A New Batch of Babies Has Arrived

The first shipment of my latest book has arrived. 

It’s always exciting to see that Amazon box on my doorstep and to rip it open, allowing my youngest babies to hatch.

I got the idea for this book several years ago when I was fighting my second kidney stone. That was when I took the picture holding my “kidney stones,” not imagining it would grace the cover of any book. But I was inspired to write about the pain I’d been having, wondering if what pain taught me about life would be helpful to anyone else. 

Fast forward to the pain that started in my lower back the weekend of April 1st last year. The pain that seeped into the fabric of my very being and is still plaguing me today. 

I started putting this book together about that time and began working on edits by fall. The problem was my pain was still shifting, evolving, even some days abating, so that I couldn’t decide when to declare that the book was finished. But what if that never happened?

And it hasn’t. Even though the pain, in general, is much less, I can live normally at least half the days of each week. I continue to adjust to this life – the other half of the week when the pain is manageable, but still leaves me mainly on the couch all day. 

I only pray that I am back to normal before I come up with forty more days’ worth of devotions.

Order your copy online by clicking here or message me to get a signed copy. Chris 

Where my pictures came from.

 In case you haven’t gotten your copy of my latest book, “Bones and Stones and Pain, Oh, My”, here is a little excerpt. It also tells you where the cover photo came from.

 “Be joyful in hope; patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” (Romans 12:12, NIV)

             We had been having a good time camping in the U.P., until around 4:30 Friday morning.

            I won't go into detail. I did avoid a trip to the ER, thanks to the fantastic people I work with at the clinic back home, who gave me a phone visit by eight a.m. and called in some drugs to the pharmacy near where we were camped. That makes it sound so simple.

            In reality, I was writhing in pain in our truck in the pharmacy's parking lot, waiting for those prescriptions to be filled. The curse of a previous vacation – dratted kidney stone. I feel like such a wimp. I know anyone who has had a kidney stone will tell you it is the worst pain they've ever had.

            But really, Chris? Writhing in pain? Acting crazy, pacing in the parking lot, squatting on the pavement, nearly throwing up (by the way, those doggy poop bags they have in park dispensers can double as puke bags).

            At one point, as I was sitting on the truck's running board, I turned to prayer. My usual – God, I know You have better things to do, but can You please make this pain go away.

            I looked down at the pavement and saw this heart-shaped pebble. Okay, God did not take away my pain. I don't know why; that's His decision, but He let me know that He was still with me.

            That's not the end of the story, though. After several trips into the pharmacy, Hubby came out again to report that they had the prescriptions, but it would take about 20 minutes for them to be ready. He asked if I wanted to ride around town.

            I answered sure.

            There was a picturesque church in town that I wanted to check out, so I asked him to drive there. I barely looked at the building, though, as I kept pacing and squatting and dry-heaving in the parking lot.

            Until I saw a bunch of loose pebbles on the blacktop. I scooped them up and told Hubby I would take them home and tell people they were my kidney stones. This was all before I even took a narcotic pain pill!

            I don't know. To me it is proof again that God answers our every prayer, maybe not how we would like. But He always has an answer. And if His answer is to bless me with a weird sense of humor, who am I to doubt Him.

This, however, is the picture on the back cover of the book. The heart in the pavement in the parking lot was too small and became too distorted when I zoomed in on it. This heart here is from one of the buildings at Kinstone in Fountain City, WI. A much nicer place than that parking lot. 

Click on this link to order your copy of this devotional. 

And here is the latest book

 

 Once again, it has been way too long since I posted anything to this blog. And I even have something to say this time!

As you may know, if you follow me on social media, I finally published my latest book, a devotional / memoir about pain. "Bones, and Stones, and Pain, Oh, My" is available on Amazon.com as a paperback or an e-book. I am also ordering some to sell directly; I'll let you know when they arrive.

The topic of pain sounds like a real downer. Why would anyone want to read this?

Quite simply, each of the forty-one entries is meant to give you hope and lift you from whatever emotional or physical pain you might be in. Hopefully, you even get a chuckle out of some of the entries. I can find humor in some of the most non-humorous situations. I am not sure if that's a blessing or a curse.

But here is one blessing – the back pain that assaulted me in April of last year and then morphed into chronic pain practically all over my body has started to ease. I really wanted to wait and publish the book after the pain was all gone so I could end with a devotion about how faithful God is, and how He answers our every prayer, and how He answered mine.

Here's the thing. God did answer my prayer. He answered it in His way, and I'm thankful that each day, I wake up and can get out of bed, no matter how much pain I might still be in. I can still get out of bed! Do you know how many people worldwide can't get out of bed? Or don't have a bed to get out of!  

Anyway, so this book is set up as a forty-day devotional, with an additional devotion at the end to sum up. But it is also a memoir, as each entry was written from my own experiences. Over the past twenty years, I wrote about each of those incidents on my other blog, The Dino Chronicles.

So that's a little background. Check it out online by clicking here, or keep watching this blog for more tidbits from the book.