Looking Back, Looking Forward, by Paula Rose Michelson


I received my editors first draft notes and the manuscript of Casa de Naomi: The House of Blessing Book Two a week ago, and reviewed the comments and text. Happy to discover that I had successfully applied what I learned while editing book one, I knew I needed to think through the comments and speak with Hillary before I began working on the edit of book two. So yesterday was my ‘Get to It Day!’ I say that because as a scribe for God, I wait until I know (and I cannot tell you how I know) that this is exactly the moment to begin. And since all things have a beginning including God’s Word, I felt that you might like to know about my Genesis. If you’re wondering why I say Genesis, it’s because that word means beginning. That title is taken from Genesis 1:1, which says, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Being a stickler for wanting to know what happened before the beginning, or what motivated a person or character to act as they do, I thought you’d like to know how God prepared and helped me edit book one and book two, so today I’m looking back and forward. So let’s return to yesteryear, which would be April 2011 when I fell and broke my hip while working through the edits to the first novel in the Casa Saga. Though dealing with pain might sound like a part of the Jewish lifestyle, I can attest that I never have enjoyed pain, nor am I fond of being housebound. Yet the ten days I stayed home before I became a pin-up-girl (the surgeon pinned my hip), and the subsequent weeks I spent learning to walk, getting up stairs, and discovering what works best proved to create a sort of vacuum where I could devote myself to the editing process. I say that because my missionary husband was traveling and the friend that was taking care of me went to work, returning to fix meals, shop, spend the night, etc., sometimes throughout the weekend since she owns a personal app company.

This time nothing’s changed. Well almost nothing…I say that because it’s true that I haven’t slipped on a grape at a potluck and broken my other hip like I did in 2011. But I have, praise the Lord for gifts that seem like anything but, been ill. In fact this is my eight or ninth week (I’ve lost count) of being almost housebound. Yes, I’ve dragged myself to book events, spoken at libraries, and orchestrated book signings for me and many of my Laguna Beach Chapter of Pen Women friends. However, by the time I received Hilary’s edit, I was so done in that I needed to take a break from all the activities that populated my world since Casa de Naomi: The House of Blessing Book One released on December 20, 2011. And God, knowing me better than I know myself, did not ask me to do what I could not, he orchestrated things in such a way that I am blessed once more to discover that the lover of my soul, loves me and knows what I need and when.

If you haven’t answered His call upon your heart, I pray that you do so today. For there is nothing that He will ask you to give up, yet in knowing Him your idea of what matters and why will be change in the twinkling of an eye. For as Romans 8:37 says, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

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