Thursday, July 28, 2011

I'm Gonna Do It

I was so overwhelmed by the encouragement, messages and comments I received from so many of you as I pitched the idea to you all about writing a book. This is something I've been putting off for a few years. Maybe if I update you guys along the way, it'll help me stay the course. I don't know if that's how it gets done and I don't know how true I can be to do it this way, but let's give it a try. Writers' groups do it all the time but I can't commit to a group and to writing a book and to my family and fantastic new job in full-time ministry and, and, and. (Did I tell you I'm training for a marathon, too?)
So here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to post from my rough draft from time-to-time. It won't be pretty. it'll just be me getting it out there. I'm not going to proof read it before you see it. And what I get feedback-wise will help me gauge how I need to tweak and make edits. Feel free to contact me through Facebook or my email. If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here.
So tonight, before I sat down to do this post, I went back to the very first night when I first heard from Charity that Allie was on the way to the hospital. I read the post, and below is what I wrote. Be gentle with me.
From my blog:

If you're a praying person, please pray for my granddaughter, Ali Rae Mondok. My daughter, Charity, called a few minutes ago and said that Ali was in an ambulance with her father. She had stopped breathing. The paramedics got her breathing again, but her heart rate is still way high.
rough draft:
I don't know if I've ever been so stunned by a phone call. I had just returned from a week of visiting missionaries with my buddy Norman an elder from our church down in Costa Rica. It was a good trip, but I was tired and happy to be back home in my own bed. I always look forward to returning to the regular routine when I return from time on the road especially an international one.
As a missionary to Africa, South East Asia, and South America, I've seen incredible poverty and suffering. Sometimes, stepping into the lives of people in other cultures who are trapped in their poverty, suffering or affliction, it causes great emotion to well up inside and sometimes even gush out. I always felt like some of the people I've visiting or meeting for the first time in poverty in a foreign place are trapped there. And I wish I could just help them get out. And I wonder why they were born into their lives and I got to be born into mine. Sometimes I would lay in my borrowed bed in a tent or hut or hotel room and just weep for the people I ministered to. I felt so helpless.
I comforted myself by reminding myself that I get to go home soon. Soon, I'll be out of this. This sometimes made me feel worse because I knew that the people I was serving would still be here when I got home.
I found myself in a daze for the first few days when I was home. I'd follow my wife around in the Big Box Grocery Store feeling lost and overwhelmed by the abundance while the people I left in Africa or South East Asia or South America suffered from lack.
Now I knew I was getting ready to experience lack that I wouldn't be able to get away from. It didn't matter, I think, how good I was or how bad I was. This is just the life I was born into.

1 comment:

Kandi said...

Yay Bryon! You and Susan have a story to tell to the Glory of God!