First Runner Up

My hands have no blood.  I’m a rag doll with a too-heavy head cocked to one side.  Roving eyes blindly scan the room without focus, then stare hypnotically at the Star of Bethlehem softly shining in the darkness behind our nativity.  Maybe I should pinch myself.  There.  I did it. 

I’m here.  This is really happening.

A month ago I raised my sails, caught a stiff, very competitive wind, and courageously sailed into a non-fiction book contest.  It was gutsy business, and I spent countless hours refining the entry: a table of contents, first chapter, and overview of the forecasted remaining chapters.

I just received an email notification with the results.  My entry was awarded first runner-up!

This moment, this sitting-in-the-dark moment with the congratulatory news crawling across my screen, seems like a dream.  I’ve wanted to write for as long as I can remember.  Even in high school, some crazy-deep compulsion told me I must write (and dance, but that’s another story), but life crowded in with its throngs of screaming necessities and I didn’t give myself permission for almost half a century. 

Eventually, seven years ago to be exact, the cork popped off the fermenting internal brew. God Himself answered a tearful heart-cry and led me to an online writing guild where the pent-up words – decades worth – started spilling all over the page with every weekly contest.  Words upon words inspired still more words (you never run out, says Anne Lamotte) until eventually I wrote this year’s Page Turner Contest entry.

My head feels detached from my body - dizzy, floating somewhere else.  I’ve been recognized.  That means I must finish the book!  With God’s help I will.