Worth the Weight

As we eagerly await the first birthday of Birdie & Mipps, and as I wade through the weighty details of the publication of my third picture book, I'm pondering the homophones wait and weight.

Two very different words and concepts, but oddly connected, too.

Let's consider the writing process, because books are not born overnight. In fact, when readers ask me how long it takes me to write a book, the answer is typically at least a year, sometimes more. With Mr. Quigley's Keys, the idea came about ten years before the book came out. I cooked on the title and the little bit of reality that I had to go on, then I watched and waited. I traveled to schools of character all over the nation and observed the janitors, custodians, and maintenance staff. But it took the gift of time during the pandemic for me to actually put the idea into words in a text, secure an artist, find a publisher, and get the book on the market. Along the way, a lot of heavy lifting: gathering a focus group, edits that kept me up at night, disagreements with my illustrator that threatened our timeline. Then, in a rush to release on my 60th birthday, a significant error that needed to be fixed, but was now in print and in the hands of a few of my friends and followers. Huge heartache for a {recovering} perfectionist. 

But was it all worth the weight? No question.

With Birdie & Mipps, a seed for the story was planted at my brother's funeral, when almost everyone asked me if I knew how Mark got his nickname. Most people only knew him by Mipps; he even had it on his car's license plate for awhile. But hardly anyone knew why they called him that. 

So it got me to thinking about writing a book about nicknames.

One of my greatest memories will always be getting to 

share the story with Mom before she Jesus took her home.

With my upcoming picture book, which I got to read to the fifth-grade authors pictured above last week, the seed was this pair of slippers, which was left on my Grandma Larsen's needles after her death. My sister found them in Mom's closet, but her hands were too arthritic to knit anymore, so she gave them to me, to finish. I brought this shot along to the author visit and shared those details with the class, to let them know how a picture, with enough time and nourishment, can turn into a story.

That was 2019; I gave the finished pair to Mom in March of 2020.

Look how happy she is to have her mom's handiwork one. more. time.

And the book, based on these slippers, is due to release

five years after the fact, in early September of 2025.

Worth the wait? Absolutely. And the weight? For sure.

And speaking of September, our daughter is due

about the time that our new book comes out.

And we can't wait!

But a lot has to happen between conception and birth, right? I gave birth to three children, and it's a long ten months of changes and challenges as the baby incubates inside of us. We gain weight while we wait even as we watch what we eat and drink, to set the baby up for optimal success from the start. It's a hard ten months, even without complications, like the gestational diabetes that rocked my world during my middle pregnancy. I laugh now, but that nurse wasn't kidding when she told me I couldn't go home from my diabetes training that afternoon until I'd learned to take my own blood sample by sticking my finger with that needle four times a day.

It was a heavy burden to carry, but the light at the end 

of that tunnel made it all worth the weight and the wait.

 

Just look at that son's daughter thirty years later on his sister's lap.

So today's post begs the question: What are you going through

that's totally worth the wait? How about the weight?

My prayer for you, dear reader, is that you don't ever

think that you have to go through the weight or wait alone.

Because we are wired for connection and never meant to 

do this thing called life on our own, by ourselves, or in isolation.

So grab your people, thank them for being by your side,

and remind them that they make whatever you're going through ...

worth the weight.