Greetings Writing Friend,
I have not met a writer yet who didn’t say it took courage to put pen to paper and tell their story. After all, it is scary to wonder what your critique partners or best friends or potential readers will say about the piece of writing you share.
“If we had to say what writing is, we would have to define it essentially as an act of courage.” Cynthia Ozick
I remember creating a children’s book for my high school freshman English class. This teacher, Mr. Crnich, loved the red pen and always gave feedback on my work. I had a lot of fun writing my story of a sweet little bunny who permanently scarred his bunny ear when a rose thorn poked a hole in it. He had to learn to live with looking different. I loved my little story and it took great courage to turn it in. Especially because I don’t consider myself an artist and I illustrated it myself.
Had we not had that assignment, I may never have thought of myself as a storyteller. But the encouragement from Mr. Crnich gave me the courage to see myself as a writer.
Dictionary.com defines courage as “the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.
I often think of the cowardly lion from The Wizard of Oz when I think about overcoming courage to write one of my stories. 
What did he do to gain the courage to approach The Wizard?
- He admitted he was scared.
- He surrounded himself with encouraging people.
- He used positive self-talk.
- He was afraid, but he did it anyway.
When I was writing my first book, Caregiver’s Devotions to Go, I was afraid. Did I really have thirty stories to tell? Would the editor like them? Would anyone read my book?
Here is what I did to get through to the end.
- I admitted I was scared. I asked for prayer to help with my fear.
- I met weekly with my friend and mentor, Cheryl Penn, and we talked about devotional ideas. I read her the stories and she helped me polish the prose.
- I reminded myself that my stories matter and sharing them would help others.
- When I wanted to quit, I pressed on and wrote anyway.
Just today, I received a note in the mail from a reader.
Dear Gigi:
I love your book, Caregiver’s Devotional to Go: The Women’s Devotions to Go Series.
Please send me one more. I hope this money is enough. I saw you at Philipsburg, Montana where I bought three at the After Five group. My mom, Frances Glynn, Carol Bowen and I all love the book.
It’s the best spiritual book I’ve ever read and I’ve never been much of a reader. Carol has read it several times.
I don’t have internet so that is why I’m writing you.
With Love, Thank you, Sandra R. Matesich.
If you are looking for courage in your writing, let me know and I will pray with you. I’d like to suggest a book that might help. It is called. The Courage to Write [How Writers Transcend Fear] by Ralph Keyes – author of The Writer’s Book of Hope.
May God Bless you with the courage to write that next sentence.
Bless you
Gigi Devine Murfitt
www.GigiMurfitt.com
I hope you have had a fun summer.
I had a great summer and I’m sad to see it end. It is hard to believe we are nearing the end as fall begins in just a few days.
Over the summer, I made a list of books recommended by Michael Hyatt and started reading. The first book I picked up was Donald Miller’s, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story.
Where was I when this book was published in 2011? Somehow I missed this gem until now.
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is a book about taking action to edit the scenes in our life stories. Donald Miller found himself in a funk after writing several books including his best seller, Blue Like Jazz .
As he created a screen-play for Blue Like Jazz, Miller was challenged to look at the structure of his own story and decided to make some changes in his life.
This book includes many personal stories from Donald Miller’s life as he made the choice to live differently. He got off the couch and started riding his bike. It wasn’t a ride down the street, but a ride across America raising money for water wells in Africa.
He rode miles with friends in kayaks and unexpectedly met Bob Goff (author of Love Does – Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World.) Donald and his friends spent eight hours with the Goff’s in a life changing experience of irresistible love.
One touching story relates to his struggle to decide whether to contact his father who abandoned him when he was young. He shares the real ebbs and flows of choosing to do the difficult things that might just change the trajectory of our lives.
As an author, I also related to this book because the elements of story are used to help Miller look at scenes from his life and determine to make some changes. I enjoyed his reference to story structure.
I was definitely challenged by this book to take a look at the story of my own life. Am I living he story I want to live? I want to put myself in more situations that require me to get out of my comfort zone.
The timing of this book coming to my attention was perfect. Last week we moved our son Gabe to his own apartment two hours away. And he took his service dog Ruth with him. The house is so quiet. A new chapter of my story begins.
This Thursday I will get to meet my new granddaughter who will join Avery and Ellison. I can hardly wait for this exciting part of the story.
In two weeks I will finish my seventeen year stint working at D+H (originally EZTeller, then Harland Financial Solutions, then purchased by D+H.) I will be laid off on October 1, 2016 as a part of a reorganization of our company. I will miss the people who were part of that story but I’m excited to swee what’s next.
Some of my life adventures are completely out of my control but I’m sure they will bring a spark into the new season ahead of me.
Steve and I are on a new adventure of living in an empty next. I hope to write and speak more. I want to spend more time with my grandchildren. I’d like to travel and enjoy the beauty of God’s country. I hope to go on a mission trip.
What bucket list items are you ready to check off?
Is there something about your life your’d like to edit?
I pray for you as God directs your path for whatever is around the corner. I know I’m listening closely for directions and I know it will be a great adventure!
Bless you friend as you edit the story of your life. Make it beautiful!
Gigi
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I felt like a kid when the UPS man showed up at our door late Sunday afternoon. The journal I’ve been creating since mid summer arrived hot off the press.
It is beautiful! I can’t wait for you to get your hands on it.
This is not only a journal. I share a bit of my story of HOPE. You’ll learn about my mom’s journal that is now seventy-eight years old. Interspersed throughout are inspiring quotes and Scriptures to point you to hope.
There is plenty of space to write your thoughts, hopes and dreams. (And frustrations too – I journal it all!)
A separate section to track prayer requests helps you remember the prayers of your heart. Updates help you see the hand of God at work. The gratitude section is a great place to record thanks each day.
And, just for fun, I’ve added some coloring pages. The coloring pages are floral or abstract designs – mostly tulips. I tell you the tulips story to explain my love for the beautiful flower.
It is available here on my website NOW. It will be up on Amazon in the next few days.
I hope you’ll consider joining me to journal the journey.
We’ve discounted the book through December 31st. The retail price is $14.95 but we are offering it here for $10.00. Click on the book section to order. Purchase Here
The proceeds from this book benefits Gabriel’s Foundation of HOPE – a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to bring encouragement and hope to those we serve.
I pray you will find HOPE in the manger this Christmas. He came to earth as a baby…just for you and for me. Bless you with encouragement today.
Gigi ]]>
I love reading fiction and often come up with ideas for sharing stories from my childhood and the beauty of growing up with a large family in a small town.
Last year I took a six week online class titled “Writing Fiction Like a Pro.” I loved it! I took one of the story ideas I’ve tossed around in my head for many years. After learning some cool techniques, it flowed into a three-act play structure and then I boiled it down to a raw outline form. I was on my way!
Now I’m ready to take it to the next level.
This weekend I’ll be headed to the Inland Northwest Story Crafters Retreat in Spokane.
I am ready to ignite my career as a novelist!
Susan May Warren is teaching at the 2014 My Book Therapy Storycrafter’s Retreat.
I’m showing up with an idea – and I hope to leave with a story and everything I need to ignite my journey to publication.
This is a private, intensive retreat with only 16 participants.
It is time to invest in my writing dreams.
I am beside myself excited!
I just finished one of Susan May Warren’s 2014 Christy Award winning novels titled Take a Chance on Me.
It is a story of love and forgiveness. I related to so many of the rich and raw characters.
It takes place in the small lakeside town of Deep Haven. I found myself rooting for each character in the Christiansen family as they struggled with relatable issues of grief, anger and unforgiveness.
With each chapter came a new twist in the developing romantic relationships from this beautiful little town in northern Minnesota.
I can’t wait to start another one of Susan’s many novels and learn from her talented writing style. I hope you’ll check out some of her books.
Here is a link to the bibliography of her many books. http://www.susanmaywarren.com/novels/bibliography/
I hope you’ll come back and share some ideas with me as I formulate the story lines for the series I have in mind.
Have you ever wanted to write a novel?
If so, why not now?
Tell me how I can encourage you in your writing.
Bless you with ideas that flow.
Gigi
#Storyteller ]]>
As a result, my book hit #1 in the Parenting Advice category and #4 in the Spiritual Religion – Christianity category.
Gotta love it.
Hurry while it remains free.
God bless your caring heart
Gigi Murfitt ]]>
Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. Romans 13:10
God is Love. If you want to give someone God then give them your love. God will take over from there.
I have to admit there are some people in my life who are difficult to love. But God asks me to love them anyway. He wants me to show them I care.
What if God put it in someone’s heart to come to me for help and I do not show them love? That would break God’s heart.
If everyone had love in their heart then there would be no dark days.
The joy of knowing God and being His love to others brings light to a dark situation.
Be the light that brightens someone’s dark day today. Show them your love.
God Bless Your Heart,
Gigi
https://gigimurfitt.com/
The idea for this blog post came from the April 18 devotional in “God Calling” edited by AJ Russell and published by Barbour Publishing.
April 18 — my brother-in-law Gary’s birthday. Happy Birthday Gary! Oh yeah, and thanks for the SUNshine today!
Why? Because I found the most amazing scarf created from a painting by Joni Eareckson Tada! www.JoniandFriends.org
- Buy this scarf at www.JoniandFriends.org
It reminded me of why I love tulips.
My first official outing after our son Gabe was born was a trip to Mount Vernon to see the tulips. Oh so beautiful!
Around the same time, my mother-in-law shared a clipping from Ann Landers that contained a story written by Emily Pearl Kingsley. It was her explanation of what it is like to raise a child with disabilities. I share it often when I speak to groups about how we can change our perspective and survive surprises that come our way.
Tonight I made a card on Shutterfly.com sharing Emily’s story, a photo of Joni’s scarf and a photo of Gabe smelling the tulips a few years ago.
Here is a link to the card on Shutterfly. I have way too much fun making gifts on Shutterfly!:
On the inside of the card you’ll find the story that warmed my anxious heart twenty-one years ago and helped me change my perspective.
WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by Emily Perl Kingsley
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this…
When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”
“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”
But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…. and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills….and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy… and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away… because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss.
But… if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things … about Holland.
I pray that whatever you might be facing today, God will help you see tulips and find your way through your unfamiliar place.
I’m so glad I landed where I did. I’ve learned to love the tulips in my life.
God Bless Your heart.
Gigi
Of course I’ve been thinking of the yummy turkey and stuffing I ate on Thanksgiving at my sister Shelley’s house.
But today, a different kind of stuffing came to mind. This kind of stuffing isn’t edible but it affects every area of my life.
It is stuffed emotion.
As my husband, Steve, and I work through our How We Love book, many different issues have have been exposed and we are both working toward revealing them, feeling them, dealing with them and experiencing healing from them.
Our eight weeks of group meetings with our How We Love small group ended last Tuesday. I’m sad we won’t be gathering every Tuesday with an incredible group of people who started out as strangers and quickly became friends.
We all learned about feelings we never dealt with in our youth and how they affect all of our relationships as adults. We shared our stories and encouraged each other in the journey of discovering the love imprints that harm our marriages, friendships, family and work relationships. It is such a blessing to watch the healing begin.
There are so many emotions we experience in a lifetime but today I’m thinking about one in particular.
GRIEF
Grief is one of my stuffed emotions that came to the surface about the second week of our How We Love group meetings.
I realized today when I wrote the date in my journal that this grief had been buried deep in my soul for the last forty-six years.
On November 27, 1965, at 2:20 a.m., my dad took his last breath in a hard-fought battle lost with lung cancer.
We were all gathered in Helena, MT for Thanksgiving. Dad was in the VA Hospital. I had not been allowed in the hospital room where my dad was dying. So none of it was real to my little seven year old mind. I was confused but had no one to answer my questions.
Early Saturday morning, I suspected he had died because I overheard my Aunt Jo on the telephone telling someone “The angels took him home about 2:20 this morning.” But when I asked my brother Bob about it, he told me I was wrong and that I should never again say that dad was dead.
No one talked about it. We packed our bags and headed home to Anaconda. There was a buzz of activity but nobody sat me down to tell me the details.
I actually heard the truth that my dad had died that day when I overheard my sister LeAnne’s friend tell her she was sorry to hear our dad had died.
I never saw my mom cry about dad’s death. I’m sure she did, but not in front of me. The way my family dealt with this grief was to stuff it, pull up our bootstraps, and move forward with that Devine smile hiding the pain.
I had cried privately many times throughout my life, missing my dad. But I know now I had never really processed the grief in a healthy way.
My dad 9-19-17 to 11-27-65
That is until eight weeks ago when, while working through the How We Love homework, I got an email from my cousin Howie Devine. It contained the words penned by my uncle Howard (Howie’s father and my dad’s brother) where he shared the detailed account of the last hours of my dad’s life. He described the church packed with family and friends and the meaningful military funeral with a twenty-one gun salute and taps played in the distance.
He told the story of how when he got home to Illinois, the clock in his bedroom has stopped at 2:20 a.m., the hour of dad’s death.
Suddenly it became real to me. After reading this letter, I could not stop crying. Forty-six years of stuffed tears flowed. I wondered if they would ever stop.
Thankfully I was able to share this with my siblings who had similar responses to the email. And I finally felt it was okay to let the tears flow. Then at small group later that night, I shared what happened and received the comfort and support that was missing so many years before.
Back in 1965, the amount of comfort I had received from an overwhelmed mom of ten kids who had just lost her husband, was the best my mom could give. But it taught me to stuff my pain and not ask for comfort in many other areas of my life.
Not any more. I can’t tell you how this process is changing my life. I’m letting go of things that have been buried for way too long.
Now I am using tools I learned in How We Love. I came up with four easy steps to work through the process of healing from past hurts that affect present relationships.
- Reveal: Speak up when I feel the need for comfort. I’m talking about what is going on in my heart. No more buried feelings.
- Feel: Use words from the feeling word list available in the book. (A great tool to help you explain what you are feeling.) Let the emotions flow.
- Deal: I’m asking questions when I need answers. I’m sharing feelings and thoughts with Steve that I never shared with him in the thirty-five years we’ve known each other. I’m getting help from my counselor in the areas I feel stuck.
- Heal: I’m allowing Jesus to heal those broken places. My relationships are improving and we are learning a new love imprint of the secure connector.
No more stuffing for me! I’m free!
How about you? Do you have stuffed emotions you need to share with someone?
I hope you will share your story in the comment section of this blog. Maybe we can give one another comfort in the “stuff” of life that keeps us down.
Come back to my blog where I will continue to share the discoveries we are making in our journey to love the way God intended. It is an exciting journey! We are always learning something new.
God Bless Your Heart!
Gigi
Learn more about this helpful tool we are using to discover our love imprint at www.HowWeLove.com Steve and I plan to continue to spend our Tuesday nights working through the chapters and workbook questions in more detail. We have so much to learn about each other. It is going to be an amazing journey.
I give them as gifts to friends who really enjoy the encouraging messages.
As Steve and I work to make the next twenty-five years of our marriage the best years, teamwork is important.
It separates the winners from the losers.
If we aren’t on the same team, we won’t get to the destination God has planned for us.
Getting your team to work together toward a common vision is the fuel that allows your team to reach their goals and envision new goals that well exceed common expectations.
Whether you consider your family your team or you work with a team of co-workers or classmates, I think you will enjoy this short movie to inspire you today!
Although the video shares the teamwork of the Blue Angels, I’m applying some of the tools to my marriage.
- Center point – Focus on shared values for our future.
- Align with our common purpose.
- Sacrifice individual gain for my mate’s greater good.
- Tap into the strengths of my mate.
- Rest, Reflect, Recharge – complete a detailed maintenance program – maintain peak performance. This How We Love group we are attending is definitely a recharge-maintenance program. (www.HowWeLove.com)
- Communicate openly and honestly. Take time to clarify procedures. – We are learning better ways to communicate.
- Walk the Talk – Do what we say we believe.
- Attitude = altitude. – Looking at our marriage with a positive attitude will help us gain the altitude we desire.
I’m ready to gain new altitudes for Team Murfitt.
How about you?
God Bless Your Heart
Gigi
Friday, October 14th, Gabe is speaking his C.L.E.A.R. message at the Philipsburg schools.
Gabe will be sharing his story right where my husband Steve attended school for elementary through high school.
Philipsburg School
On Sunday, October 16th I’ll be sharing a message titled “Courage and Care” with a group of women at an afternoon tea. If you happen to be in Philipsburg on Sunday, join us at the Granite County Museum at 4:00 PM.
It is always fun going back to our roots.
We are certainly learning about how those roots affected our ability to love in the How We Love small group study Steve and I are attending with a great group of people.
This week we discussed my most common love style – the Avoider.
As the eighth of ten children, it is not surprising that this is my dominant love imprint!
My second highest imprint is PLEASER style.
Makes sense. I avoid conflict at all costs so I am a people pleaser. It is hard for me to say “no.”
Can I say I’d just like to dig that root up and plant something a little bit healthier?
Through the How We Love book, I’m learning new skills to do just that.
I hope you have taken the time to take the How We Love Test.
If not, click here and take it. http://www.howwelove.com/hwlstylestest/HWLLoveStyleTest.aspx
Come back and tell me what your dominant love imprint style is. I’d love you to leave a comment on my blog.
It will be fun to dialogue about how this has affected our lives.
I’ve got a couple blogs drafted to share with you the jewels I’ve mined as I’ve dug up this root. So come back to learn more next week.
I’ll be flying the friendly skies tonight. That gives us more time to hang in Missoula and Philipsburg with my family.
I’m really looking forward to walking around the University of Montana Oval and kicking up a few leaves. Oh so many memories.
University of Montana Main Hall in the fall.
I love fall in Montana. And I love learning better ways to express my love.
God bless you today with an understanding that God wants to help you learn how to love.
Gigi
The How We Love book can be purchased at Amazon.com by clicking on this link:
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