A Tribute

Earlier tonight I was thinking about how critical support is to dreaming. Without my husband’s consistent and demonstrated support, I wouldn’t be writing. It would be an ember of a dream rather than a reality.

Every time I would think about writing, start fixating on the hunger to do something special with words, my husband listened so patiently. He never once said I was crazy or that I couldn’t/shouldn’t/wouldn’t do it. Instead, he encouraged me and listened.

Then, when I met Colleen Coble, he’s the one that told her I wanted to be a writer. I would have talked about her books all day but never shared that dream. She was too good, and it was too small. I would have never risked having her knock down my dream (which is so not in her character anyway!). So my husband handled that for me.

But he’s also been supportive in other key ways. Just last night he rearranged his schedule (which also meant rescheduling a test in one of his master classes), so that I could attend a lecture an hour away that happened to be on a topic I think would make a great plot. He also found the lecture and told me about it. He’s constantly alerting me to other trends that might be useful. He frees me up on so many weekends so I can got to writing events and workshops. He encouraged me to run for the ACFW board knowing I couldn’t give less than 100% to it.

Without him, I wouldn’t be writing. I wouldn’t have one book coming out,and be waiting for contracts on two more. I wouldn’t have the encouragement I needed to tweak a book once more to send it back to an editor who liked it but needed an addition made to it. I wouldn’t have my sounding board that was so key when choosing an agent.

So, if you are writing, I hope your spouse is as supportive. And if they aren’t, I pray God will bring someone else into your life who will help encourage the dream.