Tomorrow my second book will make her way onto doorsteps and bookshelves across the country and world. Iām smiling thinking of you holding The Lord Is My Courage in your hands, suffused by a joy that smells sweeter than I expected. The joy of sharing this book has been made sweeter by the sorrow that preceded publishing it.
I almost didnāt get to be part of releasing my own book. You read that rightā¦
I started 2022 with bright hopes and bold intentions, but by the end of the first week of January, my big dreams were laying down beside me, sick in bed. I havenāt felt ready to share a lot of this on social media yet, becauseāletās be honestāIāve been hate-dog-piled by people of a different political persuasion than me on Instagram one too many timesā¦But this is substack. You have chosen to give me room in your inbox, so Iāll let you farther into my life than the crowd. Be gentle with me, okay?Ā
Iām going to type this up more quickly than I would normally, because otherwise, I might not work up the courage to share it soon at all. This is partly a personal update, partly a description of the strange scent of joy that I canāt help but share with you. (TLDR: make sure you scroll to the end for some really fun bonus gifts when you preorder The Lord Is My Courage.)
Long story short, an infection turned into chaos in my already immunocompromised body, and by March I had spent three months in bed, was struggling to hold my own body up, and found myself answering a phone call from my editor/publisher who said, āKJ, I want you to know that even if you canāt be part of releasing this book when it actually comes out, everything will be okay. You can personally work on releasing it in the Fallāor whenever you are feeling betterābut we care more about you being well than we do about a big book release.ā (Rare kindness, that.)
I said thank you, told him I absolutely agreed, and then hung up the phone and wept. Iāve worked for two years to release The Lord Is My Courage, but I found myself needing to release my expectations for the book and its publication first.Ā
Sometimes we must drop our dreams to the dirt. Sometimes we have to watch the ground where we had planted goodness grow cracked and dry. Sometimes, more often than I wish were true, Love asks us to sit back and witness the mystery that death brings life.Ā
Instead of creating campaigns to release this book with panache, I scheduled specialist appointments for the growing list of concerns with my body. Instead of seeing clients and holding space for their trauma, I canceled all my plans for over a month to tend to my own current trauma. I made the hard choices to care for my body. And I got more bloodwork done than I have had my entire life (My record is now 18 vials at once. LOL.). Real footage of my transition into being a vampire belowā¦
Somewhere along the way, we learned that covid was the culprit of my entire cascade of new health problems. The only reason we hadnāt known it from the beginning was that covidāunbeknownst to most of my specialistsāoften goes undetected in patients who are as immunocompromised as me. Even with a booster shot in me, covid ripped through my bodyās systems, creating chaos at every turn. I shudder to think of what might have happened had I not had a vaccine at all.Ā
ā¹ļø
Letās just say I am unbelievably grateful to be alive right now.
Before January, I had one disease, which was enough to keep me as dependent on grace as a tree needs light. I now have 7 diseases and conditions, most of which my immunologist believes I will have my entire life. Iām thirty-three years old, and Iām sobered by the fragility of my life. Iāll be starting high-dose IVIG (immunoglobulin infusions) soon to treat several of these diseases at once, including the primary immunodeficiency we uncovered. In six months, weāll see if it works. If it does, Iāll probably receive IVIG every 3-4 weeks for the rest of my life.
These past six months, Iāve been living the pulse of The Lord Is My Courage in a way I never anticipated. Courage is collective. Courage is practiced. Courage grows in the dark, dry dirt of the dying of our dreams. It smells of sweat and tears and salt. It takes our fear and fragility and fertilizes it into joy.
In March, I hobbled my way into cardiac rehab, where I confessed to the intake nurse that I was subsisting off of McDonaldās fries and green protein smoothies because I couldnāt keep any other food down (turns out you crave + need mass amounts of sodium with my condition!)ā¦but also that I wasnāt sure I could keep living like this. The terribleness of how miserable I was seemed too insurmountable to change.Ā
When I started cardiac rehab, my doctors and exercise physiologists had me working on holding my body up in bed for two-hour stretches at a time. I could barely make it two minutes long on the gentlest exercise machine (the one even the oldest heart attack patients barely usedā¦š¬). Week after week, I kept showing up. Many times, the work of moving my limbs wore me out so much, Iād spend the following 24 hours in bed.Ā
Manny, Mel, and the cardiac rehab team greeted me with kindness every single week. They didnāt shame the tears that fell when I told them about new diagnoses. They didnāt laugh when I cried for joy at finally being strong enough to move from the recumbent bike to the treadmill. They looked me in the eyes and said, āYou are doing amazing. This is huge.ā
āCourage is not something we can cultivate on our own. It is something we hold in common, a gift we confer on each other. It is the communion we offer with our faces, in safe spaces, with words that break the bondage of yesterdayās shame and harm, rooting us in the reality that Beloved is who we are.ā
āThe Lord Is My Courage, p. 229-230
On Friday, I graduated from cardiac rehab. Mel stood by my treadmill as I came close to my final cooldown and said, āKJ, I want you to know that witnessing you show up here has been beautiful. You have come so far. Do you realize how sick you were when you started? What you are capable of today is stunning.ā And I got to look straight back into the eyes that saw way too many of my hard moments for comfort and say, āI couldnāt have done this without you.ā
āI couldnāt have cared for my body in the way she needed without your support. You gave me the courage to care for my body in a way that was too hard to do on my own.ā
Mel put Brandi Carlileās āThe Storyā on the speakers, per my graduation request, and I cooled down to the sound of this season becoming part of the story of courage creating communion and joy. After the other heart patients and I stretched to finish, Mel walked out to my car with me, where I got to give her one of the first copies of The Lord Is My Courage and tell her, āYour work matters more than you know. You confer courage on your patients in ways we canāt conjure up on our own.ā
The trauma of this season was too much for me to take. Until I had tender, skilled folks stand on the cracked dirt of my days with me.Ā
Yesterday, I stepped outside my apartment to switch over our laundry (yep, I live in an apartment and donāt have my own washer and dryer. My life is *glamorous.*), and all around me, the earth perfumed joy. I stood there on the asphalt of our parking lot, mist rising up from the hot, wet ground, and savored the earthy scent of petrichor. Petrichor is the scent the soil makes when, after a long dry season, water falls. The scent of summer. The scent of the earthās smile. A scent that is only possible after the land has been parched.
Some scientists coined the term petrichor after the Greek word petros, which means āstone,ā and ichor, which means āthe fluid that flows in the veins of the gods.ā Just like rain expresses the scent of sage or flowers, it breaks down a molecule made by bacteria in the dirt, geosmin, and releases its scent into the air. What was cracked becomes fragrant. What seemed dead becomes alive. Out of the broken earth, we are given a scent that soars.
Courage comes from our cracked places. There is more happening within us, under the cover of darkness, where the substance of othersā kindness and support meets the dirt of our dying dreams and even despair.
Do not curse your cracked earth.
The rain will come. And the most stunning scent will rise.
Every dying thing and dream is the start of new life.
With joy, with love, and with wonder at how the water we most need always comes through the darkest valley (and, yes, you can read a helluva lot more about how in The Lord Is My Courage TOMORROW),
āKJ
The Lord Is My Courage releases in mere hours! But if you preorder one or more copies today, you can claim some fun bonus gifts. (Make sure you fill out the form on my website to claim your gifts!)
Preordering a book is the number one way you can support authors you appreciate. Preorder sales + sales in the first week make a huge impact on helping new readers find the book, getting on bestsellerās lists, getting on more bookshelves, and beyond. Thank you for supporting my work and this message by preordering. I canāt express how encouraging it has been to watch so many of you rally behind the message of a Good Shepherd, of honesty about harm, and the courage that is possible in the midst of fear. Now onto your presents:
Preorder one copy, and you can claim:
A free downloadable print for the book
Access to a preview of the audiobook
Early, exclusive access to a preview of the book
Preorder two or more copies (this counts even if you preorder say, the audiobook + your paperback copy, or if you get one for yourself + one to give to a friend) + you can claim:
A totebag with graphic elements from the book*
A sneak peek at my next next book (yes, Iāve been keeping some secretsā¦), releasing Winter 2023!
Oh KJ Iām so sorry for all youāve gone through and are facing. I get it more than you know. I have a chronic and pretty severe degenerative illness (mostly genetic with some autoimmune components), and because I was in the high risk camp for covid, my family basically quarantined the whole first year (kids did school from home and husband worked from home) to try and protect me. We finally got the vaccine and boosters and though we were still careful, the fam was able to leave the house and venture into the world more. But we ended up getting COVID anyway in January during the peak of omicron. Because of the vaccine, thankfully, I barely had symptoms. But my body has been a complete dumpster fire ever since. I was already very limited (disabled), but since January Iāve been bedridden and/or homebound most days. It seems to have compounded everything and doctors are still trying to figure out what is going on because of all the unknowns with COVID (as you probably know first hand). Anyway I am still very much in the throes of trying to figure out what is unfolding in my body, and itās all been enormously discouraging. Some days to the point of despair. So I just wanted to say thank you for your vulnerability in sharing this. Though I feel like I relate to so much of what you write, this hit the nail on the head in a very specific and providential way for me personally. More than I can share here. But justā¦ thank you for this šā„ļø
K.J. I am so sorry for all that pain and trauma. I teared up reading just this. I'm glad you had such a kind team working with you. Looking forward to your book!