Reckless Yes is born! 

It’s quite surreal when a day you never thought would happen is the day you find yourself in. Today is that day for me. The book I’ve dreamed of writing for nearly a decade is out in the world today! I’ve poured my heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears into this project and now it’s no longer just my baby. It’s a gift I’m offering to the entire world. And what a precious, fought-for gift it is!

I can’t help but think back to this day last year. June 6, 2022 I was four months in to working diligently with my writing coach, with our next Zoom call just on the horizon. And then it happened. Hayden’s shunt in his brain failed which could turn deadly if not addressed immediately. Right when I was in the middle of finalizing my first draft of Chapter Six: 210 Days recounting our NICU days, Hayden was back in an Operating Room yet again, us in a waiting room praying for a successful surgery and his survival.

Our NICU stint happened during our days when we lived in Houston. In fact, we moved to Houston for Texas Children’s Hospital. So the chapter and all the memories it was digging up for me was from TCH and the humid days of summer 2007. And in June of 2022, when his shunt failed, it was back to TCH we went. We never transferred our neurosurgery care to someone in Dallas. It just never felt like a good fit and so for the last few failures, we would make the trek to Houston to utilize the skills of our beloved neurosurgeon who we trusted.

Would you believe me if I told you on this exact day of my book launch, June 6, last year, I was at TCH with my sick child, just like I had been in 2007. I was sitting in the same  chapel I sat in so many years before, yet now I was praying not only that God would help my son, but also that He would sustain my writing project. That He would anoint me with the words and the message He intended me to share. I was begging Him to show up. I knew I had been called to write this book, and in the throes of doing so, here we were yet again, in the midst of a medical emergency with surgeries and IVs and consent forms. Not the ideal circumstances to write a book – yet somehow, the perfect circumstances for this book and this chapter.

I left the chapel feeling hopeful that God would continue to reveal to me all the parts of our TCH NICU story I needed to write, and that I would get them completed in time for my next Zoom coaching call. I went back to the hospital room and sat on the hideaway couch-bed and got to work. And the Lord provided. The words and memories fresh on my mind came quickly to the pages. Ryan snapped a picture of me working away and in the background, and out of the window behind me was the West Tower of Texas Children’s Hospital. The same tower Hayden spent 210 days in on the 4th floor in the NICU. God had orchestrated the most epic “full circle” moment on June 6, 2022 while creating the content for Reckless Yes. I made the Zoom call that week with my writing coach. From behind a fabric curtain in the parent sleeping area of an ICU room, I chatted with my coach and we walked through the content, tweaking and perfecting the book you’ll hold in your hand after today. Because in an even more epic “God move,” the release of Reckless Yes was one year to the day of the moment I felt like the wheels were falling off of the whole project. Yet, God wasn’t worried or stressed. In His sovereign timing, He was working all things together for the good.

Reckless Yes is out now and available on Amazon as an e-book, audiobook or in paperback. Autographed copies are also available at RecklessYesBook.com as well as exclusive merchandise. I hope you’ll grab a copy and read a bit of my story, but more than that, I pray you have an encounter with the God of the universe and the One in whom all things hold together.