The Glass Half Full.

Janet here. Life changes and some of those changes are wonderful. Some are an irritation. Some just plain hurt. Losing my father, a remarkable man, was one of those hurting changes.

I knew it was coming but I couldn’t quite imagine it. Not that I didn’t miss my mother and my husband’s mother and father—we were both blessed to have loving parents. But Daddy was the last and I didn’t want to let go. A retired Social Studies and Art teacher, he never made much money. I think most of us know that teachers don’t get rich while enriching young lives, but I always looked up to him. Maybe because of the vast array of knowledge he carried in his head. Or that he handled remodeling projects without losing his cool. Or in later years, when my mother’s health failed, he took over preparing meals, saying, “If a man can read, he can cook.” Or maybe because he called me kitten and told me he loved me.

You may be thinking all that’s good, but hardly remarkable. And you’d be right. My father—and my mother—were remarkable because of the way they lived.

You see my parents were delighted by life. That may sound hokey but it’s true. The year they retired, they spent February, an unusually rainy month, in Florida, living in a van too low to stand up in. They used futons for beds, stashed their belongings in boxes, and cooked on a butane stove atop a picnic table. Being a condo kind of woman myself, I couldn't understand the joy I read in their eyes while they told us about their stay. What I saw as hardship, they saw as an adventure. That outlook exemplified who they were. Creative, hard-working, fun-loving, roller-coaster-riding individuals, they lived young all their lives. They did that by focusing on everything good, the glass half full.

So what does all this have to do with writing?

We writers can focus on that half empty glass, bemoaning those numbers etched in our brains. You know—the years of rejections, the years without a contest win, the years without a sale. Or the disappointing sales figures, the closing lines. All pretty disheartening stuff.

Or we can affirm our talent. Acknowledge the progress we’ve made. Find joy in the doing. When we grasp how much God loves us, that He has a plan for us and gave us the talent to accomplish it, then each day blooms with possibilities. In the end, gratitude is a choice. I’m blessed that my parents showed me how to choose to see the glass half full.

Oh, and one more thing I’m grateful for: My father sent me a newspaper clipping about the orphan train that was the impetus for my debut novel Courting Miss Adelaide, Love Inspired Historical, releasing September 9, 2008. Isn't that a beautiful cover?

A Family of Her Own

The “orphan train” seemed like small-town spinster Adelaide Crum’s last chance to know the simple joys of family life. So many lost children, every one of them dreaming only of a caring home—the home she longed to offer. And yet the narrow-minded town elders refused to entrust even the most desperate child to a woman alone….

Newspaperman Charles Graves believed his heart was closed forever, but he swore to stand by this lovely, lonely woman who was fighting for the right to take some motherless child into her heart. And her gentle soul and unwavering faith made him wonder if even he could overcome the bitter lessons of the past, and somehow find the courage to love….