In a few short weeks a new book will be published. The back story is that my sister Mary and I wrote it together over an 18 year period.

That sounds like a long time to write about raising children from birth to only age five, but it wasn’t the content that stretched our project. It was the raising of children ourselves.

Mary and I first talked about co-writing a book long ago in side-by-side beach chairs. “Some day we should write for younger moms, so they can avoid the many mistakes we’ve made,” she said.

We began praying about it and our sense was that God wanted us to move forward, encouraging mothers whose efforts to raise children these days are often denigrated by our culture.

We set to work, even though finding time together without kids was a challenge. After we would reacquaint ourselves with what we’d written to that point, it was usually time to put it all away again.

As our collective 14 children grew older, though, new pockets of peace popped up, and we began making better headway. Then a giant stop sign planted itself right in front of us:

Mary’s terminal cancer diagnosis.

Her free time quickly filled with medical appointments, surgery, feeding tubes, and chemotherapy – and the book was set aside. I gathered our materials and folded them deep into a basement box.

We assumed Mary’s remaining time would be in days not years, but how fortunate we were to be wrong. About five months after her diagnosis her health was stable, and she was feeling good. One day, again at the beach, she said, “Hey, let’s dig out the book and try again.”

“Really?” I said, grateful for her forward-thinking.

“ Well let’s try, anyway,” she said. “Who knows what’s ahead.”

The next day we dug out the stack of 10×13 yellow envelopes stuffed full of ideas, examples, and Scriptures for each chapter, and spread them out to see where we’d left off.

As we worked, we followed the pace of Mary’s good and bad days, making sure we had lots of creative sessions at (guess where) the beach. 

One day I told Mary that since the Lord was the Initiator behind our book, he might just keep her going until the project was finished. With her usual pluck she said, “Then let’s drag our feet.”

God always finishes what he starts, and two years later, he brought us to our finish line. We began shooting the book through cyber-space to different publishers who each considered it for several months, and we came close. But before we got a yes, the Lord lifted Mary into Paradise.

Both of us trusted God to publish the book whenever he wanted, and now…this appears to be his time. THRIVE AND SURVIVE, ZERO TO FIVE, will be launched in several weeks.

And I like to think Mary knows all about it.

“It is not for you to know times… that the Father has fixed by his own authority.” (Acts 1:7)