Sitting here in tears. I just finished reading Heaven is Here, a memoir by Stephanie Nielson, author of the blog, NieNie Dialogues.
In my last post, I told you I’d share a funny story about our flight to Florida last week—the one where I overcame my eighteen-year-old fear of getting on an airplane with my hubby while leaving our kids at home.
Since I am attempting to write a book and actually get it published, I’m doing a great deal of reading memoirs. While at Wal-Mart doing some last minute shopping for my trip, I noticed a new book on the shelf:
I made the cover of the book really big for you to see…it is a memoir of inspiration and hope. Not unlike the message I am conveying in my book. So I bought it.
I was feeling pretty good about our trip. We gave the kids a loving, “so long” as we dropped them off at school, and off to the airport we went. We boarded the plane; I said my trusty trust prayer:
“God, I’m putting my trust in you today.
No matter what happens, good or bad, I know you have it under control,
and it’s all part of your plan to create an eternity beyond my wildest dreams.”
…And off we went.
There was quite a bit of turbulence, so I pulled out my new book to keep my mind occupied. There really should have been a little more information on the cover of this book, or maybe I should have turned it over to read the back. Here’s how the book starts:
A voice whispered, “Roll.”
I fell to the ground and crushed the brilliant flames that licked at my clothes, my skin, my hair. The mangled wreck of our airplane blazed nearby.
Really God? Of all the books I had to bring with me to read it had to be a memoir about a horrific plane crash? And she had gotten on a plane with her husband and left her four kids at home. Literally, my biggest fear.
But, as all great writers do, Stephanie Nielson had me hooked with the first sentence. So I kept reading. I couldn’t put it down until I knew that she would be okay. I realize since it’s a memoir, and she actually wrote it, that she is alive and well today, but I had to hear it from her. Life has been crazy since we returned from our trip, so I just got a chance to read the Epilogue, and I think she has convinced me to take my book in a different direction.
My story, a seemingly perfect life as a wife, mother, and pharmacist turned up side down by grand-mal seizures and depression, my desperate search to cure myself, and ultimate realization that God is the ultimate healer, is a book in itself.
And it was originally what I’d planned to write.
As you know, prescription drug addiction plowed uninvited into my life and turned a snowstorm into an avalanche. God had to really work on me a while on the whole “transparency” thing for me to be able to make addiction part of my story. Some of my closest friends didn’t know I was dealing with addiction until recently. And I don’t know if I’ll ever work as a pharmacist again. What pharmacy would hire me?
But God didn’t tell me to worry about my future. He told me to be transparent right now.
In writing about addiction, I thought my job was to draw people in with my story and finish the book with the miracle God gave me. I hoped to appeal to a secular audience, so I have not written much about God’s part in my life before he healed me in 2010. But God has always been a huge part of my life, even though I didn’t realize it. He has always pursued me; I just had not always pursued Him back. My life was perfect.
It’s hard to realize that you need God when everything is hunky-dory.
In Heaven is Here, Stephanie tells of her life before her accident, during her immediate recovery in the hospital, and life after she returned home. God was a part of Stephanie’s whole story, and through the heart changes He walked through with her, her relationship with Him was deepened to a whole new level.
So in my book—and my blog—I hope to share on a more personal level. It’s easy to share the lessons I learned on this journey, and I will continue to do so. But I hope to share more of myself with you.
I think Satan loves to get in our heads and tell us,” People don’t really care about that. Why do they want to know about you? You’re not famous, just an everyday person. People will just laugh at you.”
Stephanie Nielson was just an everyday person who had to overcome extraordinary circumstances. She writes that she never would have survived without God. I’ve never had to survive a plane crash (thank goodness), but I learned so much from her journey…only because I got to know her personally through her book. If I’d simply read a newspaper article highlighting the details of her accident and recovery, I’d have learned nothing of her heart and her relationship with God. And it was God that saved her…completely.
Prescription drug addiction is the fastest growing drug problem in the United States. In 2010, enough painkillers were prescribed to medicate every American adult around-the-clock for an entire month. Although most prescriptions are deemed necessary for medical use, many end up in the hands of people who misuse or abuse them. In 2010, about 12 million Americans over the age of twelve reported nonmedical use of prescription painkillers in the past year.
There are a plethora of self-help books out there on addiction. There are tons of memoirs about drug abuse—mostly by famous people addicted to illegal drugs. But prescription drugs are legal. Prescribed by doctors every day. To Christians who would never dream of misusing or abusing prescription drugs. Until they are addicted, that is.
It won’t be pleasant digging up emotions that I’d really rather leave in the past or the constant struggle going on in my brain the entire time I struggled with addiction. But I want people to be able to read what I write and know me—like I know Stephanie now.
It will be hard to write; but today, I’m writing this post.
Tomorrow will take care of itself.
From my heart,
Celeste
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