What do you do to pay the bills?
I’ve been a physical therapist assistant for 10 years.
Will you share a little bit about your family?
I’ve been married to my lovely and supportive wife, Jen, for 10 years. We’ve been blessed with three daughters ages 5, 6, and 8. All fun-loving, sweet-spirited, and of course always well-behaved (ahem).
What do you like to do when you’re not working, writing (which is work!), churching, or familysizing?
Read and fool around with my website. Oh, I also mow the lawn, trim the hedges, paint the porch, replace rotted boards, and all that other fun stuff homeowners do to pass the time away. Actually, I’m pretty boring (except when Toby Mac is in the CD player).
A full-time job, church involvement, family life, writing books: How do you do it all?
Very carefully. Seriously. God’s blessed me with time management skills and I make use of my time wisely. Of course, there’s the tendency to get over involved and that’s when I need to take a step back and re-evaluate what I’m doing. But careful management of time is key. Make the most of every minute.
Tell me about when you were diagnosed with cancer.
Yeah, cancer. Kind of a big thing. I was diagnosed on March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day. Here I was getting ready to launch into trying my hand at promoting my new book and in the middle of negotiating a contract for a second book when the doctor dropped the bomb: You have colon cancer.
Funny thing is, I don’t remember ordering colon cancer. Not part of my plans at all.
How has that diagnosis affected your writing?
How has it affected my writing? Well, immediately, it’s halted my writing. With the exception of daily journaling on my blog, I haven’t written a lick since being diagnosed. I love to write, it’s my passion, but this cancer thing trumps it. I took this diagnosis as a nudge from God that I need to set writing aside for a little while and just concentrate on the most important things: my relationship with Him and my relationship with my family. Sometimes it takes something like cancer to refocus you, to get you to evaluate your life and do a little re-prioritizing.
In the long run, I think the experience of traveling through this valley will only enhance my writing, give it more depth, more texture, more emotion and passion. I know firsthand what it’s like to traverse that Valley of the Shadow of Death, to question Why me?, to be scared of dying, not for dying’s sake but for my family’s sake, to live with a monster inside me that wants to kill me (hey, that gives me a great story idea), to be poked, prodded, scoped, and stuck, to live a life that revolves around the next test result or the next doctor’s appointment. I’ve been there now and I can incorporate those experiences into my stories, into the life of my characters. It’ll be interesting to see how my writing changes once I get back to it.
What is one thing your diagnosis has taught you?
One other thing I’ve learned is to fully rely on God, to willingly submit myself and put my life in His hands. And of course, this carries over into my writing as well. We writers never know where the next contract is coming from or how much the next royalty check will be for, or even how the next story will unfold, if there is a next story. We are constantly at His mercy, and I’m learning that’s a good place to be.
