Three gifts in one
The first 100 Days | Dying to Tell His Story books arrive in time for Christmas.
The 160-year-old Book of Common Prayer received as a gift from my mother.
Shortly after my father died on May 31, 2008, my sister Deb realized it had been exactly 100 days from the day we found out he was dying until the day God took him home. There was something about this number (considered by many to mean “perfect”) that stuck with me. It seemed another sign that Dad’s death had not only been divinely inspired, but perfectly timed.
As I revisited Dad’s last 100 days in my mind and with my family, the idea of a book about my father’s life, and death, was born. At first, I naively thought I could just pop out 100 stories. Write one story a day. It seemed, well... perfect. I asked a few close friends if they would accompany me on my journey and allow me to email them one story a day as I finished them. I was hoping it would hold me accountable. But it was not easy, nothing held me accountable, and at the end of the 100 days I had managed to complete only 50 stories. Worse, it would take another six years to complete the remaining 50. Some I’d finish in a few days, others I wrestled with for weeks, and there was even what seemed like an entire year that I put the project aside, feeling self-doubt and unable to write. But somehow I labored on. When story 73 was done, 74 was waiting. When 80 was finished, 81 called me. When 92 was complete, I couldn’t wait to start 93. And when I finally wrote story 100, I found myself oddly sad that the journey seemed over. The work to complete the book had taken seven years, and I was determined to publish it by May 31st, on the 10-year anniversary of my father’s death.
As the anniversary approached, I realized I had grossly underestimated the time that editing, permissions, proofreading, a beautiful book layout, and printing proofs would take. Another self-imposed deadline was missed. Little by little the prepress work continued, but the end seemed nowhere in sight.
As December rolled around, my husband, Ron, asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I responded that all I wanted was to receive the printed book–that the seven-year project had seemed too long.
Wrapping the last presents to put under our tree three days before Christmas, I heard a knock at my front door and found two boxes sitting on the doorstep. One box held the first 20 newly printed books, 100 Days | Dying to Tell His Story, just 3-days off the press. The other held a single small prayer book that had belonged to my father, given to him by the minister that married he and my mom. As I opened the tiny frail cover that had fallen off the spine, I noticed that it was printed in 1858 and was now 160 years old. My mom had sent it as a Christmas present to me.
As I looked at my newly printed book that seemed to take forever to finish next to the tiny 160-year-old book, I felt another Christmas gift from above: a reminder that God’s timing is perfect, and that through Christ, the gift that really matters... is eternal.