I (Robin) am so excited to let you know that I just finished a round of edits on a new book coming out very soon!  Several years back, I felt compelled to write a book.  Of course, I didn’t know where to start, but I knew that it would be centered around our daughter’s life.  Our journey with her has taught us so many lesson and encouraged 1000s of people.  There was no question in my mind that God was calling us to get this into book form.

For several years, I toyed around with different ideas.  We started blogging and trying to process all the thoughts, emotions, feelings, and theology that has come out over the last 17 years.  I could never really nail down a concise message until the fall of 2016.  I was speaking at a friend’s church in Austin, and he asked me to use our story with a particular verse in the Bible.  John 5 talks about a crippled man who was asked by Jesus, “Would you like to be made whole?”  As I began to dig into this passage and look at our daughter’s life, it was clear that she was a shinning example of someone who was whole.  I knew that modern society would be shocked to hear this. How could she be whole? What made her whole? How did that play out in everyday life?

After I spoke that Sunday, I got a great response from the congregation (a very white, well-off crowd).  Ha!  Then, over the next 2 years, I did a lot of international travel and spoke the same message to people in Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, and India.  Typically, I really wrestle with speaking over seas because of the cultural differences.  It is intimidating to figure out how to relate to people that are so completely different.  However, I decided to simply give the same message using my daughter’s story.  I didn’t change anything.  In every country I got the same result.  People were deeply impacted with the simple message of being made whole.  While in Cuba I clearly heard God speak to me, “This is the message of the book. Write this message in book form and get it out to the world.”

Of course I went to some agents and publishers to see what the interest would be.  The new nature of publishing is that you need 10s of 1000s of followers on social media to get a book deal.  That wasn’t me!  What should I do?  I wrestled with this quite a bit and got another clear message from God, “I didn’t tell you to get a book deal or that it would sell a lot of copies.  I told you to write a book and publish it.”  Wow!  What a release.  From that point, I simply made the decision to be faithful in the process. I would write the book and self-publish.  I finished the first draft in early 2018.  A dear friend of mine had just had his book edited.  I asked who was his editor and he introduced me to Deborah (will share more about that some other day).  Deborah and I have been working over the last year to finish this round of tough edits.  It is such a difficult and long process.  Today, we finished!

Now, I have to connect with the publisher and move towards the final stages.  I wanted you all to know about this first hand because of several reason: #1 – I want you to be the first to get a copy.  #2  Before that happens, I want to share with you portions of the book.  I would love your feedback.  How you respond to different portions will let me know how it resonates and how I can market it to folks.  I will be posting sections to our blog over the next few weeks.  Be looking for it! I would love to hear your thoughts on the book!