Back to Navarre

It feels so good to finally be writing again on my inspirational romance novel set in Navarre Beach. For awhile, off and on throughout 2014, I was in the hospital a lot and too ill to write.

I had started working on the manuscript in October 2013. Ken and I went down to Navarre about the middle of October, got a lot of pictures, and Tony and I did a lot of posting about it on facebook. Then by the end of the year I was unable to work on it. But I'm back on it now, and really enjoying it.

My first inspirational romance, THE MISTAKEN HEIRESS, was published April, 2014, and I needed to get the second one done long before now, and then get back to a historical one I have started.

I really hope I can keep my blog going again, too. I want to do more about writing on it, and having some other authors share, too. If you are a writer/author or wantabe and would like to share on it, contact me in comment on the blog or email shelbasn@ gmail.com. 

PLEASE PRAY FOR MY BROTHER TOM

I, my sister Nina, and brother Joe went to the doctor with our youngest sibling, Tommy, yesterday. His doctor is an Oncologist with Birmingham Hematology and Oncology Associates. L.L.C. at the Shelby Cancer Care Center next door to the hospital in Alabaster. We all liked her very much. She is kind, seems very caring, but straight-forward and tells it like it is.


He has primary liver cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).  The doctor says it is in Stage 3, at least. Tumors are all in the liver, both lobes. The don't know yet if it has gotten outside the liver, which would be a Stage 4, the hightest Stage number

He is to be treated with a new chemo durg, Nexavar (Sorafenib), in hopes it will shrink at least some of the tumors/lesions. She says it will be slow acting, gave him info on the cancer and the treatment and some other things to be working on while she gets the med approved for him.

I looked both up on the internet. Sounds really, really, serious, but she seems to think there is some hope that he will get some better. Said it's a team effort, she will do her part (as long as he stops drinking his beer), he'll have to do his part, then we'll just have to trust God to do His part. She seemed glad to see so many of his siblings with him. Said he is going to have to have a lot of support.

I talked to him late this evening, and he sounds good. He's been working on getting his disability set up like she told him to, and was gathering up his beer cans, the empty ones and the full ones, to get rid of them.



Please say a prayer for him. Thank you.

Seeing Clearly

A recent experience has helped me to better understand what the Apostle Paul meant when he told the Corinthians that now we see God "through a glass darkly," but that someday we'll be able to see Him clearly.

It's sort of like having cateracts, then having eye surgery.

For several years my eyesight had been getting fuzzier and fuzzier. Then, on Monday I had cateract surgery on my right eye. I can already see better, and can hardly wait to get the left eye done in two weeks.

I was surprised to learn, though, that I'm now walking around with a little sheet of plastic in my eye.

I'd always thought that a cataract was a growth in the eye. But it's a cloudy, or yellowed, lens! No wonder I was always cleaning my glasses and wondering why there continued to be a film over them. It wasn't the lens in my glasses that were dirty, but the lens in my eyes. So, the surgeon removed the dirty, foggy, natural lens in my right eye and replaced it with a clear plastic one.

It's wonderful to know that someday God will replace my foggy spiritual lens with clean, clear spiritual "lens" so I can see Him clearly. So I can know Him even as He knows me. (I Corinthians 13:12)

New Life, New Pastor, New Writing Possiblities

Hopefully, Ken and I will be going to south Alabama the first of the week -- if my bronchitis clears up enough by then -- to check out an area that my agent wants me to use as setting for a novel. She now has two of my novel manuscripts which she's trying to place with publishers. One is a contemporary set in central Alabama where we live, and the other is historical set partially in this area and partially in South Carolina. I'm looking forward to exploring the possibilities in this new area of our state, and writing the proposal for the book. Then I have to finish the proposal for a nonfiction about living with chronic illness.

I'm also working on a couple of articles with my new pastor, and trying to place an article on the work of our local pregnancy resource center and a young woman who works there.

These little problems with lupus, or things related to the disease, keep popping up to slow me down. But evidently God is not through with me yet, or He would not keep giving me all these writing assignments, or all these people in my life to love. I say God because I feel that it is He who called me into this work and this ministry and who gives me the ability to do them. And it is He who gives me my wonderful family. A new great-grandson is due next week.

Screams in the Night

“Learn to live with it.”

How many times have I heard that through the years? Too many to count.

And that’s virtually what the orthopedic surgeon said today that I would have to do. Unless I want him to practically make me two new feet, which would involve whacking several toes in two, removing the joints and inserting steel rods.

Did I actually hear him use such gross terms? Well, almost.

Anyway, I decided I’d bear with it awhile longer. At least I have medication right now that stops me from waking Ken -- and myself -- with screams of pain.

The first couple of times that happened, Ken shot straight up in bed. “What’s the matter? What’s the matter? What can I do?”

There was nothing either of us could do to stop the electric-shock feeling that shoots through my toes and causes me to wake us both with my screaming. So, I finally went to see my doctor about it.

I hate taking pain pills, and feel blessed that I have had to take so few these many years that I’ve lived with autoimmune diseases. Of course, I have plenty pills for other things. So many that I get embarrassed -- and broke -- having so many prescriptions filled. But when I mentioned this to my doctor, she said, “Well, they are all for things related to your lupus.”

So I swallow my pills, take my lung and eye treatments, pull on my shoes with custom-made insoles and thank God for giving humans the ability to develop treatments for all these ailments that befall us humans.

Take prednisone, for instance. I realize that it was God who saved my life during my severe illness when I was first diagnosed with lupus. But I feel that prednisone was one of the things He used to do it.

Now, if He would help these humans to stop charging so much for what He’s helped them develop, we would be able to buy our pills and groceries, too.

(Be Still and Know) Writing and illness

“Sometimes we get so busy listening to so many other voices, that we can’t hear the voice of God,” a wise man once told me.

This is what happened to me. I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was in second grade. It wasn’t until I was a young mother, full-time bookkeeper and church youth leader -- thinking I didn’t have time to write -- that I began to sense God calling me to a writing ministry. Then it took chronic illness -- an autoimmune disease -- to make me listen to God‘s voice.

Lying in bed during recuperation from my first major flare, I kept a pad and pencil under my pillow where I wrote prayers and thoughts from God. As soon as I was able to be up, I began writing stories and poems with a borrowed typewriter, then sending them out to editors. Before long, I was seeing my work in print. Then my ministry moved out into other areas.

Talking with other chronically ill persons, I’ve found that many of them had similar experiences. Some with writing. Some with other ministries, new relationships or new jobs. Many with a new or renewed relationship with God.

It was also a chronic health condition that forced my sister Janice to leave work with the public, and brought her back to her love of writing.

My friend Nita doesn’t want to write, but she loves to read Christian books. Reading about other people’s walk with the Lord, inspires and strengthens her in her walk. But a few years ago she found herself so busy that she never had time to read. “I was working two jobs and doing a lot of things at the church,“ she recalls. “I was always rushing to go someplace or do something so I would rush through my Bible reading and prayer time. I longed for a closer relationship with the Lord, but never seemed to have time to just be alone with Him.”

Then Nita came down with an illness that put her to bed for several weeks. “Now I had plenty time to read, listen to Christian tapes, talk to the Lord and listen to him talk to me,” she says. “And it was so good.”

This time alone with God helped Nita sort out some things in her busy life, and after she was better, she gave up the two jobs. Instead, she began working in the church office where she could still minister to people as well as earn a little money toward family expenses.

"Be still and know that I am God...," The Lord said through the Psalmist (46:10). "...commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still" (4:4)

Sometimes it takes putting us upon our beds before He can get our attention so we will listen to Him.