Light

 Tuesday arrived quickly. December 2nd. I can't believe we're here. 

Today is another good day. I can't tell you why. It has just been one of those days that roll in and surprise you with things you didn't think you deserved. 

We had a bit of snow overnight. I went to lunch at Firehouse, my new favorite place. One sandwich and I'm done for the day. And it is so good. The girls behind the counter have become pals. It's nice to go to a place and have a person smile at you and you know they're glad to see you. They told me I was their favorite customer, recently. They're my favorite sandwich girls.

A friend called me and talked for a while, and that was a lovely respite from what would have been a boring day.

No writing today, well — that's not actually true. I wrote something on the writing blog and this, of course. You'll have to go see it if you're interested. 

I blog little about grief here anymore, except at this time of year. I think I posted something recently. I will not do that this year. At least, I'm going to try not to do that. I have several years of grief post from January 30th, 2009, through maybe the next six years. There are random posts throughout the blog for more years. 

This year, I want to end it. I want it to stop. I had a difficult week in mid-November. It was as if it had happened yesterday and I couldn't cope with it. I literally fell apart several times. 

 In the last couple of weeks, I realized I want that to end. I want to stop feeling the hurt. I want to stop hearing that ring rake along the headboard. I don't want to see his eyes anymore. I don't want to experience a silence so great that it feels like I'm dead. 

At some point during this last month, I figured out I want life. And I've not been living life for 17 years. I stopped laughing. I stopped singing. I stopped seeing the world around me. In November, the walls closed in, and I was suffocating. It made me lose myself again in the dark.

Then, someone made me laugh, genuine laughter. And a light came on.  

A Good Day

  Today has been a good day. I post this here to mark it down. I never know, nor do you, whether a day will be a good day. At least not in the sense of nothing going wrong. 

Since Jerry died, any day above ground was "good". But let's face it, if you read any of these blogs, you'll find that no day is that good. And grief often turns days into nightmares . 

But today was a day the Lord made indeed. I woke rested, with no pain, and fairly energetic. I dressed and put my hair up and had half-hour to spare. So good indeed.

I have not been doing much at home but writing. Hours a day but I have lost 12 lbs because I forget to eat. Trying to remember to drink water. Food has become less appealing. This is just bizarre to me. It would appear that writing is an appetite suppressant.

 I should have known this. One thing that I did before Jerry died was write, a lot. Afterward, I wrote a lot just to keep my mind off death. But RA and fibro got worse from the trauma and I couldn't write.  The writing came back in a dump truck. The story was pouring into me at a rate I couldn't believe. Thrity thousand words in a week. 

It feels good, and today was a day of clarity. I felt like my brain woke up overnight. Still don't know what I'm doing, but I'll just ride this road for as long as I can.

Happy Endings

Another holiday finished for a year. What a month it was, too. If you've read this blog long, you know that November through February is a difficult time. In the last few years, it hasn't been terrible, but this year, that mess just blew up in my face.

Starting November 12th, 2025, I began working on a new novel. That wasn't the plan. I have a story I've been working on for a long time and suddenly wanted to write the backstory of those characters to see if it would help me. What happened is confusing and surprising to me.  

As of today, I'm at 35,991 words. That's 2249 words a day, and there were a couple of days I didn't write at all. For non-writers, that's a lot of words.

What was confusing was the emotional turmoil I experienced for the first five days. I cried every day. Every time I wrote and after stopping for any reason. I was just wrecked. It took five days to figure out why. 

My husband died 17 yrs ago this coming January 29th. It was the greatest trauma I've ever experienced. While writing the new story, around the third day, I realized that many of the character traits of the main character reminded me of my husband when we first married. The way he treated the female love interest, the attitudes, and his actions were all my husband. Even the initial meeting of the characters was a reflection of meeting my husband. With that realization, any control I had disappeared. And from that point on, there were moments I had to stop writing at all. I even fell apart in front of my son. 

I don't actually know what would have happened if I had continued without talking to a friend. They gave me the freedom to talk and to let me cry. I felt like a fool and was embarrassed, but it gave me a way to find some control, albeit shaky at best. 

Now, sixteen days in, the story is still flowing like water. I don't know whether anyone will ever read it. I don't care. Though the experience was and is traumatic, the beautiful memory of being loved and cherished is mine to keep. Jerry was the only person who ever wanted me. Maybe we find that only once. I would not like to believe that, but I do. I don't know what he saw in me. I doubt there are many men who can see that deep. 

I still have to get through finishing this story. Then I have to do an edit or two. Every time I go back to check something or read a passage, it breaks me again. How do you survive that?

I don't care. Just this once, I'll finish the story. There will be a happy ending. Something I never got. And maybe that's why this story came to me. Everyone deserves that much.

Falling into Cactus

 What does it mean when everything you touch becomes painful? Like falling into a cactus. And each spine you pull out, hurts again. By the time you're done, you're a holey, bleeding mess. And everything is gushing out through all those holes.

I'm bleeding out. 

I started the Rendered Praise blog because I wanted to be more positive, to focus on something other than the dark I was living in. Or at the least, find light in the dark. I've begun to think I'm the dark because no amount of light I shine on it matters. Dark is dark, and it can't comprehend light. 

I'm a researcher. I've always known where to find the answers. People ask me about something, I find the answer and tell them. But I can't find the answers to my own questions. I know where to look. I know what I'm asking. 

Maybe I'm asking the wrong questions; maybe I'm looking in the wrong places; maybe my questions just aren't important.

I'm a little old to be asking about the meaning of life. I thought I had figured that out. The whole duty of man is — 

Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. Ecclesiastes 12:13.

 He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? Micah 6:8.

Not hard at all. Right? I thought I was doing all of that well. At least, to the best of my ability. Now, I admit, I don't know. And this time, I don't know where to find the answer. 

I had three different sources tell me this last week I "live in my head too much". I don't know how to live anywhere else. When your world shrinks, where do you go? And what does it even mean? I researched it. It depends. And that is no answer at all.

If I find something to stop the bleeding, maybe I'll find it. 

Right now, tonight, I'm tired of searching. I don't think there are answers.

Stumbling Along

 Life throws things at you randomly to keep you on your toes. I started back working on my book, The Dream Stealer, on November 12th. It may get a new title. For the next nine days, I wrote day and night. By the ninth day, I had around 30K words. My mind was blown. I wasn't sleeping; I lost 10 lbs because I wasn't eating. I could be slimmer if I wrote day and night. I forgot to eat. 

On the second day, I cried and cried nearly every day I wrote. You write what you know and what was going into the story; I knew. And it was painful, beautiful and painful. I went into an immediate depression. I denied it, of course. I couldn't explain what was happening in my head. Until about the 4h or 5th day. 

That's when I realized that the way my character thought and behaved was very familiar to me. I had experienced them in another life. 

Who knew that could happen?

The ages of my characters were very close to ours when I married my husband. The relationship between them was so reminiscent of my marriage in those days, I couldn't stand it. A word, a look — all were like knives. I stopped watching a clock and just wrote. Hours at a time. And I cried between chapters and during breaks. 

You may ask why I didn't stop. Because I couldn't sleep. The story was like a dam break. It kept pouring in and there was no outlet unless I wrote it. So.... I'm close to 35K now. With each scene, I also get a little more insight as to why I have been so impacted.

If you could relive a moment with someone you love, even on paper, what would you do? The thing had a hold on me, and it felt as if I wrote it. Or it was meant to kill me. 

I didn't die, but I can't say I came out of the flow unscathed. I won't know until I finish it. 

I'm still working on it. Over the last four days, I've spent more time talking to friends or family. I know I have to sleep more. And I have to put the past to bed, while still keeping the memories without pain. Because the actual truth is, I'm stuck. 

Mike is waiting for an appointment with a neurologist in Indy. They have his request and are waiting for his medical records.

David is working, and I think he finally found a job he really enjoys. However, he's the strong, silent type and never says. 

Tonight, I'm out of words. Truly. It hit me suddenly in the middle of a conversation that my ability to say something had simply ended. So, I'll end this post and say good night.