be fairly simple and fitting for my blog.  I missed the theme reveal day, but I had a list of A to Z topics and verses to go with them when I signed up for the challenge a week before April 1.  I managed to get my A to F posts prewritten within that week, and I was able to stay ahead with G to J, but after that, most of my posts were written the night before.  I regret not getting them all written before the challenge because I could have gone a little deeper on some of my letters, especially letter T since I simply did not have time that night to write and had to put something together in about 5 minutes in the morning. 

Despite the rapid pace I had to keep up with, I did make a few last minute changes on some of my topics from my original list, and I like how they all came together in the end.  When I wrote about Joseph, I noticed how his story exhibited grace, endurance, and blessings.  I saw similarities among my posts on prayer, quiet, trust, wait, and yield.  And armor, fruit, love, ministry, and unity are building blocks for churches and fellowship.  These people and things I’ve written about stand out to me and looking at them all together shows me that God is using these lessons in my life and they are building blocks to strengthen my own walk with Him. 

Before I acknowledge the blogging community, I would like to make a special recognition of my family and friends who have been faithfully reading my blog since I first started it and they were willing to come back for more after my long absence.  Thanks for coming to visit from my Facebook posts or texts and for the words of encouragement!

Something I didn’t expect came about from this challenge.  I had heard the term “blog hop” before, but I had no idea that there was such a large, supportive community of bloggers behind it.  I saw on the A to Z sign up page that we were encouraged to look at other people’s pages, so I decided to save the links of a few of the bloggers near my number on the list.  I also started following a few of the co-hosts who had some interesting-sounding themes.  After April 1 rolled around, I saw all the comments flooding in to their pages and realized that was part of the experience.  I started off slow, and I will admit that I read a lot more posts than I commented on.  I was really nervous about it at first, and I found that it was easier to start on the co-host pages since there were so many other commenters.  I was so elated when the first few co-hosts left a comment on my page!  I managed to comment back on most of the people who left a comment on my posts and I apologize to those I missed in those first few days while I was still adjusting.  I also gained some followers through this challenge, and I am following each of you in return; I appreciate your encouraging comments and I am excited to continue sharing with you.  I wish I could have had more time visit the pages I liked every day and to get to see more bloggers on the list.  I will remember to have all my posts pre-written so I can participate more fully next time.  Overall, this community of writers has made the experience richer and more enjoyable.  I am glad that Arlee Bird started this challenge and I am grateful to the co-hosts and their helpers for diligently keeping it running smoothly.

There is one more silly story with this challenge.  In the week leading up to April, I started looking for clip art letters to use for my posts.  It took a lot longer than I thought to find letters I liked and to double-check that they were public domain.  It was not until April 1st that I found out there were letters designed for the challenge on the A to Z homepage, and since I already had most of them I decided to use the ones I found.  So, there’s another way to gain more time next year!



Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for reading!  I already have a lot of ideas forming for another A to Z, so I will probably participate next year and hopefully be more prepared.  It really was a great experience and I hope those of you who have followed along have enjoyed it as well.  I will post again sometime next week, probably Wednesday or Thursday, and share some of my plans for some changes to my blog.  Stay tuned!



Close-up of my A to Z Survivor t-shirt designed by Jeremy @ beingretro.com :)