Another Day, Another Blessing

     Thursday morning I received another blessing out of the blue.  I was taking a break at work, and decided to check my email, which is something I hardly ever do.  Sometimes I go weeks without checking my mail.  I was scrolling through when one caught my eye, it was from a name I didn't know, but the title was "Your Story Submission To Guideposts."  I had submitted a story to Guideposts a few months ago, but didn't expect to hear anything back about it.  I honestly figured it was a "thank you for your submission but we are not able to use your submission at this time" letter.  Imagine my surprise when I read the message, and it said they wanted to use my story in their Mysterious Ways Newsletter.  The message went on to say for me to contact her as soon as possible.
     I was excited as the morning went on, and during my lunch break I called up my mail again to get the number to call.  I had already received another message wanting more information about the story.  I called the number, and the editor answered.  I told her my name, figuring I would spend about 5 minutes waiting on her to figure out who I was.  Instead, what I got was that she was working on my story as we spoke, and how much she enjoyed it.  She started asking me questions about how everything came about, and exactly what had happened.  I went through the story with her, and she told me she would do an edit on it to clean it up a little, then would email it back to me for approval.  I told her that was great.
     She then told me they would mail me a contract, that I needed to sign and get back to them so they could send me a check.  I knew I heard her wrong, so I asked her what she just said.  She told me they paid for published materials, so not only would I be published, I would be paid.  She didn't know how much, as she handled editing only.  I didn't care.  She then told me my story would be in the Guideposts Mysterious Ways Newsletter and on the Guideposts.org web site on March 28th.
     There are several things about this whole deal that make it extra special for me.  The first is the story itself means so much to me.  It is the story of my daughters miracle baseball.  I have written about it here, and the story actually made the finals of a national contest with Reader's Digest.  It is a true story, and one that means a lot to me.  To know that I have finally been able to share the story with a large audience is amazing.  Secondly, most things that attempt fall short, but this is one time that I am actually going to accomplish something that I set out to do.  I am not a great writer, and I am far from eloquent, but I write from the heart.  I have failed at so many things, it is hard for me to actually believe this is real.
     Finally, I can now officially add to my resume that I am a published, professional author.  It sounds good to me.