Do you see what I see?

In 2005 I wrote and had published a book titled, A Gathering of Spirit. It contains over 30 true life stories sharing the lives of Cibola County, NM residents. The stories first appeared in the Cibola Beacon in the column, Who We Are, which I also wrote at the time. I was very proud of the stories and they received a lot of attention from the community. The book is now out of print, but a few copies may still be obtained through various online sources.

This book was one of the tools that helped make me the writer that I am today. It taught me to only use necessary words, because I not only had a deadline, but a word count limit. It was fun and challenging getting a person’s entire life on a one page document. I had to find what was really important to the subject I was writing about. For clarity, every story was edited by that person before it was published and I rarely had to rewrite.

I remember telling someone that I felt I was offering the person’s life as God sees it. Her response was, “That’s quite a gift!”

One day I gave a copy of the book to a woman who had just moved to town and had opened a restaurant. I thought it might help her get to know some of her future customers. After reading it she stated, “The stories were too nice.”

I saw something this morning that reminded me of that experience and I would like to share it with my readers because I feel it is very important to keep in mind.

Sometimes I need to take a shovel and do a lot digging before I can see what God and the angels see, but it is always worth the effort.