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Dear Readers:   This blog entry is actually more than an advertisement, so hang in there!

My first novel, Breakdown in Denver, is about to be released in the next few weeks.  It's a comic novel about serious topics, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and God's control of the universe, and a mystery. 

          The narrator, Doc Johansson, is distracted, depressed, and alienated from God over the recent death of his wife. Reluctantly he agrees to treat Rocco Cohane, lead singer of the Bleeding Werewolves rock band, who thinks he’s turning into a werewolf.  Rocco’s fellow band members create a diversion while Doc and Rocco escape from the paparazzi to save what’s left of Rocco’s sanity. 

Here's some of Doc's philosophy  (which is mine, although Doc is leaving out God at this point):  

 Picture the inside of your adult brain as your eccentric maiden aunt’s attic: filled with dusty, sheet-covered, lumpy ephemera from you and your relatives.  Your challenge is to pull off the dust covers to unearth the treasures hidden beneath your family trappings, as well as the joys and pains of your own that you’ve accumulated along your journey.

There might be priceless heirlooms in your attic, assets which have been unknown to you for ages. You’ve hungered to find these, for years and years. There are also moose heads and tasteless hat racks, taking up valuable square footage. These you can unload at the dump, or give them to Goodwill.  You have the choice, once you have taken inventory. Until you did, your riches were essentially useless beneath the dust covers, or lost under the junk piles and old magazines.

There might also be toxic mold, contaminating and endangering your most valued treasures.  You may need a professional to clean the toxin out, but the first step is to find it under the piles where it’s been working against you in the darkness.  Once you have found it, you can do whatever you must to stop it, to free yourself from its poison.

No matter what happened to you in your life, once you begin to realize the full extent of what you do still have left in your attic to work with, you can start living again, afresh. Not that it’s easy or simple.  But it is an adventure worth taking.

It may take a long time, but you learn that you will not be, cannot ever be the same person you were before tragedy or loss hit you.  The new person you are can be strong, and more beautiful, because of your pain.  Not despite the pain.  No, not at all. Because of it.

That’s what has kept me in the profession, all these years.  Taking inventory and finding what is still good; giving people back their hope.  You can look at your past as baggage to drag you down, or as supplies for your daily battle. You choose. It weighs the same, and you’re carrying it, either way. The only difference is your attitude.

You don’t need me to explain what was going on in Rocco’s brain.  The poisons were thick enough, even he knew about them.  

 Doc's wife's faith is much more apparent in her philosophy:

 It’s so easy for us to live our lives waiting on-hold for the next new big thing, never even noticing what we have.  We’re never satisfied with the storehouses full of what we’ve already got, like kids looking in a full refrigerator complaining that there’s nothing to eat.

 See who God really is. Look at what you still have in him, no matter what has happened to you, good or bad. Focusing on what you've lost keeps you miserable. Give God what's still left in your inventory. He can multiply loaves and fishes—and you.

 Simple and basic, I know, but the truth has to be simple enough for everyone to have a chance. How could it be fair, otherwise?  The God I know is not willing to exclude anyone from his love.  Sure, elitists don’t get to feel superior that way, but get over it.

Anyone who has read this blog for very long knows if you put the two together, they sum up my philosophy for finding meaning in hard times. The difference between a heavy load and supplies for the journey is perspective. Even God cannot force you to change that. It's one of the few things only you have complete control over in this world.  

Another is prayer.  Put them together and you can change your world.

In the day of my trouble, I shall call upon thee, for thou wilt answer me. Psalm 86:7