My life is a swirl of words. Over the past few weeks, I've written about sisterhood, success, country music, ballet flats, relationships, best friends, and most recently, my experience acting in a church Passion Play. I've been working on that article for quite a while today. And...(drumroll)...I just clicked on the Radiant magazine Web site and saw that my article "In the Presence of a Hero" is up! You can read it here.

It's been an encouraging week for me as a writer. Yesterday I was notified that this article was accepted, and I also won a free T-shirt for telling the authors of Consider Lily, my most recent read, why I liked the book. (It's classy, smart and funny - quite different from most chick lit - and it actually has a moral. And the protagonist was an English major!)

I've also written emails, of course, and taken notes for a couple of profiles for ACU Today and a recruiting guidebook. And I've journaled and talked to friends and dashed off a few thank-you notes. Words...words...words.

I love words, of course. They don't always love me - sometimes they're stubborn or elusive or just plain hard to work with. But I'm learning that the secret is to show up at the page or the computer. Having ideas helps, but even if I don't, the simple act of writing something opens up my fingers and my mind. As Julia Cameron comments, "As we suit up and show up each day at the page or the camera or the easel, we have an 'eye' that becomes the 'I' present in all that we do." And inspiration is much more likely to strike if you're working faithfully.

All that to say - Please read my new article! And have a wonderful weekend filled with sno cones and baseball games and rolled-down windows and all the delights of summer. Cheers!