Author Archives: Kerry Peresta

Intermission

woman,phone for intermissionThe phone call from my agent was less a thunderclap and more a gentle spring shower.

I’d finished the darn manuscript three years ago, gotten picked up by an agent a year later, so how on earth could it take so long to find a publisher?

I read with fierce anxiety every rejection from major publishers. In truth, they were nice rejections, with compliments woven in, but a rejection all the same. I prefer to call them ‘redirections’. I do that because it is pretty hard to get that many rejections, although most manuscripts don’t even get a thorough read by the big boys, so there’s that.

But I thought being represented by an agent guaranteed a publishing contract in ten minutes.books and coffee nook intermission

Haha. Nope.

So I muddled around, thinking about what I should do in the meantime. I’m not a person who can just . . . be okay waiting. Surely I could hurry the process along. Isn’t that what we all think in the waiting? We have to do something.

I wrote more stuff. I prayed. I asked God if this wasn’t the right direction, should I just quit writing? Should I change course and write magazine articles? Should I work for one of those ten-cents-per-word blog writer companies? Work out more? Take up knitting? Get more cats?

This ‘being a writer’ thing is not as cool and interesting as it appears. A lot of time is spent writing into a void and I’m a person that needs encouragement. I still can’t figure out why I’ve always felt an inner urge to do this. I am the most needy and impatient person on earth and I don’t handle rejection well. A writer, by definition, is nearly synonymous with rejection.

I’ve learned a lot about waiting the past couple of years. Waiting means that eventually, the right thing to do will make itself known and nothing I can do or say will make it green arrow on stairshappen on my timetable. Oh I can bluster something in, ignore red flags, knock down doors that should remain closed and make the wrong thing happen and spend a couple years on a disaster detour,  but I’ve done that before and don’t want to do it again.

I’ve learned how to be content in the waiting, trusting that my prayers are heard and my desires are noted. I can trust the process if I’ve done the right things and have the right heart attitude. I’ve learned I can enjoy myself in the waiting, do stuff that I might not have time to do if I am busy meeting deadlines. I don’t have to sputter and spew complaints all over everyone that I’ve not ‘arrived’ yet or that people are just not ‘getting’ what I’ve accomplished.  I’ve learned not to pull the plug too fast on something, but wait. Be patient. I’m still learning how to do that, but I’m definitely better than I was.

I’m learning that just sitting in the chair and putting my hands on the keyboard will yield something, anything; and that is better than nothing. Waiting is a great time to practice whatever skill or endeavor the waiting is attached to. Waiting also exposes the good, the bad and the ugly inside me, which gives me the opportunity to work on becoming a better person.

I wonder if there are many things quite as hard as waiting on something wonderful we’ve decided we must have. Problem is, often it isn’t something we just have to have. It may be a burning desire, but not an actual need. I didn’t have to ‘be something’ in order to validate myself or prove that I am a worthwhile human being. It’s been hard, but I’m learning to let go of the belief that my identity is wrapped up in what I do instead of bible intermissionwho I am. So I went sighing and moaning to God and gave him my desire to be a novelist, told Him it was all His anyway, so there.

And that was the week I got the call. By that time, I barely cared. The hold it had on me was broken. I was happy when I got the contract offer, but not overly impressed with myself. I was humbled instead. God gave me a gift! I want to be responsible and take care of it, but I’m no longer panting with desire or pushing and prodding and forcing it to happen through sheer self-will. cozy nook time intermission

It didn’t happen on my timetable. It happened when I quit trying so hard and caring too much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the Party is Over

Christmas has come and gone, and with it, my balloon-like joy.  It popped the minute everyone left my house.

cloudy sky

Oh, we had lovely memories and lots of gift exchanging. Lots of hugs and oohs and aahhs. But the elephant in the room, the one sibling/adult child that didn’t make it for Christmas because he was in rehab (again) sat in the room (virtually) and glared at us as if his disability was our fault. As if being excluded from our Christmas celebration was an abuse of his familial privilege.

To all parents of drug addicts, a select club of which I am reluctantly a member, I salute

adventure beautiful blue dawnyou. I’m in my eleventh year of this stuff, and I can’t even feel my fingers anymore, where the addict is concerned. NarAnon has taught me to take one day at a time, to do the tough love thing, to distance myself from the addiction but love the addict.

And it is working, kind of.

But the emotional pain, the offense, the expense! The wondering if I should pay his bills, as if I, somehow, caused this and should suck it up. If I should be the one to tell his roommate sorry, buddy, for my child causing you such financial hardship, here’s a few thousand bucks to make up for it

Such insanity! That in no way, shape or form, did I cause. At NarAnon meetings it is common to recite “I didn’t cause it, I can’t cure it, I can’t control it.”

This helps.

But believing it, trusting it, stiff-arming the addict’s onslaught of unpaid bills and possible jail time . . . well, that’s a different matter altogether. We parents want to rescue. And so we do, over and over until we realize it does no good. It delays their sobriety, actually.

beautiful calm clouds darkOn the bright side, I got a book contract about the same time that Christmas came around and I have many, many books in me that need writing. I have many stories to tell, not the least of which include a postscript of addiction in there somewhere. Too many people can relate. Way too many. It is an onslaught that needs curtailing, but how?

Don’t get me started.

So I fall to my knees, recite the same prayers over my son, try to carry on as if ‘normal’ is a thing I can do in spite of.

But it never leaves, you know, the weight of a child that still struggles to be born.

Since he is in rehab, an inpatient, four-month program, I sleep better. The nightmares lessen. In this facility, he cannot call often, a good thing since the sound of his voice still brings tension and fear. It is a good thing not to hear it sometimes. A four-month program that is voluntary, I pray that he will stay, not run; that he will finally understand that his life is at stake, and not only his, but mine. His father too, his sisters and his brother.

The hard thing to internalize is that nothing matters to the addict but the next high.

Nothing.

We are all praying that this time, he will stay long enough that things matter. That his life matters. His family matters. His friends matter.

That we can finally love him the way he is meant to be loved, in spite of everything.

We cling to hope. As long as he is breathing, there is hope.

person standing on hand rails with arms wide open facing the mountains and clouds

Ode to Blended Family Holidays

So Thanksgiving is over and tucked away. It was wonderful, it was stressful it was . . . in a word, family.

Family gatherings with all their differing perspectives and personalities are often difficult to manage, but throw in a history cluttered with divorce, remarriage and painful experiences and it’s difficult to keep a lid on the simmering stewpot of the past.

So why was it, I often wail to God, that I didn’t have the Norman Rockwell marriage? Why did you allow me to travel such rocky roads rutted with despair and discouragement?

I finally learned to move on and express gratitude for what I have now. Leave

My husband, the energizer bunny.

the hard lessons of the past in the past. Run the race of life with courage and confidence. It was me, not God, that chose the detours that led to those rocky places. It was God, however, who protected me there and led me out of the rocky places. Then He allowed me the grace to grow in knowledge and understanding along the way. Thankfully, I’ve now been married to a great guy for eleven years and counting.

The Pew Research Center specifies that in America, one in six kids lives in a blended family. One in six kids has experienced upheaval with role models, parenting styles, perhaps differing religions or living arrangements, the list goes on. It is a sad fact, and one that I hope will change. Marriages are meant to thrive and grow instead of ending in a courtroom with a stranger dictating who gets what.

Absolutely perfect nuclear family in “Father Knows Best”

I wish I’d had an enduring, wonderful marriage when raising my four kids. I wish I could’ve spared them the agony of change and rearranging the family unit. But it does no good to look back and dig around in the bottomless pit of ‘what if’. I’m learning a new way of looking at life with an excited and hopeful ‘what now’?

So on this day, as I ponder holidays and blended families and emotional potholes along the path, I choose to be grateful.

Grateful for the little spats that somehow manage to draw us closer and help us understand each other better. Grateful for my husband who cast a net of fun and frivolity over things in spite of my irritation with his methods. Grateful that my oldest daughter’s family and one son actually LIVE here now (yay) and I get to enjoy them all the time. I am also learning to be grateful (through a jaw-clenched faith) for the sad detours my kids take at different points in their lives before they finally dig in and figure it out. I know that God is in control of this too, and if I survived my detours on the path to contentment and wisdom, so will they.

I think there’s something to this ‘being thankful’ thing. After all, when does griping and complaining ever make us feel better? For me, it just makes things worse. But being thankful zips me back to emotional equilibrium in a heartbeat. I start looking up instead of down.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because in bold type and underlined it emphasizes the concept: Thank God in all things.  Even when the circumstances aren’t favorable. A thankful heart goes a long way to helping us stay on top of our circumstances instead of under them.

Especially for non-Norman Rockwell families like mine.