An Absence Explained...And A Hope For The Future

It's been awhile since I did any blogging, much less on this site, as my previous posts testify, but it was suggested to me that I start posting again, so I'm gonna give it a shot and see how it goes.

Just a bit about what has happened since I was last active, and I'll be quiet.

In January 2013, I started my second year of college, and in February of that year, I decided to change my major from English to Criminal Justice. Because I was already in the other classes and partway through the semester, I couldn't switch my schedule around to work with my new major, so in the fall of 2013 and the spring of 2014, I took all of my required Criminal Justice classes.

In May of 2014, I graduated with an Associate in Arts, an Associate in Science, and an Associate in Applied Science in Criminal Justice.

I would continue my schooling through Missouri Baptist University, starting my Bachelor in Criminal Justice in the fall of 2014, and soon to graduate with it on May 3, 2016. In the fall of 2015, however, I started classes to receive a certificate in Computer Forensics, a specialty within the Criminal Justice field that was offered at the local junior college. This certificate will be completed in December of 2016, due to a class--part one of two--which was cancelled this semester.

Rewind back to November of 2013, and my Pappy passed away. That was when I stopped writing. To cope with the pain of losing him, however, I would sometimes write poems, letting everything inside me flow out onto the paper. It helped, some. But I couldn't make myself go back to my books.

Why?

Pappy was my editor, and every time I sat down and tried to work on one of the manuscripts in the Love Blossoms series, I couldn't do it. My writing spirit was broken, shattered when I received the news of Pappy's death. He lived in Arizona with my Grammy, and throughout 2011 and 2012, he edited the first book in the series, Love Blossoms On Snowy Mountain, marking up his proof copy of the book as he found mistakes. He would call every week and tell me what he had caught, and I would correct it.

And for the first time in my life, Pappy wasn't there for me to call and get advice from, or talk about the books or how my math class was going, tell him about the guy I liked, or laugh over memories with. And for the first time, when I sat down with my manuscript for the second book in the series, Love Blossoms On Pine Creek, which Pappy had been an avid supporter of and had wanted to read, I couldn't work on it. I sat there and bawled like a baby.

To this day, I've been able to occasionally go back to those manuscripts and do a few little things, like read a part of one or do some editing on a few paragraphs of another, but I haven't had the heart to even continue writing that series, or stick with the editing until at least a part of it was done. I've started numerous short stories, but never finished a single one.

I'm hoping to be able to go back to the Love Blossoms series eventually, but I'm still not sure when "eventually" will come. But the whole reason I'm even writing any of this is because my brother-in-law, who I acquired May 22, 2013, suggested I start writing again. However, while he did include the LB series, he mentioned my blogging specifically. He seems to think I have a gift for connecting things in the Bible, such as stories or just different verses, to situations we face in life almost every day. That is what I would like to mainly post about, although I'm sure some posts about the LB series will sneak in from time to time when I finally do pick them back up again.

To end what turned into a slightly longer explanation than expected, I'd like to say thank you for sticking with it and reading the whole post, long as it was, and I hope to see you again in the future. Here's to many more posts and many lives touched!

In Christ,

Esther Faith