Inspiring Women by Christina Lorenzen

The older I get, the more I see one thing is guaranteed –everything is subject to change, and nothing is guaranteed

Nothing stays the same. Life is many things, but one thing it isn’t is static. I can only speak for myself, but I know that just as I’m feeling comfortable and sure, something happens, and I find myself knocked off course. As we all must do, I find my strength and pick myself back up. As women, we find ourselves knocked off course more than men, namely because it’s our tendency to care for and nurture those we love. If you want to be an inspired woman, you need to seek out the women who inspire you. And with all that is going on in the world around us, I can think of no better place to look for an inspiring woman than the Bible.

I have always believed that inspiring women inspire other women – to do their best, to be their best and to help others do the same. If you feel despaired with the world around you, you need only pick up your Bible to find examples of women who were courageous, selfless and of unwavering faith. Whenever I am faced with something that seems unsurmountable, that stirs up fear, I turn to a woman in the Bible that continues to inspire me each time I read her story. Ruth.

Ruth suffers a tremendous loss with the death of her husband, Kilion. Her mother-in-law Naomi, in turn, suffers the unspeakable loss of not only her son Kilion, but her other son Mahlon, and her husband Elimelech. Though she urges both her daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, to go back to their parents’ homes, Ruth will not leave Naomi alone. Together Ruth and Naomi journey to her homeland of Judah. Ruth is a moving example of a selfless woman who remains devoted to family. Despite Naomi’s bitterness, going so far as to call herself Mara (Hebrew for bitter), Ruth stays by her mother-in-law’s side in Judah, working in the fields so the two women will have something to eat.

I have read the Book of Ruth countless times. Each time I pull strength from these two women who carry on in the face of adversity and loss. The last time I had read it, I had been struggling with my writing career, unsure of which way to go next. It had been several months since the release of my last book, and I wasn’t feeling inspired to write anything. Until I got a message from a friend and fellow author. Immediately I felt drawn to this author’s proposal to join her and two other authors in a collaboration of four stories based on four women of the Bible. The idea of crafting a contemporary story based on a woman of my choosing sparked my interest. I knew within minutes I would say yes to her proposal. And even faster than that, I knew I would write a story based on the story of another woman I had come to love and admire, Ruth.

In my story from the collection, Faithful Women: Legacies of Grace, Ruth Baker is reeling from multiple losses. She has lost her beloved husband, her job and her home. With her six-year-old daughter Mara, she is unsure of what the future holds. When her grandmother Eleanora asks for her help as she begins the transition from her long-time home to an assisted living facility, Ruth knows she must pull up stakes and take her child to Pebble Shores, her grandmother’s seaside hometown.

As many women have experienced, Ruth is at crossroads in life, unsure of the future. Unwavering in her faith, she never stops praying each day, patiently waiting for God to answer her in His time. That’s something I know I have struggled with, accepting an answer that may not be on my desired timetable. As she travels down memory lane during her visit, trying to accept the sale of her grandmother’s precious house, her heart begins to open. And with an open heart comes the possibility for another chance for love and a whole new beginning, for Ruth, Mara and her grandmother.

It is my hope that when you read Ruth’s Garden, as well as the three other inspiring stories from gifted authors Belle Calhoune, Leah Atwood and Cate Nolan, you will draw strength from Ruth’s struggle for your own struggles. And in the future, when you find yourself feeling faint of heart, may you draw strength from the women of the Bible who continue to inspire us today. I’ll leave you with one of the verses I run through my mind during trying times:

        

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with

wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

– Isaiah 40:31 KJ

 

Ruth's Garden

Ruth: Ruth Baker has lost her husband. Unsure of what the future holds, she clings to her faith and her six-year-old daughter, Mara, when she travels to her grandmother’s beachside home in Pebble Shores.

Eli Hamill has felt the pull to put down roots. After years of buying and selling houses, he’s doing something he’s never done before – living temporarily in the beachside house he bought from an elderly widow. The last thing he’s looking for is an instant family.

Can an old house filled with loving memories and a sweet little girl show two lonely people what the future can hold?

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Christina Lorenzen is an Amazon bestselling author of sweet and inspirational small-town romance. She is the author of ten books, her most recent book, The Christmas Coin, released September 2018. She is busy working on her next small-town romance. When she isn’t writing or reading, she can be found walking her dog, talking to her herd of cats and spending time with her grown children and husband.

To find out about Christina’s upcoming release, visit her website at http://christinalorenzen.com. You can subscribe to her quarterly newsletter through her website and automatically be entered to win a $5 Amazon gift card each month, just for being a subscriber.

Sale or Sail? by Christina Lorenzen

In 2014, I received a contract for my first novel, A Husband for Danna. Two years later I had a contract for the follow up story, A Wife for Humphrey. And now, only four years later, I am the author of one novel and seven novellas. Some might say that’s a pretty amazing accomplishment. Me, I’m wondering when I will really succeed.

I think we can all agree that we’re hardest on ourselves, demanding pie in the sky accomplishments with no room for error and little to no self-compassion. My father’s sister, a beloved aunt, has always been my cheerleader. She is forever posting comments on my social media saying ‘you are the hardest working author I know’ and ‘you are absolutely amazing’. Instead of feeling proud, I think to myself “she mustn’t know a lot of other authors’ because I know authors who put out six books a year, every year.

It’s often hard for writers to take stock of what they’ve accomplished or how far they’ve come. This is one tough industry. It seems like there is always an author announcing their latest three book deal, a huge advance or a book becoming a movie to remind us of the things you haven’t accomplished yet. Then there are the sales or lack thereof.

Every author I’ve talked with has winced just a little when the word ‘sales’ comes up. You can have a fabulous cover, a tantalizing blurb and a dozen five star reviews, but where do your eyes go as you check in on your new release on Amazon? Right to the sales rank. And if you have an ounce of control tendencies in your personality, you might even have an app on your phone, Novel Rank, where you can track the sales of your book – every time you look at your phone.

Unless your book is flying off the shelves, or onto kindles, sales numbers can be the thread that leads to the undoing of your writerly confidence. Seeing slow growing numbers, or, worse yet, a single digit number, hour after hour, days after release day, can do more damage to the fragile writer’s ego than those earlier announcements. We can still dream of eventual multiple book contracts, big advances and our stories playing out on a screen, but sales numbers are reality slapping us in the face. They plant the seed of doubt. Maybe I’m not such a great writer. Maybe that five star review from my cousin Anna is her just being nice. Maybe there isn’t a market for the kinds of stories I write. The list goes on and on, usually at three in the morning when you should be sleeping.

While writing the other day, I had typed the word ‘sale’ when I had meant to type ‘sail’. A homophone, I grinned. Yes, I was the geek that loved every English class I could take back in school. I was toying with the completely different meanings of the two words, when it hit me how relevant they were to where I was in my career.

I’d been spending so much time worrying about getting a ‘sale’ that I’d lost the ability to take joy in my writing. When I’d first started writing fiction, I used to leap to get to my keyboard. Or shall I say ‘sail’ to my keyboard. While both words are nouns, their meanings are, in that order, an instance of selling and to voyage upon or across. To sell or to voyage. Then it dawned on me. Was I writing only for the selling or was I writing for the voyage it afforded me? A writing career afforded me a chance to go anywhere I wanted to go. I could be anyone I wanted to be behind the numerous masks of my heroines and heroes. I write for the same reason I read, to escape my ho hum, sometimes trying, every-day life if only for a few hours.

Will my joy as a writer come only from chasing a sale or sailing into an imaginary world? Will I find my joy in a factor I cannot control, a sale, versus the factor I have some control over, the ability to whisk readers away on a voyage? When I chose to find my joy in the ‘sail’, the joy of writing and creating a story, all the questions and doubts ceased. Of course as a career author I want my books to sell. How else will readers read them? But obsessing over a sale, like comparing your achievements to another author’s, kills creativity. I have learned that writing isn’t a quick trip, but a journey, and sometimes a rocky one at that. But if you hold on to the joy that brought you to writing to begin with, you’re so much more likely to enjoy smooth sailing.

How do you hold on to the joy of writing during those bumpy times?

Jessie Daniels moved to Phillips Village for a fresh start. After a bad breakup and her parents selling the family home, she’s ready to put down roots somewhere new. It was love at first sight when she visited Phillips Village and a offer to work with animals at the town shelter are all she needs to make the move. After seven months in town, she’s enjoying living in the apartment in the Phillips House and devoting all her time to the animals who need her. Just as she’s forgetting the incident that led her to break off her engagement, Mark Sherman shows up and disrupts her peaceful single loving life.

Mark Sherman will do whatever it takes to get back in his father’s good graces, after breaking an engagement that cost his father a merger between the company and his ex-fiancé’s family company. He plans on being all business when he goes back to Phillips Village to clean out and sell his grandmother’s cottage. The sweet memories of his childhood summers with his grandmother hit him harder than he expected. He’d also vowed not to get involved with another woman. When a stubborn basset hound finds its way into his truck, he has no choice but to bring along to the house where he’s rented an apartment. When he meets fellow tenant Jessie Daniels, he knows he’s in deep.

Is it the magic he’d always believed surrounded Grandma Lettia’s cottage or the sweet little basset hound that seems to be pulling he and Jessie closer together?

Amazon Buy Link Howls and Hearts

Christina Lorenzen started writing as a young teen, jotting stories in wire ring composition notebooks. Her first typewriter made it faster to get all those stories out of her head and down on paper. Her love of writing has sustained her through a myriad of jobs that included hairdresser, legal secretary, waitress and door-­to-door saleswoman.

Luckily for her, writing proved to be successful and a lot less walking than going door to door. Howls and Hearts is her eighth book. Christina is busy working on her next novel. When she isn't writing or reading, she can be found walking her dog, talking to her herd of cats and spending time with her family.

Readers can connect with Christina at:

Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/ChristinaLorenzenAuthor/

Website:   http://christinalorenzen.com/
Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Christina-Lorenzen/e/B00NI9ELKA/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1525124169&sr=1