2023 Year in Review

"...the future all unknown."

Happy New Year!

As I sit down to write about the happenings of 2023, I find myself at a bit of a loss. 2023 was…kind of normal. In fact, one could say it’s been downright boring. 2022 was a whiz-banger of a ride. I truly don’t know how I survived it. It is no exaggeration to say that it was and remains the wildest year of my entire life. Read all about it here:

And yet, I am so grateful for the normalcy. I haven’t had a normal year for a while. By normal, I mean that my health has more or less stopped swooping and swinging around like some sort of carnival ride. I just feel so much better. (More about that later.) No house purchases, no moves, no stunning mold revelations like last year! Just living at home, writing, getting fully immersed in our church for the first time because…for the first time, Jonathon’s political work hasn’t been taking us all over the state since retiring from the state legislature. It’s been lovely.

January was quiet, though not without its small gains and improvements.

Last year in October, I’d had my oxalate revelation in which I finally discovered the role these nasty little crystals abundant in spinach, potatoes, nuts, and chocolate were playing in the remaining unpleasant symptoms I was dealing with.

I began slowly cutting down on high-oxalate foods at the end of 2022 and have continued for the entire year of 2023. It was a long and painstaking process which continues to this day. The lower I went at the beginning, though, the more my body would dump the offending particles bringing on some unpleasant and sometimes bizarre symptoms. GI upset and frequent runs to the toilet in the hours between 10:00 PM and 3:00 AM (it was weird how oddly and specifically timed this was…always in the middle of the night, rarely in the day), excruciating neck pain that lasted for around three months, nausea, fatigue. I just kept at it and plugged away at my writing on the days I had too much pain to keep going as usual.

I guess I can thank my oxalate detox for all the progress I made on 27 and all the good pieces I wrote for you on Substack. Every time I had to give up and go back to bed, I’d get writing. What else was I going to do stuck in bed, feeling yuck!? I made steady progress on 27 all throughout January, February, and April.

The month of April was probably the most eventful of all the months. I got bitten by the Spring bug hard some time in February. I started all kinds of flower seeds inside, and Jonathon tilled up a brand new flower bed for me. I was determined to have flowers by the bushel. I got a bunch of discount bulbs at Aldi and planted everything a couple days before Easter. The night before Easter Sunday, it rained as in the days of Noah. The neighbor’s cows took this opportunity to spring a jail break, and in the middle of the night, they stepped all over the new bed, leaving four-inch deep hoof prints in every square foot of space, churning up dahlia bulbs and mashing and bashing sunflower seeds in their wake. In spite of it all, things sprouted. They were all slightly rearranged, but they sprouted and the flower bed had begun to make promises of those bushels of flowers I dreamt of, right before it was time to head into my next adventure, “The Goes Wrong Show.”

At the end of April, two sisters-in-law’s moves across states in opposite directions, a homeless man’s shopping cart, and a planned trip to Colorado to visit my family collided in the most spectacular fashion. You really must read all about it, if you missed that entry last year:

May was yet another quiet month. I continued lowering oxalates, feeling great some days and horrible others. I chugged along with 27 and found myself well beyond the half-way point. I came back from Colorado to find my flower garden beginning to bloom. The gladiolus were putting on their showy display and my zinnias were picking up steam. Near the end of the month, I sang The Lord’s Prayer for a friend’s wedding and all the mamas and grandmas cried as tradition demands.

June came, and I could feel a subtle shift inside my body. I still had a few rotten days, but something felt different. I tried not to think about it too much for fear of getting bogged down in too much weighty expectation. Instead I burst out of the house every fine day I could and played with my flowers. I cut bouquet after bouquet of zinnias and gladiolus. I transplanted my Shasta daisies, black eyed susans, echinacea, carnations, painted daisies, yarrow, and lupine I started from seed and fussed over them like a mama hen. (Most of them are still alive and I’m crossing my fingers and hoping against hope they start blooming this year!)

And of course I kept writing. But I ran into a little hiccup. It was myself. I was getting towards the last stretch of 27’s story and I kept putting off finishing it. I had a notion that it was going so well, I was bound to ruin the last six or seven chapters. And I was so afraid of ruining the book, I messed about with a lot of editing and rewriting old material for much too long. Silly, I know. I guess it’s a writer’s thing.

In July, I had a lovely visit with my brother and his family up in my home state of Michigan over the 4th of July. After many trials and travails at the hands of Southwest Airlines, I finally got home. My irritable soul brightened at the sight of rows and rows of sunflowers, all sorts and colors, finally blooming! I cut loads of those and added them to my zinnia bouquets! You can read all about my harrowing journey in Another “Goes Wrong Show.”

However, I was annoyed. I was almost done with my novel, and I couldn’t overcome my fear of ruining the story and just get it done. I had reached out to one of my mentors, Michael Collins, earlier and he was willing to read what I had and give me some feed back. At the end of July, we had an opportunity to meet in person and I was buoyed up by his genuine high praise of my writing, the story, and my growth as a writer the story displayed. After that, I got back down to business and started writing more new material.

In August, my mom, younger brother and his family all came to visit me and we enjoyed spending time with each other for a few weeks. I had a slight setback in the oxalate department by over indulging in some gorgeous and delicious homegrown tomatoes our neighbor brought over for us to enjoy and developed a week-long stomach ache. It took me a while to make the connection between the tomatoes and my stomach, but once I did and quit eating them, my stomach ache picked up and left. Not much writing happened that month, as my adorable, precocious, busy and extremely chatty five-year-old niece more or less bombed my writing schedule. After all, nieces need doll clothes made for their dolls and I couldn’t just let her go back home without any new doll dresses, could I?

I made some progress all throughout September, writing here and there, trying to balance writing with all my other projects and duties. But near the end of September, I was so anxious to have the thing done, I said to Jonathon one day, “I just want to sit down and write this thing to the end without interruption. Let the dishes wash themselves! Let the laundry stand up with stink in the hamper! Let the floors get filthy! But the book needs to get done!” Alright, those weren’t my exact words, but you get the picture. Jonathon just looked at me with a gleam in his eye and said, “Then do it.”

And so I did. In about one week, I wrote something like 25,000 words and finished it. It was such a weird feeling. Finished. All done. Finally. After all these years. And you know something else? I loved it. I love the story. And you want to know another thing? Everyone else who’s read it so far loves it, too.

The rest of the year, Jonathon and I worked on getting some rudimentary copies printed to hand to people of influence who will hopefully read it and give the book an endorsement and/or review.

But something else happened. I suddenly realized that my stomach had stopped hurting, my bladder had completely stopped flaring, and my monthly cycles stopped hurting in excruciating fashion. All throughout October, November and December I have had a hope springing up in my heart. It goes like this:

Maybe, I’ll live the rest of my life without constant stomach pain. Maybe, I won’t have periods of months where I’m too exhausted to think straight. Maybe, my monthly cycles from now on will just be times where I feel a little more tired than normal instead of curled up in a fetal position in spite of the ibuprofen already in my system? Maybe, I won’t have weeks where I feel anxious about leaving the house because of a bladder flare. Maybe, I’ll get to live the rest of my life feeling…like a healthy human being?

Friends, I’ve never had those maybes before. Ever. Maybe it won’t happen, but I’ve never had the hope before and that’s something worth celebrating.

I wonder what will happen next year? Will I find a publisher for 27? Someone who believes in the book? Believes that it can sell? Will I get to talk to people about the book? People who have audiences? People who will let me share my book and the hope behind it with their audiences, the way I keep hoping against hope I can?

Well, I don’t know. But I do know this:

Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin? The blood of Jesus whispers peace within.

Peace, perfect peace, by thronging duties pressed? To do the will of Jesus, this is rest.

Peace, perfect peace, death shadowing us and ours? Jesus has vanquished death and all its powers.

Peace, perfect peace, our future all unknown? Jesus we know, and he is on the throne.

It is enough: earth’s struggles soon shall cease, and Jesus call to heaven’s perfect peace. Edward Henry Bickersteth

Whenever you think of it, would you pray with me that God would see fit to let 27 be a story that thousands and more will read? I think it’s worthy of that, but God knows how many worthy stories grow dust in writer’s filing cabinets every year without seeing the light of day. I would so appreciate your prayers.

I will continue doing my utmost to improve my health, promote 27…all the things. But the outcome is in the Lord’s hands.

Hope that’s a comforting thought to you in the year ahead. Once again, Happy New Year. I’ll see you all in writing next week.

That’s all for now. Until next time, folks…