Ten Years On

This is what I looked like ten years ago this week. I was thinner than almost any other time in my adult life. My hair looked great. My then-husband and I and our three dogs were living in a nice four-bedroom house and had two cars. And I’d been waiting for seven months to get fired as the editor of Writer’s Digest magazine. The wait would end that week.

What had been a dream job when I arrived in November 1998 had become progressively more stressful through two company sales, a series of publishers, and the end of the dot-com boom that dried up a significant portion of our ad revenue. I had become gossipy and argumentative. My marriage was ending. My cousin’s family constituted my only non-work friends in Cincinnati. I’d tried to go back to the Catholic Church that spring after an absence of more than thirty years, but that hadn’t worked out. I couldn’t think of any way that any of it was going to end well.

Seven months later, I had a job with the federal government and had moved to Washington–alone. My sister would join me here eight months after that. The following spring, I filed for bankruptcy and was on the road to repaying $109,332. I did as much freelance editing as I could. That fall, I got up the nerve to go back to Church again and found a warm, welcoming community. The next fall, the divorce was final. Two years later, I cut back on the editing after the bankruptcy repayment was finished (the same month one of my retinas detached) and started writing, primarily for the inspirational market. My first solo book, Sisterhood of Saints, came out earlier this month. I’m blessed with a slew of friends here in the Arlington area and across the country.

I share all those not to engender pity for my life ten years ago, or envy or accolades for my life today. But I’ve been thinking a lot this week about how happy and fulfilled I am today, and how I would have never believed ten years ago that that could ever happen. Losing a lot in terms of possessions and prestige gave me everything important, things money can’t buy.

If one person who’s going through bad times right now reads this and believes just a little bit that troubles do pass, and that God can do amazing things if you get out of the way, this little essay will have served its purpose. You can do it. I know you can. And so does He.