Hi friends, let me start by saying …
I mean, I’m not ordering you to be grateful or thankful or anything like that, but ’tis the season to at least consider it. Sometimes it can be good to force the focus on gratitude a little because it does shift one’s perspective. I find it otherwise exceedingly easy to complain.
Here are a few things I, personally am grateful for.
Our house is, at last, completed. This is only a small glimpse of the outside (it’s now too dark out to get a better picture), but you can see how beautiful the white and black are together.
Painting the front stairs is up to us.
And we love this bathroom upstairs:
The four bedrooms all have mezzanine beds, which gives them tons more room.
We now have a nook in the stairwell that holds our plants (and “une maie” which traditionally held bread that now holds our Christmas decorations, which we’ll be putting out soon).
And I finally have my long-awaited office. It is where the boys used to share a room.
The artwork for my three illustrated books is on its way and will go on that big blank wall up there.
I’m grateful for my family. For my larger family that I grew up in, for the family I married into, and for the family I live with every day.
We have an extra teen in the house. Svyata comes from Dnipro and she’s staying with us for the school year. We’ve become close to her parents, especially her mom and little sister, Dunya, who lived with us for a month. She takes that fourth bedroom on the top floor, goes to the local junior high, and does gymnastics 3x a week. Juliet, Gabriel, and William are all doing great in their respective schools and studies, and other than all of us being busy there’s not a ton of family news since my last post.
I’m grateful for my career as a writer, and (hey, what do you know?) I want to give you some news about that. I have a YouTube channel and you can listen to all my books for free. It’s still new, so not all the books are up yet. But it’s here with four books up so far:
If you’d like to be notified of new audiobooks as they come out, click HERE to subscribe to my channel. The narrator, Stevie Zimmerman, is honestly fantastic.
I’ve also got a couple of books that are free or on sale. A Regrettable Proposal is free! (My publisher didn’t tell me it would be so this was a nice surprise – I was notified by a reader). You can click on the image below to access the free version.
And the paperback versions of books 2 and 3 are dirt cheap if you get them directly from the publisher. (As in $.99 cheap). A Faithful Proposal is here. And A Daring Proposal is here.
And since Christmas is soon upon us, A Yorkshire Carol will be just .99 from Nov 29 through Dec 2. You’ll have to mark it on the calendar, though, because it’s not for a few more days.
The link is here. And of course you can always listen to the book for free on my YouTube channel. I’ll be putting this one up next week. Finally, in case you missed it, A Whimsical Notion finally came out last month, kicking off the Daughters of the Gentry series.
It’s a perfect Thanksgiving read because it’s set in the fall. (Get it Here)
I’m grateful for Jesus. Despite writing comfortably about faith, I tend to shy away from statements that sound (to my own ears) on the cliché-ish side, such as the one I just uttered. And trust me, this is my own issue – I’m just being open – so I hope you won’t take offense.
But I am grateful for him because at a time in my life where I could barely manage to put my own socks on, he revealed himself to me. And I resonated with the “a bruised reed he will not break; a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” I resonated with the “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” And I resonated with “In this world you will have many troubles. But take heart. I have overcome the world.” As I get older (I just turned 53 on Monday), I realise increasingly that there is so much I cannot do – so many weaknesses, so many limitations. I’m grateful that my salvation doesn’t depend on my own efforts, and that my very life is richer and more perfect because of how Jesus lived, not how I live.
As this is a sort of spontaneous, chatty post, I think I’ll end it here. You all know by now that my posts are not regular. (You can get more regular news on my newsletter here). But it’s nice to check in from time to time and remind my readers I’m still here. I do still love my old blog, which has been a pretty big part of my life.
Let me therefore close with some seasonal wishes. Have a wonderful holiday – and month in general – as we ease into Christmas and the new year.
