You have a(n) (Audio) Book

On July 31st 2025 my audiobook went live. I was so proud. I worked SO hard on it. Even after publishing my book, I thought I would be able to set it down but I wasn't finished yet. I had to finish it. Close the book on this that consumed me. But all this talk of endings, got me thinking of those beginnings. 

All the moments I moved from pain to true self love. It had me wondering if instead of God waiting to give me things I've been praying for, I've actually been given the greatest gift. Time. Time to learn to trust that I AM a person who puts God first. That conviction for a good God was not something I had to convince myself of but a God I got to LOVE. 

God showed me how to love myself, by loving me first. Until I understood and fully felt what that meant, I was pouring all my heartache and desperation into loving others and hoping my fogged up and fearful interpretation would be "good enough." So God gave me time, patience and loved me through the process of my self development. Which was the greatest gift I could have asked for (and the greatest gift we can give to others as well. Here's some of the moments I've come to hold sacred when at the time I was just trying to make the next right move:

In November 2011 I started dating my late husband. We were friends for 6 months prior and decided that we liked spending time together more than being apart. I knew his soul. I felt it like peering into a torn veil. Throughout out the next few years our coping mechanisms got the best of the both of us. I already wrote a book on that. So I won't go into more detail... but the further he coped the further I retreated. The more I cried in desperation to see that soul again. Hanging on for when I did, and stuffing the feelings down when I didn't. 

Even after multiple years together including many moves and deployment... the line I drew for boundaries became nearly non existent. I lost all of myself trying to keep the man I loved. Eventually I had to leave. I packed up and drove across the country in 2020. From Pennsylvania to California I cried as anxiety pulsed through me. My heart was beating and my lungs were moving but I had no soul left in me. In fact, neither did my husband. And unfortunately we hadn't even began to reach devastation.

So through the panic and anxiety I wrote. It curbed the vertigo. I had yet to process everything that had transpired and yet it was eating my muscles alive while it lived in my body. So I wrote. A word document began a few months after that drive. I wrote and didn't stop for 4 years. With every panic attack from something I remembered I wrote it down. I went to therapy. I started working again. And just as I was getting out of me that last 10 years. He died. A statement that needs no explanation. Every time I say it everyone knows I'm taking about my husband. A statement I say less now. But the intertwining we hold will forever be there. I’m finally able to see myself as a widow. Here's how God helped me get there:

In May 2024 I looked at my word document that unedited was 167 pages. I took a deep breath and shared that with my church Life Group. Someone in the group was a book editor. His response was "you have a book." I know deep down… I knew that too. The statement was to hold me accountable. I knew what I had to do next. I knew I had to share it. So I spoke up and let the professionals help me. From May to October I worked with an editor who slashed it up, found hundreds of grammar mistakes, commented "no one cares about this" or "explain to me why is this important", and told me to expand on other things. It was the bluntness that I desperately needed. 

On October 5th 2024 I hit "publish" on Dragon In You. The 3 year mark from when Micheal met Jesus. It set me free knowing that all the ways I felt shame and guilt, I could let it go. I wasn’t hiding anymore. Anyone and everyone can read and do what they want with what I wrote. I put the book down for two months and tried to get on with my life. Until December when I decided I wanted to seriously work on the audiobook. I started a few months prior but with all the frustration of technology I put it down. 

I spent the last 8 months deep diving into my YouTube degree in Audio. I learned the hard way for months. It was all consuming and I felt way over my head but day by day I plugged away at it. Until I got to a point where I realized what I was doing. I was reading out loud what I wrote. Then, I was hearing myself say it. I became angry. I became so sad for that girl that I now realized in my heart was me. It was my journey. It was all about me. I had to go back to intensive therapy. 

I had to look deep within myself and start to learn what God meant by love others. It was a goal of mine to learn to love the man I married but damn was that hard (yet it was what I was desperate for). I told myself over and over again that I loved him. I just didn't believe myself. But in short, after I finished recording/editing I found the seed that was planted in the beginning. It was about learning to love myself again. What I've found is that I do. That's what brought me from reactionary loving others to true love for everyone. I may not be able to feel everyone's soul, especially since it's easy to hid behind coping mechanisms. It's easy to drown out our citizenship as God's child. But it's not worth it. Take it from me who spent my first 32 years living that way.

I don't want to talk about my Late Husband forever. I just couldn't live in a state of mind where I feared and responded because of all the ways he coped. In fact 4 years ago I reposted a quote that read:

 "Peacemaking doesn't mean passivity. It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight but the careful, arduous pursuit reconciliation and justice. It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free."

That was my vision for the book. I'm here to set the oppressed and the oppressor free. Knowing darn well that I've been both in people's lives.