Where oh where has the euphoria gone?

For the first couple of weeks after the heart attack I was euphoric. This, I'm told, is to be expected. Now, the euphoria is gone and I am left with the questions. Don't get me wrong, the thankfulness for another day, another opportunity, another blessing, is still very real for me but I find that I am now wondering "why me?"

Why was I saved? Why am I still here? I feel a need to do something amazing, big, important in response to the amzing, big, and important thing that God has done for me. I find myself feeling like I couldn't possibly be nice enough, love well enough, or serve heartily enough to warrant this gift of time that I've been given.

So, what do I do now? I have prayed for guidance, asked for help from on high, and looked to The Bible for help and I'm still waiting for answers. In the meantime it appears that as any good soldier must, I need to continue on in my last duties till new marching orders are forthcoming.

What I do now is continue to pray for my family, friends, community, and any other needs that present themselves. I continue to write, encourage in both print and in person, I continue to raise my children and serve my community, and I do my best to honor God however I can.

Still, it seems like an awfully small offering in comparison to the gift, but then a gift is free isn't it? God doesn't expect me to earn His favor, nor does He expect me to repay His kindness because there is no way that I could.

God is so gracious friends. He is loving and merciful and His love for us is not dependant on how good or bad we are. And He is an amazing, big, important gift giver too. He desires time with us, relationship with us, and He desires for us to receive the gifts He offers. After all, how sad is a gift that is never received?

Until next time friends,
blessings and peace and love to you all~
Andora Henson, thewritingmommy

So, I had a heart attack....

I'm 47 years old. I am a survivor of many things. I live with the chronic pain of fibromyalgia and have since 1997. I survived cancer, childhood sexual abuse, foster homes, poverty and homelessness, and well, the list goes one but you get the picture. I have always felt that surviving the many cards I was dealt made me stronger by God's grace, and on July 14, 2013 I added another to my list of crazy things I have lived through.... I survived a heart attack.

It wasn't a big dramatic thing, in fact I wasn't sure it was really a heart attack and waited until the pastor had finished his sermon before I even mentioned anything. I was going to stay for the business meeting that followed till the sweating started again. I told my husband, "I think I may need to go to the hospital." He knew I had been feeling poorly so he gathered the troops and met me at the van where I quickly told him "maybe we should just go home so I can rest." We had an extra child with us since my oldest daughter had a friend stay over the night before and we always met this family at the hospital since it was a middle point between our homes. As we arrived the nausea, chest pains, jaw pain, and profuse sweating began again so since we were at the hospital anyway I decided "I'll just go on in and have this checked out. Just in case..."

About an hour later the E.R. doctor came in and sat down next to the slab I was on that they called a bed and told me " well, it appears that you did indeed have yourself a little heart attack."
My first reaction was to laugh. I don't know why, it just was, but I stifled that reaction so that they wouldn't add insanity to my diagnosis. It still seems surreal.

Since that day I have found that one artery was blocked at 70% and another at 80%. Both have been stented and the prognosis is good as I understand it.

My husband, sisters, family, and friends have been amazing and supportive. I have had days when I felt that this must all have been a dream, days that I felt like I was run over by a truck, really tired days but mostly I have very grateful days. I keep expecting to have more of what I call A.H.A. (after heart attack) moments where I have piercing bouts of insight and wisdom, but I'm still waiting for those. I had one, just one, the Sunday after I got out of the hospital, exactly one week after the heart attack. I was washing the dishes that somehow gather after we all go to bed while waiting for my coffee to brew. I stood looking out of my window over the sink and thought "I'm so grateful that I get to wash my dishes today."

I would like to say that I have not lost my temper since that day but that isn't true. I'd like to say that I take everything with a grain of salt and perspective but even that isn't completely true, while it is more true than before. The truth is more like; I am quicker to remember that it all counts, that I'm so blessed to still be here, and that I have a purpose in God's kingdom or I wouldn't still be here.

I'm still a work in progress, as are we all. And I'm so thankful to still be "in progress". 

Blessings and peace to you all,
Andora Henson, thewritingmommy

Redeemed - Big Daddy Weave (With Lyrics)

A Dream Come True!

Well, it finally happened, my dream of having a published novel is coming true.

My novel One Perfect Now is finally available in print and online.

I have always wanted to be an author, since I was a small child. I would write poems and stories and such; I was always scribbling away in a corner.

This isn't my first novel of course, just the first to be published. There were others whose character's lives were given in experimental settings and plots only to waste away in files and draws and boxes under beds. There were many unfinished stories as well that I poured over for months only to move on to other stories, or the laundry or meal preparations.

And then I heard of NaNoWriMo, otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month. I had heard of it before but last year, in 2012, I took the challenge and One Perfect Now is the result.

I felt inspired and I believe that this was the easiest 50k words I ever wrote or considered writing. Actually, it was the first time I had written fifty thousand consecutive words ever on one story. I felt inspired, anointed, blessed, and on November 30, 2012 at 9:59am I finished the last word, just a little over fifty-one thousand.

I put it away for a month so that I could get some distance, perspective, and so that I could prepare for Christmas with the family. Then in January I read, revised, edited, and critiqued the words I had written. I was excited to find that it was actually a pretty good story. I sent it to others to be critiqued and edited. After further revisions, I sent it to a proof reader and self-proclaimed "grammar Nazi" who gave her suggestions and after a final revision, I began the publishing process on Createspace.com

I do not like the publishing and marketing process of writing nearly so much as I like the writing part. I do however love the being a published author part. That part rocks!

One Perfect Now preview  is available here, please do come check it out.

So, that's my publishing story, for this book anyway. There is another one book hot on the heels of this one though and that story will be altogether different.

No matter how old you are, how long you've been waiting, or who has tried to talk you out of it, if you feel that God has called you to do something, if you have a passionate desire and dream that has yet to come true, keep working at it, searching, trying- keep on dreaming y'all cause I'm here to tell you, dreams do come true and when they do, it totally rocks!

Till next time,
Peace and love from
TheWritingMommy

You never know what you're gonna get....

I have to admit, I am just not an avid blogger. I have been working as a freelancer and many of the jobs that I'm offered (that I must decline unfortunately) include blogging. So, it looks like I will be working on this lapse in writing judgement. I will however be adding a different blog than this one because, while I love the name of this blog, I was just awakened to the fact that "unmaksed" can mean something very different to some people.

I was looking for my blog, this blog, and typed "unmasked" in the browser.... WHOA! was I ever shocked at what jumped up on my computer screen! I mean, no covert landing page that you had to navigate through to get to the hard stuff, just in your face (literally) people doing lots of stuff with and without masks. Oh My GOOOOOOODNESS!

So, in an effort to keep that from happening to anyone else trying to find my blog, I will create another, fresh, and carefully named blog. Oh, and I will write on it more regularly than this one. Because I'm a writer, and apparently, we blog.

Peace y'all~

TheWritingMommy

and in local news....

Recently, one of the small towns that make up my community has come under attack. Why? Supposedly, it is because of “Religion”. I feel however that it is because of a misunderstanding and a choice.

See, supposedly someone was offended by a nativity scene decoration on the lawn of “the square”, which is the place right in the middle of the town where the court house and other government buildings are located.

I think however there is a big misunderstanding though. Some people want to believe that when others talk about Jesus or God that they are trying to change someone’s mind. I know they are wrong.

To illustrate I’ll just make it a bit more personal since to me, it is very personal.

When I write personal pieces, comments on social websites, when I speak to crowds or in normal everyday conversations, anyone who has read or heard what I have to say will not that I often mention God, or Jesus, or The Holy Spirit, or the fact that I’m blessed or something of that nature.

Most people who know me realize that I am not proselytizing, making an “argument” for Christianity, or trying to persuade anyone. When I talk about Jesus, my personal Savior and Lord I am mentioning my love, my friend, the most important thing in my life.  Think about it, when you begin a relationship with anyone, you talk about them- a lot. When you meet someone you hold in high esteem, you also mention that you have met them, that you know them, the name comes up in conversation, a lot. I think that is why I talk about Jesus, God, so much. While I have known Him intimately for several years now, (since October 27, 1993) I fall in love with Him afresh every day; a lot like I do with my husband, but even more so.

Every morning when I wake up I’m amazed at all the wonders that God has made available to us. Personally, I remember every morning that my life wasn’t always so blessed and I thank God because I know He is the difference. I thank God that I have a home because I have been homeless and that I have food because I have known hungry. I thank God that can feel love because I see and hear hate all over when I watch the news, or turn on the computer, listen to the radio, or even sometimes just go to Wal Mart. I knew rage and pain and abuse at one time and now my life is filled with peace and hope and goodness. You better believe when I wake in the mornings I thank God for this life and lest you think my life is idyllic or I’m some sort of Pollyanna, think again. I know personally the ravages of living in this world and I make a choice, every day, not to pursue pain and meanness and hate.

I make a choice and my choice is Jesus.

I don’t condemn anyone who doesn’t make that choice and it isn’t fair that anyone should demand that I change mine. This is where the nativity comes in; that scene is a celebration to me. When we have a baby we send out announcements, we call people, we give silly candy cigars to everyone we meet, even strangers. They don’t have to take them but we do because we are happy, proud, celebratory, over this blessed event in our lives. Every time I see that decoration on the lawn in the square in Athens I am reminded of the celebration of the birth of one very dear to me. I don’t get upset because there are Santa decorations, or little elves or gnomes. I don’t celebrate these things but it doesn’t bother me that others do. So why does it bother others so much that I celebrate the way I, and so many others have chosen to?

I believe I know why. I believe that because they have chosen not to believe in God, or Jesus, they think we, those who do believe, are trying to change their minds. Well, I’d like to send a message to anyone who doesn’t believe in God or Jesus, ready? RELAX. No one is trying to change your mind. We are not trying to make you celebrate anything you don’t want to but it is wrong for you to “demand” that I not celebrate something so dear to me.

And since the Constitution was brought into this local matter, The Constitutional declaration that separates “church and state” was included so that no government would be able to force any citizen to practice a particular faith choice.

The local government ALLOWS citizens to erect the decorations, it does NOT REQUIRE that they do.

That same Constitution, that by the way I hold very dear to my heart as well, says that I have the right to free speech too, just as we all do, and to the pursuit of happiness. There you have it. Jesus makes me happy. He makes a lot of us in this area happy, and we have every right to demonstrate that happiness by erecting decorations that display that happiness anywhere it is lawful.

Since no laws were broken, and the local government didn’t force anyone to erect those decorations, it seems this was just all a big misunderstanding over choice.

So now we can all go back to decking the halls. Merry Christmas, oh and Happy Holidays if you don’t celebrate Christmas.

Getting Social

For the past year I have been working hard to build my writing portfolio beyond the comfortable and into the profitable. Over these past months I have learned this one lesson above all others: the more I learn about social networking, the less I feel I know!

I have learned that Word Press is another name for FRUSTRATING!, and that designing a website is way harder than it looks no matter how "user friendly" the "anyone can do it" advertising says it is.

I have also learned that it is okay, even imperative at times to ask questions. And I have learned that I despite all my fears and frustrations, I am capable of so much more than I thought.

"I can do ALL things through Christ who gives me strength" has become my mantra on some days. Knowing I don't have to "go it alone" makes all the difference.

I'm thankful for all the lessons this year. I made some writing goals in January and to my great delight and the cheers of faithful friends, family, and fans, I have met them, and even exceeded some.

So, while this whole "social networking" thing is still confusing to me sometimes (I am sooooo happy that I don't have a web cam!!), I know I will eventually figure it out. Maybe that will be next year's goal?

Until next time,

Peace