A Tax Day E-mail

Monday, April 17, 2006 an e-message from an unknown sender sat in my in-box. The subject was “A window into my world.” I considered deleting it because to me that read a little spam-ish, yet I considered what I had to lose. Not much by simply clicking open the message to see what it was about.

Fearlessly, I clicked the message open. It was from a woman who found my book (My Lost Summer, Jamaica Road Press) in the Cincinnati Airport. She said she “could not believe what [she] was holding in [her] hands.” She was in the airport on a layover from a trip to North Carolina to visit her brother, who is recovering from a coma he suffered on July 31, 2005. She wrote, “We have been through so much of what you document in your book - - the coma, the reawakening, and now the most difficult process of rehab.”

She told me she read the entire book on Sunday. Most people I’ve talked to who’ve read the book tell me that they read it straight through. It’s a pretty compelling story.

I wrote back to this woman, offering advice, trying to provide a window into what her brother is experiencing right now, telling her to challenge her brother, to give him my book so that he can read of someone who was in the same place he is and is now a fully functioning citizen. Maybe that will inspire him.

I told her I would pray for her family. God is already watching over them. How else would she have found my little self published book, that is only distributed locally, unless God led her to it? I’m glad the book is finding its way to the people who need it most.